‘The goals that are reflected in this budget are really missing the mark,’ Hagerty says
WASHINGTON—United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, today called out United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Samantha Power for prioritizing woke green energy initiatives in developing nations rather than investing in reliable and affordable energy resources to alleviate poverty and address basic economic needs.
“The goals that are reflected in this [USAID] budget, particularly with respect to energy, are really missing the mark. And what it does, and I think Uganda’s President articulates this well, is that it puts ‘green colonialism’ over the real economic development needs of these countries,” Hagerty said, referring to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s Wall Street Journal op-ed that argued “many developed nations are pushing a transition to renewables on Africa,” but “this stands to forestall Africa’s attempts to rise out of poverty.”
“You take Uganda, for example. Thirty percent of the population lives on $1.77 a day,” Hagerty continued. “These countries have been devastated by the pandemic. They’re trying to climb out of a true economic crisis. They’ve got crime that’s rampant in many of these nations. They are trying to fulfill the most basic economic needs, and to do that, they need to have consistent, stable, reliable, and frankly, affordable energy.”
“When we fail to do that, we create a void, and that void right now is being filled by China,” Hagerty warned. “So, my goal and my sincere hope is that we can get past the ideological underpinnings that are reflected in this and look at real pragmatic ways to deliver solid economic development, reliable energy, [and] affordable energy to these countries that desperately need it.”
USAID Administrator Power defended her agency’s prioritization of their climate agenda in Uganda and other nations by claiming “collective carbon emissions, even from developing countries—we’re all part of the solution when it comes to mitigation.”
“USAID’s goals are to basically win friends and bring about people into our fold as opposed to pushing them into the arms of China, which seems to be happening,” Hagerty concluded.
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