Climate change policies war on America’s living standards

By Peter Murphy

President Joe Biden has been talking up the economy lately by extolling “Bidenomics” as a prelude to his re-election message on the economy. Price inflation has slowed, unemployment remains low, and the massive stock market decline has inched up for the moment. But his administration’s climate polices are forging ahead and threaten to exacerbate his already dubious economic claims.

Policies imposed by the Biden administration to combat “climate change” come down to raising the price of oil, gas and coal to make pseudo-renewal energy more economically competitive. Since day one, the president has canceled pipelines and slow-walked leases on federal lands and off-shore to drill for oil. He also is imposing new regulations to further reduce emission standards on new gasoline vehicles and increase efficiency standards on household appliances, including washing machines and water heaters, and curtailing gas stoves.

Tighter auto emissions will raise the cost to manufacture and sell gasoline vehicles, and thereby force the “transition” to still more expensive electric vehicles. Supposedly more efficient appliances will necessitate more energy use and higher consumer expense.

Higher energy prices also stimulate broader inflation, which spiked in Biden’s first two years. This has forced the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates — and the cost of borrowing — by five percentage points in the last 16 months to slow consumer demand and tame overall price hikes.

Since the beginning of 2021, inflation has risen by nearly 13 percent over the first two and one-half years of the Biden administration, with a year-to-year peak of 9.1 percent in June 2022. The sharp interest rate increases by the Fed have had their counter-effect on inflation, which last month slowed to 3.0 percent over the prior 12 months. Also contributing to this cooling-off was the drop in U.S. energy prices in the first half of 2023, after sharp increases for two years, including the cost of natural gas due to rising supply and the price drop in crude oil.

Happy days are here again? Well, no.

Climate policies remain a palpable threat to the economy and Americans’ living standards. The U.S. Energy Information Administration predicts crude oil prices, after falling from their late 2022 peak of nearly $120 per barrel, will again rise through 2024 due to consumer demand increasing faster than supply.

Indeed, it is already occurring. Crude oil prices increased globally in the last month by 16 percent, which translates to the gas pump. According to the American Automobile Association, the national average price for a gallon of gasoline hit $3.75 last weekend, which is the highest since last November and still 56 percent higher since Biden became president when gasoline was $2.41 per gallon.

Contributing to this renewed upward trend is the oil production cuts by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). But the vagaries of oil production by OPEC, led by Saudi Arabia, would hardly matter if the U.S. maintained its oil independence achieved during the Trump administration. Domestic crude oil production remains below its pre-Covid peak in late 2019 of 13 million barrels per day, which makes American consumers more dependent on, and vulnerable to, imported oil.

Not surprisingly, the climate crusade by the Biden administration and United Nations will continue in relentless fashion, which bodes ill for American and global living standards that are inexorably tied to the cost of energy. The latest examples of this ongoing folly leave no doubt.

Climate Ambassador John Kerry spent four days of July in China trying to convince the Chinese Communist Party to make some grand bargain to curb their CO2 emissions, to no avail. This fruitless diplomatic outcome was as predictable as the sun rising in the morning, which could have saved Kerry the fossil fuel and CO2 emissions expended to make such a foolhardy trek halfway around the world.

Kerry spun the trip as “productive” and claimed that the CCP “embraced the criticality of moving with urgency to deal with the climate crisis.” Ever the dupe, China’s actions say otherwise, as dictator Xi Jinping is ruthless but not stupid.  In contrast to the U.S., Xi made clear he is not going to sacrifice his nation’s economy and curb its very modest to poverty living standards.

Then there is UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who last week upped his climate hysteria by saying, “the era of global warming has ended, the era of global boiling has arrived.” This socialist UN chief and so many others ignore the planetary reality that July is the hottest month of the year in the northern hemisphere because the planet tilts closer to the sun; that it is not about “fossil fuel addiction.” As for the global temperature, which prompted General Guterres’ latest climate conniption, July 2023 was not the hottest month on record, as CFACT showed (e.g., here, here, and here).

These latest statements by Messrs. Kerry and Guterres reveal climate policies remain on full throttle by the Biden administration and United Nations and are aimed at America’s low-income, working, and middle classes, which collectively are the world’s largest consumers of fossil fuels. Policies to force less energy use and the products it fuels to fight “climate boiling” means having to make energy much more expensive, and thus an ongoing declaration of economic war against all non-wealthy Americans.

Author

Peter Murphy

Peter Murphy is Senior Fellow at CFACT. He has researched and advocated for a variety of policy issues, including education reform and fiscal policy, both in the non-profit sector and in government in the administration of former New York Governor George Pataki. He previously wrote and edited The Chalkboard weblog for the NY Charter Schools Association, and has been published in numerous media outlets, including The Hill, New York Post, Washington Times and the Wall Street Journal. Twitter: @PeterMurphy26 Website: https://www.petermurphylgs.com/

From cfact.org