Commentary
There are times when politics resembles the theater of the absurd. This is one of those times. We just witnessed the spectacle of heads of state gathering in Glasgow trying to find ways to curtail the production and consumption of fossil fuels at the very time when the people they supposedly represent face a grim, potentially lethal winter due to shortages of those vital fuels.
The situation is far direr overseas.
Due to drought,
Brazil has lost its main source of electrical power—hydropower.
In
China, the shortage of energy has resulted in cities turning off street lights and traffic lights; elevators in high-rise apartment buildings not working; and people suffering carbon monoxide poisoning when ventilation systems in a factory shut down. The shortage also is crippling
production of foodstuffs and industrial metals. The negative consequences include higher food prices ahead, continued disruptions in supply chains, temporarily shuttered factories, and so on.
Blackouts may become “the new normal.”“Schools, hospitals and clinics could also be much chillier—and deadlier. At 11¢ per kilowatt-hour (average U.S. business rate), a 650,000-square-foot hospital would pay about $2.2 million annually for electricity. At 25¢ per kWh (UK), the annual cost jumps to $5 million; at 35¢ per kWh (Germany), to $7 million! Those soaring costs would likely result in employee layoffs, higher medical bills, reduced patient care, colder conditions, and more deaths,” Paul Driessen wrote for
The Heartland Institute.
The severity of this energy crisis is largely attributable to short-sighted government policies. Tilting at the windmills of an imaginary future global warming catastrophe, governments have impeded and restricted the production of fossil fuels. I’m willing to grant the possibility that so-called “renewable” energy sources (more accurately, “intermittent” energy sources) may someday replace fossil fuels, but the policies that have been restricting fossil fuel production before intermittent sources have come online fast enough to meet the global demand for energy are inhumane.
The juxtaposition of the Biden administration reaffirming and ramping up its anti-fossil fuels agenda at the very time when the world is dangerously short of energy supplies is appalling. Team Biden seems totally oblivious and indifferent to the grim reality that low energy supplies are endangering people’s lives.
When a
Bloomberg interviewer asked the straightforward question of what her plan was “to increase oil production in America,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm responded with a belly laugh. I half expected her to cackle, “Let them eat cake.” Instead, she dodged the question by saying that she didn’t have a magic wand to wave that would compel the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to increase production. Of course, nobody expects her to increase OPEC’s production. She’s the secretary of energy for the United States, not for foreign countries. But then, too, she’s a liberal progressive, and, true to her ideology, she expects others to do the helpful things that she herself could do.
It’s embarrassing to see the president of the United States, so soon after the shameful, incompetent withdrawal from Afghanistan, implore OPEC to increase its production when our own country has the capacity to meet all our own and some of the world’s expanding energy needs. I wrote over a decade ago that the United States, by virtue of massive reserves of coal, oil, and natural gas, is the
world’s energy superpower. There have been large additional discoveries since then, and President Donald Trump’s policies led to energy independence for our country—an independence since torpedoed and jettisoned by the Biden administration.
Realizing that a major reason for his plummeting popularity is the rapidly rising cost of fossil fuels, President Joe Biden has adopted a
pathetic public relations strategy: “I have directed my National Economic Council to pursue means to try to further reduce these [rising energy] costs, and have asked the Federal Trade Commission to strike back at any market manipulation or price gouging in this sector.”
How economically ignorant this president is! The reason energy costs are soaring is that the president’s own team has undercut energy supplies at every opportunity. If he really wants to discourage higher prices for fossil fuels, he doesn’t need the FTC. All he has to do is back off and let American companies tap into our vast energy resources. If he did, supply would rise and prices would fall. Ah, if only progressives understood economics.
In closing, let’s hope that the pain that Biden and the democratic heads of state in Britain and Europe are causing by their anti-fossil fuel policies will underscore and drive home two vital truths:
One, whatever role fossil fuels may play in humanity’s future, they’re indispensable today.
Two, central economic planning by governments invariably leads to unnecessary impoverishment and suffering. Today’s self-described American socialists are sadly oblivious to the destructiveness of their agenda, but the rest of us need to thwart their objectives before it’s too late.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.