The Patriot Post® · Biden's Costly War on Fossil Fuel

Free market capitalism has a long track record of fueling innovation, increasing choice, and providing the best prices for consumers. The reason the vast majority of the world is not still riding on the backs of animals has everything to do with the free market.

But a funny thing happens when politics meets the free market: A desire arises within the politician to exert control over that free market. Politicians see the freedom of the market as a threat to their identity and their hold on power and therefore develop excuses to exert control over it. Within the American context, this political control comes most obviously in the form of bureaucratically formed regulations.

These Washington elites see Americans not as their equals, not as fellow citizens for whom they have been elected to represent so as to ensure that Americans’ freedoms and rights are upheld and protected. Instead, they see them as inferiors who need to be “cared” for and directed as if they were little children.

How else does one explain Washington’s insistent “need” to overregulate? This reality becomes further evident when Washington embraces a certain ideological agenda that much of the country rejects — an agenda such as the climate change cult.

The climate change cult is why Joe Biden has pushed an economically unsustainable green agenda, and it explains why he has targeted the fossil fuel industry for eventual elimination. He proudly promised to “end fossil fuel” back in 2019, and his administration has done much to make headway toward that end.

This explains the Biden administration’s push for electric vehicles, which is costing the auto industry and consumers a lot of money.

Indeed, the rate of EV sales has increased, but it doesn’t remotely meet the levels needed to hit the Biden administration’s stated target of 50% of auto sales by 2030. With just 9% of all auto sales last year being EVs, automakers are now cutting back their EV production and future sales outlooks.

As a recent article from CNBC put it: “EV euphoria is dead. Automakers are scaling back or delaying their electric vehicle plans.” Tellingly, the article notes that automakers have shied away from ESG investing and “companies are again cheering consumer choice.” As the old motto states, the customer is always right.

It’s too bad the Biden administration hasn’t embraced a similar motto of the American consumer always being right. Instead, the administration is seeking to dictate what consumers will and will not be allowed to buy. As we have noted, it’s not just with EVs; it’s also with household appliances.

The International Code Council (ICC) issues building codes for new construction. While the ICC is not a government agency, it does effectively establish building codes for much of the country. Now the American Gas Association is accusing the ICC of “serious lapses in due process” with its soon-to-be-released International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) for 2024. While the energy codes are typically noncontroversial, this year the AGA, which supplies natural gas to 180 million customers across the nation, notes that it was left completely out of the consulting process.

Apparently, the AGA was left out because the new IECC eliminated natural gas in its energy efficiency codes. As AGA CEO and president Karen Harbert contends: “They’re incentivizing electrification and discriminating against the natural gas industry by excluding it from being part of the code. That really is anticompetitive behavior.”

The irony is that eliminating natural gas from building codes will actually negatively affect energy efficiency and increase construction costs, which will in turn raise the price of homes.

According to Harbert, this move by the ICC has everything to do with pushing an activist climate agenda that is anti-fossil fuel. “The activists that are supporting an all-electrification agenda tried to come in through the policy front door, which was to ban natural gas in cities, and that got overturned in the Ninth Circuit. They tried to ban gas at the state level, and that’s now being challenged. And they have tried to do it through regulation and have been unsuccessful.”

The Biden administration is dancing to the same climate activist tune. This is not about what is best for Americans or even what is best for the environment. Rather, it’s about forcing an activist ideology onto the country irrespective of its negative impact on the economy and Americans’ freedom to choose what they want to buy and what works best for them.

When inflation predictably soared following the Biden administration’s decision to spend like drunken sailors in part because of the Democrats’ “green dream” agenda, the president’s response was dismissive. “There’s nobody suggesting there’s unchecked inflation on the way, no serious economist,” Biden claimed back in July 2021.

Indeed, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen infamously insisted that the sky-high inflation was “transitory” at the time. Of course, she now says: “I regret saying it was transitory. It has come down. But I think transitory means a few weeks or months to most people.” Yeah, not years. But this is what happens when an activist agenda guides an administration’s policies.

It’s promoting an agenda of globalism over and against nationalism.