The United States is the leader of the world by nearly every measure, a fact highlighted more than ever during the early weeks of Donald Trump’s second term as president.
Every decision or comment Trump makes—whether on tariffs on foreign goods, ruminations on the future of Canada and Greenland, or the level of U.S. involvement in Ukraine’s war with Russia—sends reverberations around the globe in ways that no other nation can match.
The U.S. wields that kind of influence because it remains unmatched in its economic strength—strength based on the principles of innovation, freedom, and personal prosperity. And nothing is more crucial to America’s economic engine than its energy supply.
The U.S. can only maintain its supremacy when we can power our factories, fuel our transportation, and heat and cool our homes safely, efficiently, and affordably. That’s why the push from the radical left to replace affordable and reliable energy with government-subsidized “alternative energy” gimmicks is not only economically unsustainable but also dangerous to national security.
Promoters of wind and solar inundate the media with misleading claims, such as declaring last year that “90 percent of new electricity capacity in 2024 to date comes from renewables.” That sounds like a lot until you realize that “new electricity” amounts to only 3 percent of total electricity capacity in 2024 and is projected to be as little as 1 percent in 2025. In reality, about 60 percent of electricity generated in the U.S. is thanks to fossil fuels, with natural gas accounting for more than 40 percent of that total.
Conversely, about 97 percent of projects currently seeking approval under Biden-era “green energy credit” incentives are weather-dependent and unreliable to meet demands.
The benefits of natural gas are becoming increasingly evident. Natural gas is plentiful and affordable. It’s by far the cleanest fossil fuel, made even cleaner by modern emission technologies. As such, natural gas is increasingly being recognized as “green,” including by legislative fiat.
In Ohio, Gov. Mike DeWine (R) signed a bill in early 2023 designating natural gas as “green energy.” A few months later, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) signed a similar measure. A comparable bill is working its way through the Indiana legislature, while still other states are crafting legislation expanding the definition of “green energy” to natural gas, biomass, or nuclear energy.
For too long, “clean” energy has been defined by special interests who are heavily invested in propping up wind, solar, hydro, or geothermal technologies. Such narrow definitions have shunted aside the nation’s most affordable and reliable energy resources when it comes to the fight for federal dollars designated for “green” projects.
As Maureen Ferguson, an official with the American Petroleum Institute, pointed out to Indiana lawmakers, “The newest gas-fired generators in the U.S. are more efficient and have lower emission rates—roughly 65 percent below that of the average coal plant.” Tragically, the Biden administration prioritized radical-left energy initiatives over safety and security, making affordable, reliable energy harder for Americans to access.
While it’s encouraging that states are slowly embracing common sense energy policies, what’s needed is a national strategy that begins to translate Trump’s “drill, baby drill” vision into legislative action.
To that end, U.S. Reps. Troy Balderson (R-OH) and August Pfluger (R-TX) recently introduced a resolution defining natural gas as affordable and green energy, detailing how natural gas lowers emissions while remaining a leader in meeting America’s energy demands. Balderson followed that with legislation designed to fast-track power generation projects to improve the reliability of the nation’s electric grid and overcome a dangerous backlog of projects.
Sen. John Hoeven, co-sponsor of identical legislation in the U.S. Senate, said, “The reliability of the electric grid has been undermined for years by Green New Deal policies advanced under the Obama and Biden administrations, whose heavy-handed approach to regulation has forced the retirement of critically-needed baseload power plants. The result is an unstable grid, power shortages, and more brownouts and blackouts.”
The actions taken so far at the state and federal levels are good first steps, but Americans deserve more. Model legislation has already been drafted that would ensure America’s security and protect the U.S. from being at the mercy of foreign nations.
Among other things, the ARC Energy Security Act would require fuel to be domestically sourced, have a stable and predictable cost, be readily available 24/7, and redefine “green energy” as energy resources that reduce air pollutants—including energy generated by nuclear reactors and natural gas.
For too long, the far left has monopolized the “climate change” conversation while holding America hostage to its radical energy demands—all while endangering the safety and security of the United States, accumulating trillions in taxpayer debt, and attempting to destroy our most reliable and abundant energy resources.
There is still time to reverse the damage, but only if state and federal lawmakers act now to codify America’s energy independence and security into law.
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Gary Abernathy is a longtime newspaper editor, reporter, and columnist. He was a contributing columnist for the Washington Post from 2017-2023 and a frequent guest analyst across numerous media platforms. He is a contributing columnist for The Empowerment Alliance, which advocates for realistic approaches to energy consumption and environmental conservation.
The green movement never could survive on the presence of particulate pollution alone. That, REAL, pollution has been arrested. The movement required the gift provided by the SCOTUS. The SCOTUS, not understanding what constitutes pollution, logically concluded that the EPA would be better suited to understand any role CO2 might have. Of corse the Court now realizes that the FDA is a bureaucratic government within a government and was, itself, already polluted with anti – CO2 ideologues convinced that adverse climate change is completely dependent on CO2 production from the use of fossil fuels and that the effects will be world wide, immediate, irreversible and Biblical. Dittos for Brussels. In the meantime real pollution, particulate and macroscopic, is ubiquitous throughout most of Asia. The countries in that region build new coal plants each week and the effluent does not remain in their neighborhoods. Like Chinese spy balloons traveling over American skies it is not long before Americans and Europeans share the same polluted atmosphere.
Ultimately nuclear power and other forms of yet to be discovered energy will be employed to meet the demands of AI engineered infrastructure. Fossil fuels represent the logical immediate and current solution. They are affordable and abundant and can be used to generate very clean energy. However no amount of reclassification of natural gas will change the hearts and minds of the fear mongering, cultist, apocalypse decrier class unless, perhaps, Al Gore, himself, comes out and states that his predictions were wrong. That is a prediction that is even more unlikely to happen than the predicted climate changes that will require the east and west coasts to build dykes to prevent NYC, LA and San Fran from being deluged by the second coming of the Biblical flood.