Why Are Energy Prices Everywhere So High? Democrats
When President Biden warned of a bleak and deadly winter, he was referring to the Covid-19 outbreak that he promised to “shut down.” While he has failed to curb the virus, his policies have unfortunately been more successful reining in our once thriving energy industry.
At the one-year mark of his administration running the Departments of Interior and Energy and determining regulations at the Environmental Protection Agency, anyone paying a bill sees the results. Oil prices have nearly doubled since Biden’s inauguration.
Despite the longing of green activists worldwide, we are in fact, a fossil fuel-driven economy, and all prices have gone up dramatically: gas, food, utilities, shipping, durable goods. Biden’s inflation, now at 40-year highs of 7 percent, is now the number-one issue among voters and will no doubt hang over every race this November.
The only logical response for an embattled president is changing the narrative. So, Biden bought a puppy.
To be fair, Biden alone is not to blame. The entire far left is. For years, leftist politicians have attacked the energy industry in the name of “climate change” and for years those of us who know the industry have warned of dire consequences.
The Left’s Insanity On Energy Supply
Four years ago, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey started using her office to prevent pipeline construction. Without a constant supply, power plants turned elsewhere for reliable natural gas: Russia.
Despite the absolute insanity of sending Commonwealth checks to Vladimir Putin rather than Pennsylvania, Healey insisted it was better for the climate. Even when the Massachusetts electric grid was teetering on failure, she insisted that transatlantic cargo ships were an improvement over domestic pipelines to a neighboring state.
It was insanity then. It’s worse now.
Massachusetts joins the ranks of many European nations enriching Putin. He has used the surplus to build his army along Ukraine preparing to invade. You didn’t think he was going to build orphanages, did you? It is Vladimir Putin, after all. Maybe the Russian army can have a disclaimer, like the ones Healey applies to campaign ads. “This army brought to you by climate change activists.”
Writing for Forbes, energy analyst David Blackmon breaks down the current state of electricity generation in New England. Despite the subsidies and the posturing of Northeastern climate-conscious Democrat politicians like Sens. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Green New Deal author Edward Markey, the region has increased use of the very fossil fuels they try so hard to eliminate. Blasted New Englanders and their… heat.
They are also importing liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the Caribbean because of the now four-year old Healey logic: why buy inexpensively from your friend what you can buy at a premium from a stranger? Add to that the few thousand miles in an ocean tanker and you get a perfect formula for being an eco-warrior.
Reduced Production
Supply is becoming an ongoing problem for the energy industry. The United States is currently producing about 1.5 million barrels of crude oil fewer per day than pre-pandemic levels. Worse, investment in the industry is down nearly 25 percent from that period. Why? Biden.
Fossil fuels are a labor and market-intensive industry, and they rely on government cooperation. That means a secretary of Energy who does not laugh when asked about industry challenges. That means an Interior secretary who does not say publicly “it would be great to stop all oil and gas leases on public lands.” Investors are not going to gamble on the Biden variable, even with oil reaching seven-year highs.
Government is dropping the ball. It’s mid-January, and we have a lot of winter ahead of us. Between the high prices and the scarce supply, consumers should be worried.
Lessons from the Texas Freeze
Last year, Texas experienced a terrible winter storm that shut down its wind turbine electricity production. Sadly, 246 people died in that storm. For decades, Texas Republicans bought into the green energy myths, quietly allowing the notion that fossil fuels were the enemy to fester in their policy hearts. They introduced “renewable energy mandates.”
When the storm of February 2021 froze the wind turbines, supporters of the renewable energy mandates quickly came to the green defense. This was not about science or facts: this was about defending ideology.
“Don’t Blame Wind Turbines” blared Time Magazine, along with USA Today, The Washington Post, and of course, The New York Times. The laughable, knee-jerk reaction brings up a metaphysical dilemma: if the absence of something is no different than its presence, does it have any value? Or even exist? If the wind turbines failed, and make no mistake they failed completely, but their failure does not matter, then how can they have measurable success?
All of these outlets blame the fiasco in Texas on natural gas pipelines, as fossil fuels are, and will always be, the reliable backup to green energy. The renewable energy advocates, desperate not to have a failure on the books, contend that in certain conditions natural gas must overperform. During that storm it did not, and therefore is at fault. Renewables are asked to do the bare minimum, demand perfect conditions, and if any variable is introduced, they get to throw in the towel and cast aspersions on the real performers.
If Texas Republicans fall victim to the green energy siren calls, then what hope does New England have? New England, the bastion of unblemished liberalism, back to burning oil instead of cleaner natural gas, running low on LNG, buying supplies from Russia and the Caribbean, adding to ocean pollution with more tankers, sacrificing American jobs, and enriching Putin.
Again, 246 people were victims of Texas’ green energy dreams. It’s the nameless, the powerless, the voiceless, who die at the hands of the state because of political decisions based on ideology. And their numbers are going to climb unless there is a major reversal at the federal and state level.
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