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America’s Natural Resources: Energy and the Environment
We are the party of America’s growers,
producers, farmers, ranchers, foresters, miners,
commercial fishermen, and all those who bring
from the earth the crops, minerals, energy, and
the bounties of our seas that are the lifeblood
of our economy. Their labor and ingenuity, their
determination in bad times and love of the land at
all times, powers our economy, creates millions of
jobs, and feeds billions of people around the world.
Only a few years ago, a bipartisan consensus in
government valued the role of extractive industries
and rewarded their enterprise by minimizing its
interference with their work. That has radically
changed. We look in vain within the Democratic
Party for leaders who will speak for the people of
agriculture, energy and mineral production.
...
A New Era in Energy
Our country has greater energy resources
than any other place on earth.
Our engineers and miners, the
men and women whose labor
taps the forces of nature, are
the best in the world. Together,
the people of America’s energy
sector provide us with power
that is clean, affordable, secure,
and abundant. Their work can
guarantee the nation’s energy
security for centuries to come if,
instead of erecting roadblocks,
government facilitates the
creation of an all-of-the-above
energy strategy.
We applaud congressional
Republicans for doing just that
through far-sighted legislation.
Both Houses have passed bills that will modernize
pipelines and the electric grid, protect the grid from
disruption, expedite energy exports, and lower
energy costs. A Republican administration will
build on those policies to find new ways to store
electricity, a breakthrough of extraordinary import.
Planning for our energy future requires us to
first determine what resources we have in reserve.
Thirty years ago, the world’s estimated reserves of
oil were 645 billion barrels. Today, that figure is 1.65
trillion barrels. The more we know what we will have
in the future, the better we can decide how to use it.
That is why we support the opening of public lands
and the outer continental shelf to exploration and
responsible production, even if these resources will not be immediately developed. Because we believe
states can best promote economic growth while
protecting the environment, Congress should give
authority to state regulators to manage energy
resources on federally controlled public lands within
their respective borders.
The Democratic Party’s energy policy can be
summed up in a slogan currently popular among
its activists: “keep it in the ground.” Keeping energy
in the earth will keep jobs out of reach of 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 its 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. The Democratic
Party does not understand
that coal is an abundant, clean,
affordable, reliable domestic
energy resource. Those who
mine it and their families
should be protected from the
Democratic Party’s radical anti-coal
agenda.
The Democratic Party’s
campaign to smother the U.S.
energy industry takes many
forms, but the permitting
process may be its most damaging weapon. It takes
an average of 30 days for states to permit an oil or
gas well. It takes the federal government longer than
seven months. Three decades ago, the Bureau of
Land Management (BLM) leased 12.2 million acres.
In 2014, it leased only one-tenth of that number.
Our nuclear industry, cleanly generating almost 20
percent of our electricity from its 99 plants, has
a remarkable safety record, but only a handful of
plants have been permitted in over three decades.
Permitting for a safe, non-polluting hydroelectric
facility, even one that is being relicensed, can take
many years because of the current President’s
hostility to dams. 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
percent of its electricity from
renewables by 2025. Climate
change is far from this nation’s
most pressing national security
issue. This is the triumph of
extremism over common sense,
and Congress must stop it.
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. A federal judge has struck down the
BLM’s rule on hydraulic fracturing and we support
upholding this decision. We respect the states’
proven ability to regulate the use of hydraulic
fracturing, methane emissions, and horizontal
drilling, and we will end the Administration’s
disregard of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act with
respect to the long-term storage of nuclear waste.
We encourage the cost-effective development of
renewable energy sources — wind, solar, biomass,
biofuel, geothermal, and tidal energy — by private
capital. The United States is overwhelmingly
dependent on China and other nations for rare earth
and other hardrock minerals. These minerals are
critical to advanced technology, renewable energy,
and defense manufacturing. We support expediting
the permitting process for mineral production
on public lands. We support lifting restrictions to
allow responsible development of nuclear energy,
including research into alternative processes like
thorium nuclear energy. We oppose any carbon tax. It would increase
energy prices across the board, hitting hardest at
the families who are already struggling to pay their
bills in the Democrats’ no-growth economy. We
urge the private sector to focus its resources on the
development of carbon capture and sequestration
technology still in its early stages here and overseas.
American energy producers should be free
to export their product to foreign markets. This
is particularly important because of international
demand for liquefied natural
gas, and we must expedite
the energy export terminals
currently blocked by the
Administration. Energy exports
will create high paying jobs
throughout the United States,
reduce our nation’s trade
deficit, grow our economy, and
boost the energy security of
our allies and trading partners.
We remain committed to
aggressively expanding trade
opportunities and opening
new markets for American
energy through multilateral and
bilateral agreements, whether current, pending, or
negotiated in the future.
Energy is both an economic and national
security issue. We support the enactment of
policies to increase domestic energy production,
including production on public lands, to counter
market manipulation by OPEC and other nationally-owned
oil companies. This will reduce America’s
vulnerability to energy price volatility.
