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Washington’s bottomless supply of pundits is always ready to state the obvious: Democrats fear they’re walking into a midterm election slaughter.
The party that holds the White House is almost always in trouble. A third of the U.S. Senate seats are up for grabs, and the entire House of Representatives is at stake. If there is smart money in Washington, the smart money sees Republicans recapturing both Houses later this year and making a serious bid for the White House in just two years.
This explains in part why the current administration’s proenvironment rhetoric is masked by its pro-petroleum actions.
Winter blends
This week, President Biden visited Iowa’s heartland to announce the suspension by the Environmental Protection Agency of a 1989 regulation that limited gasoline’s ethanol content.
The corn-based fuel acts as gasoline’s Hamburger Helper, extending its use. But it also creates more smog—ground level ozone pollution that impacts asthma and other respiratory woes. Smog is a hot-weather phenomenon. The EPA has restricted the summertime use ethanol additives. “Summer blend” gasoline can add as much as 15 cents per gallon to gas prices. Selling “winter blend” gas is a windfall for corn growers, but ignores environmental and health concerns.
Pump pain
The Ukraine crisis is being used as a way for state governments to reduce at-the pump prices by a dime. For the next few months, more than 20 states will suspend collecting state gasoline taxes. Many of these states will soon be able to reintroduce those taxes, as they are not yet eligible for the election.
Last week, Biden did something unprecedented: he released more than a dozen books. Millions of barrels per dayFor at least several months, the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve will be available. Although it may sound like Oprah-ish everyone-gets-a car tactic, analysts warn that it will not have any impact on pump prices.
Environmental electoral politics
Even if Biden’s moves are cosmetic and electorally motivated, they can’t match the cold-blooded condescension of George W. Bush’s eight years. Vice President Dick Cheney headed Bush’s Energy Task Force. Cheney was widely criticized for being too close to fossil fuel interests, and not speaking out for environmentalists. A few months into the Bush-Cheney leadership, Cheney shrugged off energy conservation efforts, saying “conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is This is not enough to support a comprehensive, sound energy policy.
Instead, Cheney’s task force created mechanisms for oil and gas interests to hide many of the pollution and climate change risks of fracking, a drilling technique for both oil and natural gas that enjoyed a boom in subsequent years.
On the Democrats’ side, green lobbyists say they were stiffed by both the Clinton and Obama administrations during their respective first terms. The Clinton-Gore Administration held off on most environmental moves, then took a beating from Newt Gingrich’s anti-regulatory “Contract With America” in the 1994 midterms.
In 2009, Obama’s staff told environmental reps that the White House would Major environmental initiatives are put on holdThe sagging U.S. economic recovery was not over. The House was relegated to an increasingly hostile GOP in the 2010 midterm elections.
So Biden is facing the strong possibility of his agenda being hogtied in his second two years. Just as the world is looking to America for leadership in climate change, it’s just the right time.
Peter Dykstra is our columnist and weekend editor. He can be reached by email at [email protected]Or @pdykstra.
His views may not reflect those of Environmental Health News, The Daily Climate or publisher Environmental Health Sciences.
Banner photo: The White House
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