If the energy vandal in chief gets his way, more Coloradans will struggle. People will die in underdeveloped countries.

The Biden administration's new draft of the government's onshore oil and gas rules reveal a destructive plan for making production on federal lands too expensive to subsist. While imposing obstacles, the plan would increase by 15-fold the cost of bonds required for oil and gas leases.

The proposal also reduces the duration of federal oil and gas permits. It would eliminate renewing unused permits.

Colorado could lose about 600 wells in the next 20 years. As the country's fourth largest oil-and-gas producer, it means a significant hit to the global market. Worse yet, Biden would end production on federal lands nationwide.

In mostly upscale Colorado, the economy probably survives "electrify everything" and Net Zero 2050. Full success means 0.07% of the world's population trying to control a climate theoretically influenced by 8 billion humans.

In underdeveloped countries, oil and gas are a matter of life or death. Children in shanties breathe smoke caused by burning twigs, dung and garbage for cooking and heating when they can't buy liquid gas. Energy scarcity means struggling to find clean water, food and clothing. When we hoard energy, those with the least suffer the most.

We routinely challenge detached politicians and elite activists who wage war on the poor. They seldom if ever visit Pueblo, Commerce City, Globeville, Alamosa, Mexico, Africa or other places devastated by soaring energy costs. They attack life-sustaining energy with fundamentalist zeal to baselessly profess saving Mother Earth.

We have never decried this mindless agenda so eloquently as Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo.

"The Biden administration has made its mission to be the destruction of affordable and reliable energy," Lamborn wrote in a statement this month expressing "extreme opposition" to the Biden proposal.

Politicians, wealthy activists and other vandals in ivory towers don't announce plans to suppress vital commodities, therefore driving inflation, poverty and death. They never advocate homelessness, illness, despair and other horribles their actions cause. That wouldn't sell. In this case, they say energy suppression will save wildlife.

"Colorado's elk herd is the largest in the nation and has increased from 40,000 in the early 1900s to 300,000 today," Lamborn wrote.

Colorado's mule deer population has grown by 40,000 in five years. Antelopes have multiplied from 5,000 to 85,000 statewide since 1940. Colorado's population of sage grouse has grown 24% since 2019. We don't need to endanger families to "save" thriving wildlife.

"All of this growth has occurred in tandem with oil and gas production," Lamborn wrote. "I am a strong supporter of our wildlife and support reliable and affordable energy, but this BLM rule will hurt Americans who are financially scraping by while doing very little to conserve wildlife." We add, while doing nothing measurable to mitigate climate change.

The war on oil and gas exacts hell on the poor, in state and abroad. The vandals don't see these people and don't want to hear them. They worship climate fear with no interest in facts. Their agenda weakens our country and causes needless suffering and death. Don't let energy vandals spread more harm cloaked as fashionable virtue.

The Gazette Editorial Board

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