Drill, baby, drill | The Manila Times

US President-elect Donald Trump believes as strongly as ever that man-caused climate change is a hoax. During the election campaign, he blamed the Biden administration for the high cost of gasoline (and of everything else) for its failure to encourage fossil fuel energy production. The Biden administration countered that, actually, the US under his administration had become more than energy-sufficient, it had been exporting Made in America oil and gas. This puzzles the neutral observer: Didn't Biden run on a transition-to-clean-energy platform? Anyway, the electorate apparently trusted Trump's word rather than that of climatologists, giving him a winning majority in both popular vote and electoral college. The president-elect has already given oil and gas companies with offshore and onshore operations notice to prepare to "drill, baby, drill."

In fairness to President Biden, he did transform the US into a leader in the transition to a clean energy campaign. His administration has raised the consciousness of the people to the benefits brought by clean energy. Reducing the use of fossil fuels can improve health and bring down the number and severity of natural disasters. His administration has thus reportedly achieved a reduction in gas emissions by inspiring the use of a wide variety of innovations, from the electric vehicle to technologies entrapping carbon dioxide to a drug that after ingesting prevents livestock from releasing methane into the atmosphere.