Environmental Progress
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. We believe that people
are the most valuable resources and that human
health and safety are the proper measurements of
a policy’s success. We assert that private ownership
has been the best guarantee of conscientious
stewardship, while some of the worst instances
of degradation have occurred under government control. Poverty, not wealth, is the gravest threat
to the environment, while steady economic growth
brings the technological advances which make
environmental progress possible.
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. 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 central fact of any sensible environmental
policy is that, year by year, the environment is
improving. Our air and waterways are much
healthier than they were a few decades ago. As
a nation, we have drastically reduced pollution,
mainstreamed recycling, educated the public,
and avoided ecological degradation. Even if no
additional controls are added, air pollution will
continue to decline for the next several decades
due to technological turnover of aging equipment.
These successes become a challenge for Democratic
Party environmental extremists, who must reach
farther and demand more to sustain the illusion of
an environmental crisis. That is why they routinely
ignore costs, exaggerate benefits, and advocate the
breaching of constitutional boundaries by federal
agencies to impose environmental regulation. At the
same time, the environmental establishment looks
the other way when environmental degradation is
caused by the EPA and other federal agencies as
was the case during the Animas River spill.
Our agenda is high on job creation, expanding
opportunity and providing a better chance at life
for everyone willing to work for it. Our modern
approach to environmentalism is directed to that
end, and it starts with dramatic change in official
Washington. We propose to shift responsibility
for environmental regulation from the 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 strictly limit congressional delegation of
rule-making authority, and require that citizens be
compensated for regulatory takings.
We will put an end to the legal practice known
as “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 agreement behind closed
doors. That deceit betrays the public’s trust; it will
no longer 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 it’s 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 the National Ambient
Air Quality Standards and modernize the permitting
process under the National Environmental Policy
Act so it can no longer invite frivolous lawsuits,
thwart sorely needed projects, kill jobs, and strangle
growth.
The federal government owns or controls over
640 million acres of land in the United States, most of
which is in the West. These are public lands, and the
public should have access to them for appropriate
activities like hunting, fishing, and recreational
shooting. Federal ownership or management of land
also places an economic burden on counties and
local communities in terms of lost revenue to pay
for things such as schools, police, and emergency
services. It is absurd to think that all that acreage
must remain under the absentee ownership or
management of official Washington. Congress shall
immediately pass universal legislation providing for
a timely and orderly mechanism requiring the federal
government to convey certain federally controlled
public lands to states. We call upon all national
and state leaders and representatives to exert their
utmost power and influence to urge the transfer of
those lands, identified in the review process, to all
willing states for the benefit of the states and the
nation as a whole. The residents of state and local
communities know best how to protect the land
where they work and live. They practice boots-on-the-ground conservation in their states every day.
We support amending the Antiquities Act of 1906 to
establish Congress’ right to approve the designation
of national monuments and to further require the
approval of the state where a national monument is
designated or a national park is proposed.
There is certainly a need to protect certain
species threatened worldwide with extinction.
However, the Endangered Species Act (ESA) should
not include species such as gray wolves and other
species if these species exist elsewhere in healthy
numbers in another state or country. To upset the
economic viability of an area with an unneeded
designation costs jobs and hurts local communities.
We must ensure that this protection is done
effectively, reasonably, and without unnecessarily
impeding the development of lands and natural
resources. The ESA should ensure that the listing
of endangered species and the designation of
critical habitats are based upon sound science and
balance the protection of endangered species with
the costs of compliance and the rights of property
owners. Instead, over the last few decades, the
ESA has stunted economic development, halted the
construction of projects, burdened landowners, and
has been used to pursue policy goals inconsistent
with the ESA — all with little to no success in the
actual recovery of species. For example, we oppose
the listing of the lesser prairie chicken and the
potential listing of the sage grouse. Neither species
has been shown to be in actual danger and the
listings threaten to devastate farmers, ranchers, and
oil and gas production. While species threatened
with extinction must be protected under the ESA,
any such protection must be done in a reasonable
and transparent manner with stakeholder input and
in consideration of the impact on the development
of lands and natural resources.
Information concerning a changing climate,
especially projections into the long-range future,
must be based on dispassionate analysis of hard
data. We will enforce that standard throughout
the executive branch, among civil servants and
presidential appointees alike. The United Nations’
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a
political mechanism, not an unbiased scientific
institution. Its unreliability is reflected in its
intolerance toward scientists and others who
dissent from its orthodoxy. We will evaluate its
recommendations accordingly. We reject the
agendas of both the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris
Agreement, which represent only the personal
commitments of their signatories; no such
agreement can be binding upon the United States
until it is submitted to and ratified by the Senate.
We demand an immediate halt to U.S. funding
for the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate
Change (UNFCCC) in accordance with the 1994
Foreign Relations Authorization Act. That law prohibits
Washington from giving any money to “any
affiliated organization of the United Nations” which
grants Palestinians membership as a state. There is
no ambiguity in that language. It would be illegal
for the President to follow through on his intention
to provide millions in funding for the UNFCCC and
hundreds of millions for its Green Climate Fund.
We firmly believe environmental problems
are best solved by giving incentives for human
ingenuity and the development of new technologies,
not through top-down, command-and-control
regulations that stifle economic growth and cost
thousands of jobs.[8]
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Pence on energy and environmental policy
