By David Potter
As usual, President Biden is out of touch with the American people. On May 23, Biden seemed to celebrate the record high gas prices. With undertones of enthusiasm, he stated that “when it comes to gas prices, we’re going through an incredible transition… we’ll be stronger and the world will be stronger and less reliant on fossil fuels when this is over”. He was referring to the transition of moving America away from fossil fuels to a green energy economy.
Biden said the quiet part out loud. This is no gaffe. What is remarkable is Biden owned up to the authentic, primary contributing factor for gas prices soaring to record highs: pro-woke, green energy policies and deterrents against the American oil industry.
The average price of one gallon of gas in America was $2.36 on Biden’s inauguration day on January 20, 2021. On February 20, 2022, four days prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the average price of one gallon of gas in America was $3.52. This is a 49 percent increase in gas, under Biden’s policies, before the war even started.
Yes, less supply from Russia, one of the world’s top oil producers, does affect global fuel prices significantly, but the corporate media has been telling us that this is all thanks to the actions of Vladimir Putin. But prices were already high with light sweet crude trading between $80 and $90 right before the invasion, thanks to Biden’s inflation.
Biden’s green energy goals remain unrealistic as storing electrical energy generated by wind and solar into batteries is, for now, too inefficient and expensive to be adapted by the masses and could be for many years. Furthermore, wind and solar aren’t growing fast enough to meet surging global demand. We still need thermal electricity.
And Americans are feeling the pinch in their quality of life as a result, with nearly half of Americans, 49 percent, saying recent gas price increases have caused financial hardship for them or someone in their household, including 21 percent who describe that as “serious” hardship. People with a high school education or less at 29 percent and minority Americans at 28 percent, are most likely to cite serious hardship in an April Ipsos poll.
Making matters worse, Biden has damaged the U.S. strategic relationship with Saudi Arabia by once again trying to make a nuclear deal with Iran. When war struck this year, and a global need for more production became apparent, Biden attempted phone calls with Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and others in March about boosting global oil production to offset the war in Ukraine, and they reportedly wouldn’t take his call, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Now, Biden is negotiating with Venezuela instead and easing sanctions there even as production there has collapsed along with its economy and civil society after years of failed socialist policies and deprivation, from more than 2 million barrels a day in the 2000s to a little more than 700,000 barrels today.
In the meantime, U.S. production is not racing ahead to catch up with the current shortfall, either, because the shortfalls and the high prices are a major feature of the Biden policy. The goal is to incentivize electric car alternatives by artificially driving up prices, the same way the Obama administration transitioned coal power plants to natural gas in the 2010s via punitive regulations.
It’s the chicken and egg, and in this case, the chicken came first, and it’s Joe Biden.
President Biden’s hyper-focus on this “incredible transition” to a new, green economy is harming the people he swore to protect. Make energy more affordable to your citizens by using incentives to boost production. The economy depends on it. The health wellbeing of Americans depends on it.
David Potter is a contributing editor at Americans for Limited Government.
