American Oil and Gas Reporter - December 2019 - 34

IPAA Past Chairman Diemer
True with the True Companies chats with U.S. Senator
John Barrasso after the senator's remarks. Barrasso
told IPAA that one in four
federal judges had been appointed by President Trump
and approved by the Republican-led U.S. Senate,
adding that many of them
would remain on the bench
for decades.

"If Democrats lose Alabama but pick
up those other three seats, they are still a
seat short of a majority," she calculated.
"They really need to pick up four seats.
Once you get beyond Arizona and Colorado, you have to go into some reddish
states, such as North Carolina, Iowa,
Georgia or Texas."
Reshaped Debate
Book, who is ClearView's managing
director of research, opened his remarks

by alluding to the Washington Nationals'
World Series victory over the Houston
Astros. "A lot of you are wondering if, in
the next administration, Washington is
going to do to Houston what Washington
just did to Houston," he quipped.
Rhetoric during the Democratic Party's
October presidential debate did little to
ease that perception, Book acknowledged.
"There were 12 candidates for a major
party in the world's largest oil and gas
producing country running for the presi-

dency, and 11 of them said they wanted
to stop fossil-fuel leasing on federal
lands," he recounted. "The top three talked
seriously about a fracturing ban, and two
of them even committed to it."
That is because discussion about a
"green new deal" has climate activists
and aligned policymakers dropping market-based modalities for heavy-handed
regulation, he said.
"The question of taxation versus capand-trade is whether there is a price on
carbon you can work with," Book described. "The regulation could be a lot
more onerous, particularly if they tell
you that you cannot do what you do; that
another fuel has to take its place. The
Green New Deal said, 'Let us talk about
a phaseout; interdiction; and there not
being any more fossil fuels.' Is that possible? No. Is that reasonable? Not anytime
soon. But does it re-center the discussion
about prescriptive standards? Yes."
According to Book, the Green New
Deal's roots reach back to the dearth of
credit that accompanied the Great Recession. The Green New Deal is an outgrowth of the populism and protectionism
that followed.
"The Green New Deal takes the geologic time scale of climate change and
grafts it onto the relatable substrate of

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American Oil and Gas Reporter - December 2019

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