Politics

‘It’s Not Just Hunter’: Enviros Rip Joe Biden For Encouraging Natural Gas Production In Ukraine

Joe Biden speaks during the Democratic debate hosted by ABC on Sept. 12, 2019. (YouTube/Screenshot)

A key part of the Democratic Party’s base is hitting former Vice President Joe Biden for his past support for fossil fuels as President Donald Trump continues pounding him over his son’s business ties with a Ukrainian natural gas company.

Biden’s son’s role at the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings is playing a role in a Democratic-lead impeachment inquiry into Trump, who said in September that he asked Ukraine’s president to investigate Biden for pressuring the country into firing a prosecutor who was reportedly looking into Hunter Biden’s employer.

Environmental groups are connecting Hunter Biden’s ties with his father, who has previously expressed support for natural gas exploration in Ukraine.

“It’s not just Hunter — it’s Vice President Biden’s multitude of connections to energy experts who continue to push the false narrative that there’s a place for gas in a clean energy future,” a campaigner for Oil Change U.S., Collin Rees, told The Washington Post Tuesday. Rees’s organization is pressuring 2020 presidential contenders to decline money from fossil fuel executives.

Biden traveled to Ukraine in 2014 to announce a U.S. program designed to gradually eliminate the country’s reliance on Russian gas by increasing its own gas production.

“Imagine where you’d be today if you were able to tell Russia: ‘Keep your gas,’” the former vice president said at the time.

Activists are raising questions.

“The global peddling of natural gas is a Democratic and a Republican problem,” Karen Orenstein, deputy director of economic policy at Friends of the Earth, told the Post. “Exploitation of natural gas in Ukraine under the guise of so-called ‘national security’ promotes climate pollution in an age of climate emergency.”

Biden, a 2020 presidential contender, is attempting to reform his image, taking up a more combative position against the oil industry as he ramps up his bid for the White House.

Biden announced a $1.7 trillion plan to transition the U.S. away from fossil fuels. He wants to eliminate hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and coal production, institute a carbon tax, place a ban on new fossil fuel permits on public lands, and work for a ban on fossil fuel subsidies. It might not be enough to stave off other candidates.

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, for instance, did not confirm to reporters in September whether he would use Hunter Biden’s past to win political points against the former vice president, who is slumping in national polls. Sanders famously suggested during a 2015 debate that he would not use former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s email scandal against her.