“Democrats want to tear down and eliminate conventional sources of energy when renewables are not yet ready for prime time”
U.S. SENATE – U.S. Senator Steve Daines, a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, today delivered the following remarks at the weekly Republican Senate Leadership press conference blasting the Biden administration’s out-of-touch climate regulation proposal that would require electric vehicles to account for two-thirds of new cars sold in the next nine years.
“Well, the weather forecast in Montana for more snow tomorrow for those that are playing at home, which is a good thing for keeping our snowpacks high but we’ve had a really cold winter and a lot of snowpack and we’re grateful for it. It was about time we had it. But I will tell you, the Biden administration has not learned anything about what’s happened in Europe as it relates to a green hallucination.
“We are following, because of Joe Biden’s leadership, as a nation, taken us off the green cliff. The Biden administration seeks to overhaul this economy to fit its green dream. But I have said this back home and I’ll say it here. As you think about the future of energy in our economy, you can’t burn today’s bridge until you build and validate the future bridges. Democrats want to tear down and eliminate conventional sources of energy when renewables are not yet ready for prime time.
“This administration started off by killing the Keystone XL pipeline that comes right into Montana, a million barrels a day from our friends in Canada, banning gas stoves while inflation rages and now maybe they made this announcement and we were out of town, but Montanans are shaking their heads. What are they thinking about to mandate that two-thirds of our new vehicles have to be electric by 2032?
“In Montana, we haul crops, we haul cattle, we haul them long distances, we need reliability. As I mentioned, these batteries don’t work that well when it gets real cold and it’ll be snowing tomorrow in Montana and we’re getting in the back half of April. By the way, in Montana, we have 85 charging stations. That is one for every 1,700 square miles.
“States out in the west, big states like Montana, like Wyoming cannot make anything that Biden is proposing work. Instead of forcing the heavy hand of government to execute their green hallucination, I would highly urge and greatly urge President Biden and the Senate Democrats to let the free market decide what should be successful and what we do in the future, in terms of powering our vehicles.”
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Contact: Matt Lloyd, Rachel Dumke, Blake Kernen