Drill, Baby, Drill

By Rep. Lauren Boebert

Winter is coming and Biden’s energy crisis is going to make the cost to heat your home outrageously unaffordable. Biden’s radical Green New Deal policies are sacrificing American energy security on the altar of climate change. Recently, 22,000 Coloradans lost control of the thermostats in their homes for the first time because of a green energy emergency. Some smart thermostats were literally locked at temperatures as high as 88° because of a utility company program that gives customers a $100 rebate and $25 annually so they can offset their overly reliant green energy portfolios. If the largest utility in the state needs to turn up the heat in your home to an uncomfortable level on a 90° day, then we don’t have enough baseload power and are relying on too many renewables.  

In California, just days after announcing an upcoming ban on gas cars, residents were asked not to charge their electric cars. Unreliable energy is threatening people’s freedom to set their thermostats, travel, and live the American dream. In Biden’s broken economy, we are just expected to sit back and think this is the “new normal.” Make no mistake, these self-inflicted green energy emergencies will continue to become more common unless we drill, baby, drill! 

It’s time we free ourselves from the grip of OPEC and once again rely on the American roughneck. Under the Trump administration, American energy was unleashed to a degree that we have never seen before in the history of this great nation. America was energy independent and became a net energy exporter. 

To the detriment of all Americans, on Day One of his regime Biden waged an all-out war on domestic energy production. His regime stopped oil and gas leases all over the country and crippled our potential energy production overnight. Biden canceled energy infrastructure like the Keystone XL Pipeline and put thousands of Americans out of work. These job losses are hitting Colorado hard. In Biden’s first year, Colorado lost an estimated 9,000 jobs in the oil and natural gas industry, and by the end of his first term, economists project that Colorado will lose over 16,000 jobs if his disastrous policies remain in place. 

Biden’s relentless insistence to go green will stop nothing short of seizing control of your home thermostats. The Left’s cultish zeal for renewables at all costs is creating dangerously irresponsible energy policy, and if we continue on this same path, it will destroy our American way of life as we know it. I am for an all-of-the-above approach to energy, but the simple fact is that renewables aren’t ready for primetime and our grid isn’t ready for largescale renewable generation.  

Many Democrats who love to praise so-called “green” energy never really consider the environmental consequences behind the production of these products. For example, one massively important ingredient for manufacturing solar panels is known as polysilicon. However, America produces very little polysilicon—instead, we are back at square one: relying on countries that hate us for our energy infrastructure. China is the largest producer of this key element for solar panels, and the Department of Energy estimates that more than 54% of China’s polysilicon is from the Xinjiang region. Xinjiang is where China abuses the vast majority of the Uyghur slaves. There is no excuse for enabling China’s evil empire of slavery that forces tens of thousands of children to mine with their bare hands in terrible conditions. The Biden Administration’s push for green energy has tremendous human costs, domestically and overseas. In fact, this dirty green energy is exactly what will give our enemies a foothold over American supremacy. 

Biden’s energy failures are nothing short of a national security crisis. Under his policies, we are stuck relying on countries that hate us for oil, and the Biden regime even issued an official statement begging OPEC for help. But it doesn’t have to be this way. The world is better off with a strong America, exporting energy that is 42% cleaner than Russian oil to our friends and allies. 

We don’t need new spending or subsidies to secure American energy independence. We need the right policies. We need the Trump administration’s policies. Unleashing American energy will decrease gas prices, decrease the unemployment rate, reduce inflation, and protect our national security interests. I introduced the Fueling American Prosperity Act and the Protecting American Energy Jobs Act to nullify and defund Biden’s energy-killing executive orders, restart energy leasing, and get America back on track to energy dominance. It is time to drill, baby, drill!

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About the Author:

Lauren Boebert represents Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives.