HARRISBURG — A few days ago, a group of legislators gathered with experts from labor and industry to talk about what Pennsylvania’s future was going to look like in the post-Putin era, with Europe at risk of starving for energy and gasoline costing more per gallon than milk.
The conclusion was that we’re going to be OK, but that we ought to be great.
Right now, we live atop reserves of gas and oil capable of making Vladimir Putin irrelevant and Saudi Arabia an afterthought. A broken supply chain should mean nothing to a country capable of growing its own food, sewing its own clothes and producing world-class goods from computers to Chevrolets.
Building it here isn’t just an option. It’s a necessity. It’s fine to be part of the global market but when that market malfunctions, we can’t wait for others to fix it. Americans, especially Pennsylvanians, not only can fend for themselves — they must.
This wasn’t a case of a group of people reaching a consensus. The consensus has been in place since 1973, when Arab oligarchs shut down our gasoline supply to punish us for supporting a democracy called Israel. We knew then that slogans like “no crude, no food,” or “drill, baby, drill” spoke not simply of our potential, but of our insecurities.
A nation needs to be able to stand on its own if it’s going to enjoy a stable economy and real national security. The polio pandemic of the 1950s didn’t find us unable to purchase automobiles; we made the components here.
An unstable Europe or Asia was a matter of diplomacy, not economy. A self-sustaining nation has a role in the world, but that role is one of leadership, not dependency.
A lot of deep thinkers concluded a decade ago that global trade would make warfare irrational. What they didn’t factor in was the truth that markets might be rational, but people aren’t. Putin is Exhibit A. National identity, even to the point of imperialism, is rooted in the DNA of some cultures and it will drive them to do things that disrupt all the other moving parts of a global market.
So, what’s holding us back?
Certainly, the cost of making clothes here is higher than it is in Bangladesh or Mexico. The computer on which I’m writing this might carry an American brand, but its parts were produced in a Chinese factory where workers are treated as disposable. Economies of scale are not based on humanity in the ways we measure it here in our nation. Perhaps it’s time to practice what we preach.
What we do know is that our single, greatest marketable asset is the natural gas and oil under our feet, and it’s time to stop playing politics-of-fear with the idea of exploiting them to the benefit of our people and our allies. We know that the world is headed in a carbon-free direction, but you don’t do that with a Year Zero option that freezes us in place, makes travel impossible, and opens the door for a Russian tyrant to invade one neighbor and extort compliance from another by shutting off their fuel.
It’s time to stop turning every energy project into a woke litmus test. We need to recognize that our electricity comes from energy – and natural gas is the cleanest, available source. We need to make things here. Pennsylvania has been the foundry of the world in years past and we can be so again. All we need is the will to do so. The answer is right here to be seen – illuminated by the fires of Ukrainian cities.
(State Sen. Ryan Aument, R-Lancaster, is co-chairman of Building a Stronger Pennsylvania, a pro-growth political action committee.)
