I was extremely confused to read a piece published recently on these pages from state Rep. George Rauscher (July 7), purporting to be standing up for Alaskans. Whoever put him up to it did not have the best interest of Alaska’s energy independence in mind.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski is part of a bipartisan group of U.S. senators who introduced the Prove It Act, which would direct the Department of Energy to study carbon emissions intensity across various domestic industries and compare it to high-polluting adversaries, like China. Ultimately, this study would prove that America has a carbon advantage and can leverage this to support domestic manufacturing and job creation. Though the bill would simply require the DOE to perform a study, Rauscher’s penned opinion piece was quite absurd and made a number of incorrect statements.
The bottom line is Rauscher — a state legislator - has decided to wade into a federal issue he clearly does not understand. This is rich, considering he is a state lawmaker in a state producing resources that compete with these rogue foreign nations.
The Prove It Act he disparages does one thing only: calculate how much more efficient Alaskan and American energy is relative to foreign nations, like China and India. That’s it. It does simple math. With his error-ridden opinion piece, Rauscher is actually protecting the Chinese Communist Party - which, on so many fronts, is out to undercut American producers and workers. If Rauscher has his way, the U.S. and our allies will shield and avert our own eyes from assessing and assigning numbers to just how dirty the Chinese economy is. What Rauscher clearly prefers is to let China undermine the U.S. economy and our workers. The most ironic thing about Rauscher’s argument was that he misled Alaskans by asserting that the Prove It Act may raise taxes.
This is asinine, and a clear sign of someone who doesn’t understand America’s economy while trying to politicize the work of our congressional delegation, whose members work day and night protecting Alaska’s energy future.
We need more realism and less rhetoric, and the Prove It Act is a step in the right direction.
Meanwhile, Rauscher is best to keep to his own knitting.
—Andrew Halcro
Anchorage
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