Politicians don't have to ban fossil fuels to achieve their "climate" goals. Instead, they use a host of covert methods.

The campaign pledge "I will not ban fracking" should be viewed with much skepticism.

In early January 2023, the Consumer Product Safety Commissioner Richard Trumka, Jr. told Bloomberg that a ban on natural gas cooking stoves was “on the table.” The response was immediate and firmly against a ban. Many elected officials issued statements condemning the banning of gas stoves, including Rep. Byron Donald (R-Fla.), who demanded on Twitter that President Biden “get your hands off our gas stoves!!!!” Within days, the CPSC “clarified” that they were only looking into making stoves safer and were not considering a ban on gas stoves. Their only concern, they said, was the “health risks” of gas emissions.

While the media mostly ignored the subject, the controversy raged on. In November, Kamala Harris posted a photo with her husband standing next to her gas stove, with the caption, “From our family to yours, Happy Thanksgiving.” Her post generated a flood of responses, with many conservatives accusing her of “hypocrisy.” Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) wrote on X: “Wait… that’s a gas stove! The same kind Dems want to BAN you from owning.”

The White House continued to deny that they were planning to ban gas stoves, although many people suspected the denials were lies. Sure enough, on February 14, 2024, the Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Building Technologies Office, published in the Federal Register “Energy Conservation Program: Energy Conservation Standards for Consumer Conventional Cooking Products.” According to the rules, interested parties had 60 days (???) to file comments. On August 12, 2024, DOE posted the final order saying:

DOE has determined that the comments received in response to the direct final rule do not provide a reasonable basis for withdrawing the direct final rule. Therefore, DOE provides this document confirming the effective and compliance dates of those standards.

Notice that the DOE is the judge and jury with their ruling that the comments they received from the public “do not provide a reasonable basis for withdrawing the final rule; therefore, compliance with the rules will be required starting on January 31, 2024.” In other words, DOE couldn’t care less about what the public thinks. DOE and other federal agencies make a mockery of the public comment process.

Another covert technique federal government agencies use in the battle against fossil fuels is “sue and settle.” Sue and settle occurs when a federal agency conspires with anti-fossil fuels NGOs to covertly agree to settle with the NGOs to give them the outcome they want after they file a lawsuit. A recent example is a sue and settle agreement between a federal agency and NGOs to stop or at least slow down drilling and hinder oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico to protect an endangered whale that may have been spotted in the Gulf.

This saga began in 2023 when two fishermen trolling for billfish 100 miles south of Galveston Island spotted a whale. They sent videos to NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, saying they thought it was a Rice’s whale, which usually lives in the northeastern Gulf off Florida, not in the southern Gulf. NOAA said that they were unable to confirm the whale’s species.

The sighting prompted a group of NGOs led by the Sierra Club to file a lawsuit to stop offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico to protect Rice’s whales. The Biden Administration agreed to settle the lawsuit by imposing “extra precautions in running ships to their offshore platforms.” This type of lawsuit and settlement agreement between federal agencies and NGOs is referred to as “sue and settle:”

The president of the trade group, National Ocean Industries Association, said

these sue and settle agreements or “regulation by litigation” arrangements serve to do nothing more than stifle domestic oil and gas production. They circumvent the regulatory process, preempting requirements to consider the science, the economic impacts and the national security consequences.

Under this sue and settle agreement, offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico will be severely restricted starting in early 2025:

Under the settlement, agreed to by the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, oil companies with operations in an 11-million-acre zone stretching across the Gulf of Mexico, must keep boat speeds below 12 mph and avoid traveling at night and during "periods of low visibility." The zone covers seas 300 to 1,200 feet deep in which oil companies have moved to operate so-called deep-water wells, as more shallow oil reserves are tapped out.

In other words, the regulations to protect Rice’s whales in the Gulf of Mexico have the potential to stop or significantly reduce drilling and severely restrict oil and gas production by restricting boat traffic in a large swath of the Gulf.

It’s not just whale protection being used as an excuse to stop drilling and production in the Gulf of Mexico. NOAA Fisheries said it was examining the creation of new regulations to protect endangered green sea turtles along the Atlantic and Gulf coastlines, potentially further expanding limits on oil and gas activity in the Gulf.

My take: The anti-fossil fuel movement has become deeply embedded in key federal agencies and is imposing its agenda on the U.S. by any means possible, including ramming through bans on gas stoves and shutting down oil and gas drilling and production in the Gulf of Mexico. These NGOs and the federal agencies they are in bed with have become so emboldened that they no longer try to hide their goals, actions, and biases.

The hypocrisy of their actions is stunning. Apparently, it is not a problem when the wind turbine industry kills dozens of endangered Right whales off the East Coast in the North Atlantic, while merely spotting what might have been an endangered Rice’s whale in the Gulf of Mexico may result in a shutdown offshore drilling and production starting in early 2025. It would be fair to say that “Right” whales are the wrong whales.

The economic effects of such restrictions will be devastating. The offshore drilling and production industry is worth billions of dollars annually. It is responsible for nearly 20% of U.S. oil production and an essential component of the Texas and Louisiana economies. Much of the crude oil produced in the Gulf of Mexico is the heavier crude oil on which many U.S. refineries depend.

This situation confirms that current federal agencies continue to be weaponized against the oil and gas industry and will take every opportunity to harm the oil and gas industry while the wind industry can literally get away with murdering whales.

Kamala Harris says she will not ban fracking, but that statement is a diversion. She doesn’t have to ban fracking to achieve her anti-fossil fuel goals. She can regulate fossil fuels out of existence by directing federal agencies to do so using sue-and-settle agreements and anti-fossil regulations.

The only way to stop the anti-fossil fuel madness that is deeply embedded in all federal agencies is to drain the swamp. The United States can then get back on track to grow and prosper by utilizing its immense oil and natural gas reserves.

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