By agreeing to support a massive bill to address climate change, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) seems to have fallen into the same Alice in Wonderland-like rabbit hole occupied by the likes of Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY). In this fantasyland, headlines and virtue signaling are the only objectives. Reality is not allowed to intrude. Facts are irrelevant. Mankind’s unquenchable thirst for energy to achieve a higher standard of living does not exist. Nor does the aggressive push we need on nuclear energy, despite its criticality.
Considerations of global geopolitics, where energy availability is existential in nature, are also conspicuously absent. Consider, for example, how the conflict in Ukraine has laid bare the worldwide dependence on a robust supply of fossil fuels, which are as essential to national security as military might, economic power, and geography. The dependence on Russian gas and oil by much of Europe is a clear object lesson. Moreover, not only do hydrocarbons provide energy directly, but they are also a component of many of the everyday products on which we depend, including clothes, mobile phones, computers, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics.
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