GOP Focuses on States Rights in Energy Platform

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Calling itself the part of America’s growers, producers, farmers, ranchers, foresters, miners, commercial fishermen and all those who bring from the earth the crops, minerals and energy, the Republican Party unveiled its party platform this week in Cleveland.

“We look in vain within the Democratic Party for leaders who will speak for the people of agriculture, energy and mineral production,” stated the Platform.

There are no surprises in the portion of the platform entitled “America’s Natural Resources: Agriculture, Energy, and the Environment.”

Here are excerpts from the platform as stated in the document.

On farming: “Agricultural production and exports are central to the Republican agenda for jobs, growth, expanded trade, and prosperity……The Democratic Administration’s sustained support for additional regulation of agriculture has directly resulted in higher costs of production for those who produce the food we eat. Like the rest of the economy, agriculture has suffered through eight years of the Democrats’ regulatory juggernaut, particularly from the Environmental Protection Agency.”

“We must never allow federal agencies to seize control of state waters, watersheds, or groundwater.”

On Energy Resources: “The more we know what we will have in the future, the better we can decide how to use it. That is why we support the opening of public lands and the outer continental shelf to exploration and responsible production. Congress should give authority to state regulators to manage energy resources on federally controlled public lands within their respective borders.”

“The Democratic Party’s energy policy can be summed up in a slogan current popular among its activists: Keep it in the ground.”

The platform’s view of the Clean Power Plan:  “We will do away with it altogether.”

“The Keystone Pipeline has become a symbol of everything wrong with the current Administration’s ideological approach.”

“Government should not play favorites among energy producers. The taxpayers will not soon forget the current Administration’s subsidies to companies that went bankrupt without producing a kilowatt of energy.”

“We will end the Administration’s disregard of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act with respect to the long-term storage of nuclear waste. We encourage the cost-effective development of renewable energy sources—wind, solar, biomass, biofuel, geothermal and tidal energy—by private capital.”

“We oppose any carbon tax.”

“The environment is too important to be left to radical environmentalists.”

“We propose to shift responsibility for environmental regulation from the federal bureaucracy to the states and to transform the EPA into an independent bipartisan commission, similar to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission with structural safeguards against politicized science.”

“We will put an end to the legal practice known as “sue and settle”.”

“We will enforce the original intent of the clean Water Act, not its distortion by EPA regulations.”

“The Endangered Species Act should not include species such as gray wolves and other species if these species exist elsewhere in healthy numbers in another state or country.”

“We demand an immediate halt to the U.S. funding for the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change in accordance with the 1994 Foreign Relations Authorization act.”