Florida Governor Ron DeSantis pledged this week that he would slow the transition America is currently undergoing toward green energy and dramatically ramp up fossil fuel production if he wins the White House.
Giving a speech deep in oil country – in Midland, Texas – DeSantis said that if he were elected president, he would also repeal regulations that involve ESG considerations (or environmental, social and governance), along with not being so aggressive about moving to electric vehicles.
He told the people in attendance at the Midland event that he’d withdraw the U.S. from agreements it struck with countries across the globe that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions as a way to curb climate change. In addition, he’d increase the production of coal, uranium, gas and crude on various federal lands.
As he said:
“We will unleash American energy dominance as a way to stop inflation and achieve $2 gas in 2025.”
The speech follows in line with what DeSantis and some of his hard-line Republican colleagues have been saying for a while now – that limits that are placed on fossil fuel consumption and production need to be gone, along with federal regulations around it.
At one point in time earlier in his political career, DeSantis had acknowledged that climate change was indeed real. He’s backed away considerably from that position recently, though, which was very apparent in his speech Wednesday.
As DeSantis said:
“We’ve seen a concerted effort to ramp up the fear when it comes to things like global warming and climate change.”
He added that “human beings are safer than ever from climate disasters” because they have better access to power and electricity.
DeSantis said this even as his home state of Florida has experienced some very devastating hurricanes over the last few years.
The Florida governor also said that if he were to win the White House, the federal government would start using the phrase “energy dominance” instead of “climate change” in its key national security and foreign policy documents. He didn’t mention specifically what he was referring to, though.
DeSantis is heavily backed financially from boosters in the oil and gas industry, which makes it not surprising at all that he’s taking this aggressive stance when it comes to American energy. He’s been traveling across Texas this week trying to raise more money to refill his campaign coffers.
The Florida governor has had to be aggressive recently, as he continues to slip in the polls. The latest poll from Reuters/Ipsos shows him behind former President Donald Trump by a full 37 points. That’s quite the chasm that he needs to make up in what is now a short amount of time.
In his speech, DeSantis said he’d “repeal Biden’s EV mandates” while also preventing “California and faceless bureaucrats from setting America’s environmental standards.”
Rules proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency would see up to two-thirds of all new vehicles in the U.S. being EVs by 2032. At the same time, California is trying to implement even stricter vehicle emissions standards for its state, which congressional Republicans are very much against.
