On the campaign trail promoting his bid as the Republican nominee, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis stopped in Midland, Texas, and revealed his strategy to reduce energy costs and more.
Speaking from a podium at the Permian Deep Rock Oil Company on Wednesday, DeSantis explained that bringing the price of gas down to $2 per gallon by 2025 would be his primary objective, according to CBS News Texas.
“I will ensure that the United States of America is the dominant energy producer in the entire world,” DeSantis promised. “I will ensure that this country does not have to rely on hostile nations for its energy needs ever again.”
To achieve this, he said he would withdraw the U.S. from “net zero” climate pacts, specifically highlighting the Paris climate accord.
Defending this move, DeSantis suggested that claims of “climate change” are hyperbolic.
“This [climate talk] is driven by ideology. It’s not driven by reality,” he said, according to Politico. “In reality, human beings are safer than ever from climate disasters. The death rate for climate disasters has declined by 98% over the last hundred years, and the No.1 reason for that is people that have had access to reliable electricity, have power.”
This is in contrast to the World Health Organization’s suggestion in 2021 that climate change is “the biggest health threat facing humanity.”
Although President Joe Biden has been hesitant to declare an official climate emergency, as reported previously in The Dallas Express, his administration has made it clear that it considers climate change to be an “existential threat” to humanity, as stated by Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
The Biden administration also recently blocked oil drilling on 10 million acres of land in Alaska and proposed doing the same on 4,000 acres in New Mexico for the next 50 years, as recently covered in The Dallas Express.
DeSantis said to ensure Americans’ access to power, he would have what he referred to as “reliable” energy sources prioritized as a matter of national security. These include natural gas, coal, nuclear power, and hydropower.
Referring to the 2021 power grid disaster in Texas during Winter Storm Uri, DeSantis told the crowd that it was “unacceptable” to have grid failures in the 21st century.
Another aspect of DeSantis’ energy plan is to pull back on the country’s transition to electric vehicles (EVs) by repealing the federal tax credits and subsidies given to the industry by the Inflation Reduction Act.
Remarking that he believed it imperative to save the American automobile, he suggested that EVs come at too high of a cost and are “undesirable for many Americans.”
Alongside this speech, DeSantis’ Texas visit was peppered with private fundraising events, which might have helped boost his reportedly dwindling fundraising network. Matt Mackowiak, an Austin-based Republican consultant, called the state “an ATM machine” for GOP candidates, according to CBS News.
However, “It is a show of strength to come into Texas and do those events in those markets and raise a million dollars in three days or whatever their goal is,” he said of DeSantis. “It shows he’s going to be in this thing. He’s not going anywhere.”
Former Midland Mayer Ernest Angelo Jr. expressed support of DeSantis’ campaign, though he noted that former President Donald Trump has received a lot of publicity over his federal trial.
“… I think the [Florida] governor’s doing a great job of [competing with Trump] given the circumstances,” Angelo told CBS News.
Mark Matta, a small business owner in Midland, told CBS News, “I do like what he had to say this morning.”
Nonetheless, he noted, “This is Trump country. … He’s a big force to be reckoned with here.”
As recently reported in The Dallas Express, a poll conducted among likely Republican primary voters in Texas by Defend Texas Liberty PAC over Labor Day weekend found that Trump was favored over other candidates by 61%.
