The Biden administration announced another multi-billion-dollar investment in green energy on this Earth Day, and two former Trump-era economic and energy experts are reading between the renewable lines.
"We've seen this blind allegiance by the Biden administration to the war on fossil fuels," former Environmental Protection Agency chief of staff Mandy Gunasekara said on "Varney & Co." Monday. "We are in a country of growth and opportunity, so we need to create a future of energy growth and dominance, not one of energy scarcity."
"But unfortunately, Team Biden is so committed to propping up these inferior technologies, it's causing all sorts of havoc on the national security front," she added, "but also the economic development front, and it is limiting the development of the very energy resources that we need."
"If we continue to shut down coal plants, not allow LNG terminals, not build nuclear power plants, you're right," former Trump economic adviser Stephen Moore also told host Stuart Varney. "But we have the capacity to lower our energy prices by an all-in energy policy. If I sound a little frustrated, I am, because we have more energy than any other country in the world."
JPMORGAN CHASE, BLACKROCK DROP OUT OF MASSIVE U.N. CLIMATE ALLIANCE IN STUNNING MOVE
Monday morning, the Biden-Harris EPA said it "celebrates" Earth Day 2024 with $7 billion in grants for low-income communities. The plan, according to an EPA press release, would deliver solar energy to more than 900,000 households and "enable low-income and disadvantaged communities to deploy and benefit from distributed residential solar."
The official announcement further claimed that the plan to install solar will lower energy costs, create jobs, and advance environmental justice while "tackling climate change."
"What would make sense is letting the market determine which technology should actually take off. And they keep subsidizing inferior technologies, which undermines the development of the very technologies and the resources that we know how to use quite well," Gunasekara reacted.
"If you look at the states that have high requirements for solar and wind power, their utility bills are about twice as high as states that get their electric power from nuclear power, natural gas and coal. So solar and wind power don't save money," Moore added to the argument.
"This is the reason that the government has to keep flushing dollars into their very inefficient ways of getting electric power accepted," he continued.
While both expanded on the idea that energy security equals national security, Gunasekara detailed how utilizing natural resources safely and efficiently can be "life-changing" economically too – a sentiment with which Moore agreed.
GET FOX BUSINESS ON THE GO BY CLICKING HERE
"I'm from a small town where oil and gas actually gave that community an opportunity to grow. I've seen it firsthand, and I don't care about the ‘deep state.’ I'm not scared of them," Gunasekara said. "And if I go back in there, I'm going to do what's right by the American people and what the president of the United States expects. And if it's President Donald Trump, we know that he expects a future of energy dominance and how to actually get there."
"Do you think the Saudis want Donald Trump back in the White House? Do you think Putin wants Trump back in the White House when his first policy, and I guarantee you, I've talked to the president many times about this, the first thing we're going to do is drill and drill and drill, produce more oil, gas and coal?" Moore expanded. "That's going to reduce the price of oil."
