Why the Biden Green New Deal Policies Are a Collection of Highly Propagandized Futile Gestures

On his first day in office, US president Joe Biden famously used a stroke of his pen to cancel Trans-Canada’s (now TC Energy) $8 billion investment in the northern leg of its Keystone Pipeline system. Biden took this action despite his administration failure to find Trans-Canada in violation of any U.S. law or regulation that would warrant such an extreme measure. The President justified his action based on specious claims that cancelling the pipeline would somehow reduce U.S. carbon emissions.

That claim, of course, is complete nonsense given that oil from Alberta’s oil sands projects has continued flowing into the United States on trucks and trains. Incremental production volumes that can’t flow into the U.S. by those means or on other, pre-existing pipelines are being transported west to Vancouver, BC on Canada’s Trans-Mountain pipeline. Both rail and trucking are far more risky, more expensive, and much more polluting than transporting oil in a modern, state-of-the-art pipeline. Thus, the Biden abuse of power will go down in history as one of the most futile and costly energy-related gestures ever taken by the U.S. government.

The same claim can be made related to every aspect of the Biden Green New Deal agenda given that its efforts to cut carbon emissions are vastly overwhelmed each day by the ever-expanding use of coal by a single nation, China. Where Biden has been cancelling critical infrastructure designed to provide the U.S. public with reliable and affordable fossil fuel energy, China has continued to expand its own use of oil, natural gas, and coal.