watsThe 2016 GOP energy and climate platform is well-crafted from sturdy planks. But never underestimate voracious appetites of powerfully influential green subsidy termites and climate alarm industry woodpeckers.

Energy. “We support the development of all forms of energy that are marketable in a free economy without subsidies, including coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear power, and hydropower.”

“We respect the states’ proven ability to regulate the use of hydraulic fracturing, methane emissions, and horizontal drilling, and will end the administration’s disregard of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act with respect to long-term storage of nuclear waste.”

“We encourage the cost-effective development of renewable energy sources — wind, solar, biomass, geothermal, and tidal energy — by private capital.”

The Democratic Party’s “keep it in the ground” energy policy “ . . . coalplantshutdownwill keep jobs out of reach for those who need them most. For low-income Americans, expensive energy means colder homes in the winter and hotter homes in the summer, less mobility in employment, and higher food prices.”

“The current administration, and particularly the EPA, seems not to care. Its Clean Power Plan — the centerpiece of the President’s war on coal — has been stayed by the Supreme Court. We will do away with it altogether.”

shutdownThe GOP would streamline energy industry permitting, “It takes an average 30 days for states to permit an oil or gas well. It takes the federal government longer than seven months” . . . ”Our nuclear industry, cleanly generating almost 20% of our electricity from its 99 plants, has a remarkable safety record, but only a handful of plants have been permitted over three decades.”

“The Keystone Pipeline has become a symbol of everything wrong with the current administration’s ideological approach, After years of delay, the President killed it to satisfy environmental extremists. We intend to finish that pipeline and others as part of our commitment to North American energy security”.

“Government should not play favorites among energy producers. The taxpayers will not soon forget the current administration’s subsidies to companies that went bankrupt without producing a kilowatt of energy. The same administration now requires the Department of Defense, operating with slashed budgets during a time of expanding conflict, to use its scarce resources to generate 25% of its electricity from renewables by 2025.”

“Climate change is far from this nation’s most pressing security issue. This is a triumph of extremism over common sense, and Congress must stop it.”

“We oppose any carbon tax. It would increase energy prices across the board, hitting hardest at families who are already struggling to pay their bills in the Democrats’ no-growth economy.”

Climate. “Conservation is inherent in conservatism. As the pioneer of environmentalism a century ago, the Republican Party reaffirms the moral obligation to be good stewards of the God-given natural beauty and resources of our country.”

“Over the last eight years, the administration has triggered an avalanche of regulation that wreaks havoc across our economy and yields minimal environmental benefits.”

“The environment is too important to be left to radical environmentalists. They are using yesterday’s tools to control a future they do not comprehend.”

”The environmental establishment has become a self-serving elite, stuck in the mindset of the 1970s, subordinating the public’s consensus to the goals of the Democratic Party. Their approach is based on shoddy science, scare tactics, and centralized command-and-control regulation.”

“We propose to shift responsibility for environmental regulation from federal bureaucracy to the states and to transform the EPA into an independent bipartisan commission, similar to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, with structural safeguards against politicized science.”

“We will put an end to the legal practice of ‘sue and settle,’ in which environmental groups sue federal agencies whose officials are complicit in the litigation, so that, with the taxpayers excluded, both parties can reach an agreement behind closed doors. That deceit betrays the public’s trust; it will not be tolerated.”

“We will also reform the Equal Access to Justice Act to cap and disclose payments made to environmental activists and return the act to its original intent.”

“We will enforce the original intent of the Clean Water Act, not its distortion by EPA regulations. We will likewise forbid the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide, something never envisioned when Congress passed the Clean Air Act.”

“We will restore to Congress the authority to set National Ambient Air Quality Standards and modernize the permitting process under the National Environmental Policy Act so that it can no longer invite frivolous lawsuits, thwart sorely needed projects, kill jobs, and strangle growth.”

“We demand an immediate halt to U.S. funding for the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in accordance with the 1994 Foreign Relations Authorization Act.”

“Poverty, not wealth, is the gravest threat to the environment, while steady economic growth brings the technological advances which make environmental progress possible.”

Yes.

NOTE: This article first appeared at: http://www.newsmax.com/LarryBell/democratic-platform/2016/07/25/id/740270/#ixzz4FSfdfWyd