Biden's Anti-Energy Madness

The rise of unprecedented modern prosperity - the world's industrial economy - is based upon one overriding factor: the discovery and extraction of vast amounts of cheap fossil fuels.

The 20th century saw people go from flightless men, riding on horseback; to astronauts walking on the Moon, and jumbo jets transporting millions between continents. In 1900 there were no skyscrapers; by 2000 there thousands of them. In 1900, people died by the millions from diseases like malaria, and polio, and cholera; by 2000, those diseases were mostly eradicated. In 1900, virtually no one had electric lights, or refrigeration, or heat, or air conditioning; by 2000, everyone in the first world took those things for granted.

All those developments didn't happen by magic. They happened because machines fueled by cheap energy made human life easier - and provided the economic surplus to invent, and innovate, and improve the lives of billions of people.

The latest political fad - banning fossil fuels - is so self-evidently suicidal as to defy belief. Especially when coupled with the anti-energy fanatics other cause: banning nuclear energy.

Today over 80% of global electric production still comes from fossil fuels and nuclear power. That despite decades of massive subsidizing of "alternative" power sources: wind; solar and hydro.

Add to that, nearly 100% of global transportation (cars, buses, trucks, airplanes and ships) is fossil fuel powered, and over 90% of home heating in the first world is fossil fuel (oil and gas) powered.

President Joe Biden has embraced an anti fossil fuel extremism that leads nowhere - except perhaps a new Dark Ages.

When fuel shortages drive up the cost of transport - food becomes scarcer and more expensive. Poor people go hungry and die. When "black-outs" cut electricity on broiling hot days, elderly people die from the heat. On cold days, children freeze to death. The new woke religion of anti-fuel hysteria is not cost-free. It threatens a new era of rising poverty, shortened lives, and ever shrinking resources. And it is based 100% on a dirty word: politics.

The tent cities and crushing rampant homelessness in California are no accident: they are a product of decades of policies - politics - making fuel expensive, and normal life increasingly out of reach for millions.

The Republicans in Congress are pushing for energy reforms - the Lower Energy Costs Act - to re-open some of America's domestic energy markets. Frankly, the Republicans' proposals are far too timid and limited, but Biden has already denounced them as "a license to pollute" and promised a veto.

A society that trashes its source of prosperity will be doomed to live in poverty. Are we really that foolish ?