Fossil fuels – and no other form of energy – according to Secretary Perry, can help prevent sexual assault. In Africa.
What is it about Rick Perry and the Dept. of Energy? It was, you’ll remember, the third federal agency he wanted to eliminate that he could not remember during a 2011 Republican primary debate, leading to his now-infamous “Oops” remark.
Perry went on to be nominated in 2016 by then President-elect Trump to head the Dept. of Energy. He accepted the nomination, only to learn days later what the Dept. of Energy actually does.
“Mr. Perry gladly accepted, believing he was taking on a role as a global ambassador for the American oil and gas industry that he had long championed in his home state,” The New York Times reported in January.
In the days after, Mr. Perry, the former Texas governor, discovered that he would be no such thing — that in fact, if confirmed by the Senate, he would become the steward of a vast national security complex he knew almost nothing about, caring for the most fearsome weapons on the planet, the United States’ nuclear arsenal.
Now there’s a new Rick Perry Dept. of Energy story, handed to us, naturally, by Rick Perry.
Fossil fuels – and no other form of energy – according to Secretary Perry, can help prevent sexual assault. In Africa.
Seriously.
Secretary Perry’s brainwashing applies zero science to the problem, and is just an effort to increase the sale and use of fossil fuels.
“I just got back from Africa,” Secretary Perry said at a forum Thursday morning hosted by Axios and NBC, and sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute. ThinkProgress notes Perry made his remarks after “he was interrupted by protesters.”
The protesters called for him to sign a clean energy pledge and attacked his pro-coal and pro-fossil fuel stance. One of them asked Perry, “Why are you against clean air and why are you against people’s health?â€
“Let me tell you where people are dying, is in Africa, because of the lack of energy they have there.”
“And it’s going to take fossil fuels to push power out into those villages in Africa, where a young girl told me to my face, ‘one of the reasons that electricity is so important to me is not only because I’m not going to have to try to read by the light of a fire and have those fumes literally killing people.’ But also from the standpoint of sexual assault.”
“When the lights are on, when you have light that shines, the righteousness, if you will, on those types of acts. So from the standpoint of how you really affect people’s lives, fossil fuels is going to play a role in that. I happen to think it’s going to play a positive role.”
Now, you might say, “Hmm… well, I suppose there’s some sense to that.”
But no, there’s not.
Why fossil fuels? Why not renewables, like solar, or wind?
And even Axios, which calls this an “effort by Perry to challenge the environmental narrative that fossil fuels are harmful due to their contribution to climate change,” punches a bigger hole in Perry’s thinking.
“A University College London study found — after studying 63 cities over 14 years — that darker streets are not necessarily less safe. In places with reduced lighting, there was no increase in sexual assaults,” Axios states.
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