Ever wonder why Republicans so vehemently oppose President Biden’s push to move America’s energy industry into renewable energy systems that are much better for the environment and help combat climate change? From Trump’s and Texas Republicans’ ridiculous claims about wind energy (bad for the environment, kills birds, cuts off your power immediately whenever the wind stops blowing, won’t work in cold weather, and, the clincher, causes cancer), to Republican mischaracterization of solar energy (it did not, in fact, cause the Texas winter blackout, your power is not cut off every time a cloud passes overhead), Republicans try to argue that if the United States moves into modern, renewable forms of energy, jobs will be lost, notwithstanding studies showing that more jobs will be gained in the renewable energy field than lost in the traditional energy industries.

Of course, fossil fuel companies make massive contributions to Republican politicians, which is the most likely source of their desire to prop up those companies, at the expense of the environment and the modernization of our nation’s energy supply. As the following chart from Inside Climate News (based on data from the Center for Responsive Politics) shows, in 2020, the oil and gas industry contributed five times more money to Republicans than to Democrats:

And, don’t forget, the Republican stock-in-trade is gaslighting.  And for gaslighting, you need natural gas. So Republicans need to continue to support the petroleum industry in order to promote their fracking policies.