Biden's unhinged energy comments

Link:

AUWAETER: Senator, Senator, wind and solar are flourishing here in Ohio, so why are you supporting clean coal?

BIDEN: Say that again? I didn’t hear what you said.

AUWAETER: Wind and solar are flourishing here in Ohio, so why are you supporting clean coal?

BIDEN: We’re not supporting “clean coal.” Guess what. China’s building two every week. Two dirty coal plants. And it’s polluting the United States. It’s causing people to die.

AUWAETER: So will you support wind and solar?

BIDEN: Absolutely. Before anybody did. The first guy to introduce a global warming bill is me, 22 years ago. The first guy to support solar energy is me, 26 years ago. It came out of Delaware. But guess what. China is burn three hundred years of bad coal unless we figure out how to clean their coal up. Because it’s going to ruin your lungs and there’s nothing we can do about it. No coal plants here in America. Build them, if they’re going to build them over there make ‘em clean because they’re killing you.

A related excerpt from this page:

June 20, 1979
President Carter announces program to increase Nation's use of solar energy, including solar development bank and increased funds for solar energy research and development.

Another related excerpt from this page:

[Gerald Ford:] We must proceed with our own energy development. Exploitation of domestic petroleum and natural gas potentialities, along with nuclear, solar, geothermal, and non-fossil fuels is vital. We will never again permit any foreign nation to have Uncle Sam over a barrel of oil.

* Speech as Vice President to the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, West Palm Beach, Florida (26 January 1974); entered into the Congressional Record vol. 120, p. 2044.

While I'm at it, here's another related excerpt:

President Jimmy Carter made energy policy the centerpiece of his administration. He notoriously declared on April 18, 1977, that achieving energy independence was the "moral equivalent of war." In August of that year, Carter signed the law creating the United States Department of Energy, intended to manage America's energy crisis.

In late 1978, the beginning of the Iranian revolution caused a shortfall in oil exports, and prices doubled over the next couple of years. Carter, wearing a sweater on national television, urged Americans to turn down their thermostats. "Beginning this moment, this nation will never use more foreign oil than we did in 1977—never," Carter declared in his nationally televised speech on July 15, 1979.

He proposed a sweeping $142 billion energy plan which would achieve energy independence by 1990. Part of his plan included the "creation of this nation's first solar bank, which will help us achieve the crucial goal of 20 percent of our energy coming from solar power by the year 2000." Carter imposed an import quota of 8.5 million barrels of oil per day and created the $20 billion Synfuels program, which was supposed to produce 2.5 million barrels of synthetic fuels per day by 1990. To his credit, Carter did begin to dismantle Nixon's crude oil price controls. (Auto aside: In his 1979 speech Carter warned: Citizens who insist on driving large, unnecessarily powerful cars must expect to pay more for that luxury.)