Last week, the Biden administration attempted its latest vote grab disguised as a land grab. The president’s latest environmental policy is antithetical to what people want and need — secure, reliable energy — but integral to what Joe Biden requires: votes. It’s part and parcel of Biden’s cash-and-carry strategy to retain the White House.
The new rule, issued by the Department of the Interior on April 18, will affect 250 million acres of land, roughly a tenth of the U.S. land mass. The rule directs the Bureau of Land Management to consider, for the first time, landscape health when determining the use of public lands. It also establishes land restoration and mitigation leases on public lands and changes the practices for designating areas of critical environmental concern. The rule’s three parts have one purpose: limiting private sector use of public lands, especially fossil fuel production.
Sandwiched between the other two initiatives is the meat: the leases.
While the administration claims that “the rule does not prioritize conservation above other multiple uses,” it clearly puts in place the processes by which it will. The rule requires the BLM to identify federal rangelands that need restoration, prioritizes BLM identification of land as “areas of critical environmental concern,” and allows private groups to buy land leases for conservation.
It is simple to see how all these new powers can and will be targeted at the federal lands with the greatest potential for ranching, mining, and drilling. Environmental groups will not need to lease all the land — land without private sector potential will be untouched anyway. And without free market profit pressures, environmentalists can simply raise the cost of the leases beyond a profitable level.
Benign as the Interior Department has tried to make the policy seem, the Washington Post correctly termed it a “seismic shift” in federal land management policy. But this is not the limit of the administration’s play to placate environmental extremists.
The same week that the Interior Department’s final rule came out, reports also surfaced that the administration has renewed discussions about declaring a climate emergency. Such an unprecedented move would vastly expand Biden’s power to block fossil fuel production through export control, drilling suspension, and prohibitive gas emission rules.
All this comes at an extremely inopportune time economically. High energy costs are already a key inflation driver, and persistently high inflation, which Biden’s profligate policies have helped stoke throughout his presidency, is keeping the Federal Reserve from lowering interest rates and, with them, people’s debt and mortgage service costs.
Looking forward even further, Biden’s environmental extremism’s effect on AI development in the United States could cause even greater harm. AI has the potential to be a productivity multiplier akin to what the computer was decades ago. It also requires inordinate amounts of electricity. According to one estimate, the 1.5 million AI servers that NVIDIA is expected to ship in 2027 could consume more electricity than many small countries use annually.
As the world competes to see who will lead in this technology of tomorrow, Biden is making America less competitive by eschewing the natural resources America has to produce cheap, secure, and reliable electricity. Fossil fuels supply 80% of America’s energy needs and 61% of our electricity needs.
Ironically, Biden’s other recent regulation, requiring most new passenger sedans and light trucks to be electric or hybrid vehicles by 2032, will further increase demand for the electricity production he is endangering. This “strongest-ever” regulation comes at a time when consumer acceptance of EVs has fallen flat — EVs were just 7.6% of 2023’s new car sales, but Biden wants them to be 35-56% of all sales by 2032 — as evidenced by Tesla’s 40% stock decline this year, Apple’s abandonment of its EV plans, and startup EV makers’ dire financial straits. And, of course, if EVs were adopted by consumers to the levels mandated by Biden, their electricity demands would come on top of normal demand growth and any coming AI surge.
Where will all this needed new electricity supply come from? Biden’s administration evidently presumes from less reliable and, as yet unproven, renewable sources. And Biden is not waiting until these are ready — he’s curtailing fossil fuels now.
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Biden’s administration has always been extremist. His political weakness begets it: Losing support from mainstream America, he has grown more dependent on the far Left, while his increasing weakness only increases the far Left’s demands.
With his support low, Biden is willing to bid high: he’s doing anything, saying anything, being anything that he believes could salvage his presidency. He’s buying votes, and forcing America to pay for it with its economic future.
J.T. Young was a professional staffer in the House and Senate from 1987-2000, served in the Department of Treasury and Office of Management and Budget from 2001-2004, and was director of government relations for a Fortune 20 company from 2004-2023.