Biden's Big Green energy policy a transition to recession

 John Steele Gordon:

With the travel-heavy Memorial Day weekend upon us, the fast-rising cost of gasoline is getting a lot of attention.

Last week, gasoline rose above $4 a gallon in all fifty states. That’s the first time that has happened. Some are predicting gas could reach $6 a gallon this summer. If that comes to pass, the average American family could see a major impact on their budgets.

(It might be noted as well, that the price of home heating oil has nearly doubled this year. If that continues, the economic impact next winter, especially in the northeast, where a high percentage of homes are heated by oil, will be considerable.)

The threat of a recession is rising thanks to fuel shortages.

Why has the price of gasoline risen so far so fast? Easy: the Biden administration, driven by the ideological fantasy of a green-energy future, has hampered domestic production and exploration at every turn.

On Inauguration Day itself, the administration revoked the permit for the Keystone Pipeline that would have allowed the importation of 1,000,000 barrels of heavy Canadian crude per day and sent it to Gulf Coast refineries, which are designed to handle such oil. This was unprecedented, because while permits have often been denied by green-minded Democratic administrations, none has ever before been revoked while construction was actually already underway.

Many other areas that hold promise of considerable potential have been declared off-limits. The administration claims that there are plenty of oil and gas leases waiting to be exploited. That is true. But leasing a tract of land from the federal government is one thing, while getting the series of permits needed to explore and build is quite another. The Department of the Interior has been slow-walking those permits, despite the quickly rising price of fossil fuels.

The war in Ukraine has also complicated the situation. With Europe finally awake to the danger of depending on Russia for much of its energy needs, the United States needs to be the source of natural gas for our European allies. But this has been hampered by the lack of liquified natural gas terminals on the East Coast.

Again, this was caused by the difficulty of getting the needed federal and state permits. New York State has been denying permits for pipelines across the state throughout the Governor Cuomo (and now Hochul) administration. Despite the recession-mired upstate economy, New York State has forbidden the exploitation of the abundant natural gas resources that could be exploited by fracking. Neighboring areas in Pennsylvania, meanwhile, are thriving thanks to the new technology.

With political pressure building as fuel costs keep rising, the Biden administration has been begging oil-exporting countries, including Saudi Arabia and even heavily-sanctioned Venezuela, to increase production to ease shortages in the United States. They have not responded favorably. The crown prince of Saudi Arabia even recently refused to take a phone call from President Biden — an almost unprecedented act for a supposedly friendly foreign leader.
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Biden talks about a transition to a Green economy, but the reality is that at this point it is a transition to nothing but high prices that are damaging the economy and the pocketbooks of Americans. When you are going for a transition, You usually have an alternative available.  Biden does not other than expensive electric cars which have limits and require electricity that is mostly created by fossil fuels. Biden is lowering American's standard of living for a transition to nothing at this point.

See, also:

Rising cost of fuel is the price we pay for their ‘green’ Utopia