Welcome to 2024, my friends. You know, we can't just let 2023 slip away without evaluating it,
without evaluating, evaluating the stories that we were told about what was happening in 2023. Now,
with the benefit of hindsight, of being able to go back and say, was crime really high,
was the economy really bad? Did we really stop being energy independent as so many in
the American right wing have said? Let's dive into some of these questions and we will be able to do
more of this as we close out the numbers of 2023 in a number of different ways. Let's start with
oil and gas. One of the big narratives that we've heard not only from the failed former President
Donald Trump, who is, of course, under 91 felony indictments and is a civilly liable rapist. And
all of those things, that guy not only have we heard it from Trump, but we've heard from
others. We were energy independent the day I left the Oval Office. And then in came Joe Biden. And
now we're not energy independent anymore. We're not producing oil and gas anymore because Biden's
something pipeline, blah, blah, blah, electric vehicles. It turns out that none of this is true,
and I'm going to give you the numbers, but I do think it's important just to put out there.
Just because we debunk a lie doesn't mean that we have changed our political position on that
issue. I'll give you an example. It is very much untrue that oil and gas production is down under
Biden. In fact, it's at a record high. However, as progressives, we still want to get away from
burning carcinogenic fossil fuels into the atmosphere to power our lives if there are
greener, less unhealthy, renewable alternatives. So just because they're lying doesn't mean we want
to burn more, more oil, which gets us to this. US oil production reached an all time high in
2023 and was also more than any other country. So however you want to compare it, however you want
to measure it. We were as energy independent in 2023 as ever before. This is a transcript
of an interview from PBS. And the critical point here is the following At this point,
the United States is producing about 13.5 million barrels a day of oil, and we're heading towards
14 million barrels a day. This is Clifford Krauss from The New York Times being interviewed on NPR.
That is more oil than any country in the world. That is a record for the United States, and it may
well be the record for any country in the world. Understand that. Trump and MAGA says were down on
oil production. We're not energy. Independent countries are beating us. In 2023, we produced
more oil than we ever have before. We produced more oil than any other country did in 2023,
and it is believed that in 2023 the United States produced more oil than any country ever has in
a single year in the history of Homo sapiens and this planet. Oh, but we're not energy independent
anymore. Now let's get to the broader. That's the data. What about the political story? We
are progressives, so we have a complex challenge where we need to debunk obvious lies being told
by the right about energy independence and oil production under the Biden administration because
they are lying. And also, we need to remember that we're committed to environmental sustainability.
Our goal is to transition away from fossil fuels. We want to go to renewable energy sources. Record
number of electric vehicle sold. Record number of solar panels are now installed. That's all
stuff we want to continue to push. And the Infrastructure Act, the Inflation Reduction
Act does. Where do we find that balance as people on the left who, you know, they talk about facts,
don't care about your feelings. Their feeling is that we're no longer energy independent. Turns
out, by their definition, we are. Their feeling is that the economy's bad. Turns out it's good. So we
need to be the people who care about the facts rather than the feelings. And we have to be able
to say two things. Under President Biden, the U.S. has not only maintained, but actually increased
fossil fuel production and so-called energy independence. They're lying about that. We also
need to have Joe Biden do more to get us off of fossil fuels. And I would love to accelerate that.
We should encourage the Biden administration. Hey, the initial measures you've put in place here,
getting back in the Paris climate agreement, the ambitious climate legislation and investing in
green tech, putting out guidelines and targets when it comes to electric vehicles and energy
retrofits and all of these things. That's all good. We want more of that. And also, by the way,
Republicans are lying about your record, about making us subservient to Saudi Arabia or to Russia
or to whoever. When it comes to fossil fuels, we fight lies, but we don't cheerlead oil. And that's
where we are. Those are the numbers from 2023 record oil production. And on the one hand, that
means MAGA is wrong about the numbers. We also have to remember that they're wrong about the
path forward. We don't measure success by how much oil we can drill and refine. We measure success by
how much less damaging to the planet while still being useful to our daily lives. Does our energy
consumption and production become solar as a part of that? Wind is a part of that. Geothermal,
although not strictly speaking, renewable in the same way, can be a part of that as well.