When Joe Biden took office on January 20, 2021, the national average gas price was $2.39 per gallon. He immediately set about to keep his campaign promise to wage war on fossil fuels, canceling pipelines and drilling leases, and the result was entirely predictable — gas prices quickly started to shoot upwards. As of last Friday, Biden accomplished the feat of doubling gas prices in a little more than 16 months. Today’s average price is an eye-popping $4.86, which is 25 cents higher than just one week ago.

“I did that!”

Obviously, the high price of gas is a huge problem in and of itself. Families are crunched and cutting back on vacations or trips of any kind. But the price of fuel impacts virtually everything else in the economy. Products at the grocery store have to be transported from somewhere, and that now costs twice as much as last year.

Another infuriating aspect of this story, though, is that it didn’t have to happen because there were warnings about the consequences of bad policy choices. Leftmedia “fact-checkers” love to heap scorn and censorship on stories blaming Biden, preferring to parrot his lines about COVID and Vladimir Putin. Amazingly, they didn’t even wait for the facts to come in to do it — they were quoting the “experts” to quash predictions of high gas prices before Biden even took office. According to The Washington Post in November 2020, “Conservatives predict gas prices will spike under Biden,” but “experts say those fears are overblown.”

What would we do without “experts”?

To be sure, Biden didn’t trip going up the stairs in the White House and accidentally push the lever that says “raise gas prices” all by himself. An economy with fully restored demand post-COVID lockdown and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine absolutely did play a role. Biden’s part has been to constrict supply at a time of increased demand. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that’s going to raise prices. And yes, the last few months have seen staggering price increases, but prices were already up from $2.39 to $3.53 before Putin ever set foot in Ukraine.

Never ones to let a good crisis go to waste, leftists routinely tout this as an “opportunity” to move forward into their renewable energy utopian future. You know, the renewable energy that is increasingly leading to power outages.

“When it comes to the gas prices, we’re going through an incredible transition that is taking place,” Biden said a few week ago. “When it’s over, we’ll be stronger and the world will be stronger and less reliant on fossil fuels.”

High gas prices got you down? Just buy a $56,000 electric car, they tell us. Electric cars are not only not the solution for most families, but the more of them that are on the road, the more they will exacerbate the aforementioned power outages due to the increased demand on an aging and insufficient electric grid.

Besides going hat in hand to Saudi Arabia later this month and foolishly tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, Biden’s other “solution” is to jack up the amount of ethanol being blended in our fuel. According to The Wall Street Journal, “EPA analysts say the decision is expected to increase consumer gas prices by less than 1 cent a gallon.” We’ll simply point you above to the “experts’” 2020 predictions about gas prices. Indeed, the Journal’s next sentence is this: “Both ethanol and corn prices have risen sharply.”

Corn prices affect other food prices just like gas prices do, so the collective effect is nothing but upward pressure on our cost of living. For what? Certainly not the environment.

Again, to quote the Journal, “President Biden has said he supports expanded use of corn-based ethanol to help farmers, consumers and the environment, though recent federal research suggests it raises consumer prices and damages habitat and the climate.”

So, other than raising prices and damaging the environment, what’s not to like about the ethanol boondoggle?

In short, Joe Biden doesn’t bear sole blame for the gas crisis, but if he wasn’t president, gas prices most certainly wouldn’t be barreling toward $5 a gallon.