House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy chided President Obama Sunday for deemphasizing the success of the American energy sector in the wake of the natural gas boom.
As President Obama arrived in Paris Sunday for international climate talks, the second-ranking House Republican implored him to “embrace and share the story of American success.”
“Only then will he negotiate from a position of strength along with the moral authority to encourage the world to follow suit,” McCarthy writes in an op-ed.
“To demonstrate true leadership, Obama should start emphasizing the important role of hydraulic fracturing and natural gas development across the globe. America would then be standing for policies with proven results rather than for ideas that may sound good, but just don’t work,” McCarthy said.
McCarthy criticized the president’s environmental agenda, and cited what he saw as the ineffectual negotiating skills of Obama and his team, no doubt alluding to the Iranian nuclear deal, which Republicans vociferously opposed.
“President Barack Obama is poised to repeat his history of weak-handed negotiations on the world stage when nearly 200 countries gather in Paris on Monday to consider an international response to climate change,” McCarthy writes. “Obama’s policies will kill jobs, increase costs and decrease reliability in an attempt to achieve a goal that the free market is already achieving. His policy is, in essence, regulatory cap-and-trade.”
McCarthy argued that the Obama administration’s rejection of the Keystone pipeline was unnecessary because U.S. carbon emissions are already being reduced.
“According to data available from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions dropped 9 percent between 2005 and 2013 — the largest reduction from any country,” McCarthy said.
