Interior Secretary Sally Jewell on Friday called climate activists “naive,” suggesting that the administration is not buying into a broad campaign to keep all fossil fuels in the ground.
Her comments came after a week of meetings between officials and foreign delegates who praised U.S. fossil fuel development from shale, specifically U.S. natural gas exports that European leaders and Latin American diplomats want to see become more a part of their economies.
“It’s going to take a very long time before we can wean ourselves from fossil fuels, so I think that to keep it in the ground is naive, to say we could shift to 100 percent renewables is naive,” Jewell told The Desert Sun newspaper after an event in California to dedicate new national monuments.
“We really have to have a blend over time, and a transition over time, that recognizes the real complexity of what we’re dealing with,” she said.
The statement concurs with a statement made on Tuesday by the State Department’s special energy envoy, Amos Hochstein, that a transition to renewable energy is likely multiple decades away, and that in the foreseeable future, natural gas is the way forward.
He was talking about a plan the administration is developing with the Central America and Caribbean countries to transition to U.S. gas exports.
“If you look at not rhetoric but action, the administration has taken significant actions to allow for natural gas exports,” he said Tuesday at the Atlantic Council in Washington. “To support the region on natural gas, to support the industry and we will continue to do that.”
