On Wednesday’s broadcast of “CNN This Morning,” White House Senior Adviser and Infrastructure Implementation Coordinator Mitch Landrieu responded to a question on whether President Joe Biden thinks the United States might need to depend on fossil fuels for longer than he desires by stating that Biden believes “we have to get away from depending on fossil fuels” just that it won’t happen in the immediate future.
Co-host Don Lemon asked, “So, what [are] President Biden’s plans with fossil fuels? Is he acknowledging that the U.S. may need to depend on them for longer than he wants?”
Landrieu responded, “I think what the President was saying last night is something that everybody knows, that climate change is an existential threat. Don, you and I are from Louisiana, we’re watching the coast wash away. We suffered from Hurricane Katrina and of course, everybody else in the country, whether it’s the wildfires in the west, the water crisis, tornadoes, etc. We’ve got a huge problem. And we have to build a clean energy economy and we have to get away from depending on fossil fuels. Now, having said that, the President acknowledged last night that we’re not going to get rid of using oil and gas in the immediate future and I think that’s the point that he was trying to make. And I think that the transition from where we are to where we need to be, to make sure that we don’t leave any community behind is critically important. States like Louisiana, oil and gas states, they’re going to continue to pump oil for quite some time. But in the meantime, we have to get ready for the incredible challenges that are coming our way. It would be political malfeasance not to do that, because climate is an existential threat and putting your head in the sand is not going to make it go away.”
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