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Austin, TX — Last week, the New York Post ran an op-ed, authored by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX) and Congressman Mario Díaz-Balart (R-FL), criticizing the Biden administration’s draconian energy restrictions on growing African economies. Chairman McCaul and Congressman Diaz-Balart write this virtue signaling will have disastrous results for US interests in Africa while doing nothing to fuel the growth of African economies.

 

Biden’s energy plan means lights out for Africa

By Reps. Michael McCaul and Mario Díaz-Balart

New York Post

December 25, 2023

 

“The Biden administration’s decision to impose oppressive, burdensome restrictions on developing African countries attempting to advance and lift themselves from destitution and dependence is profoundly concerning.

“Energy poverty is at the heart of Africa’s development challenges.

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“Instead of leveraging all available tools to pull Africa out of energy poverty, it only allows so-called ‘green-energy projects’ to receive [U.S.] funding and support.

“This policy is simply energy colonialism.

“Even worse, it is hypocritical and a huge waste of money and opportunities.

“President Biden’s unauthorized climate envoy, John Kerry, is flying around the world in jet planes while abandoning the African people to the impossible task of solving their serious energy crises with ineffective and counterproductive solutions: solar panels filled with parts made by forced labor in Communist China.

“Most recently he and other administration officials, including Vice President Kamala Harris, attended COP28 in the United Arab Emirates, where they pledged billions in taxpayer money to the Green Climate Fund — a slush fund for special-interest projects with no real oversight that has funded projects in China, the world’s second-largest economy.

“These pledges of billions in taxpayer money invested only in perceived ‘green’ projects will do nothing to address the true drivers of pollution — like China — or empower the African continent.

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“In other words, if Africa were to reduce its emissions to zero, the enormous sacrifice that would entail would still have almost no effect on a global scale.

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“Instead of confronting the world’s second-largest economy, responsible for 27% of global emissions — more than six times the emissions of the entire continent of Africa — the Biden administration is holding undeveloped countries to an unfair standard.

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“Biden’s approach to Power Africa is wasteful, paternalistic and counterproductive.”

Read the full op-ed here.

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