The Biden administration is increasingly preventing Americans from enjoying the economic empowerment of a free market system as it continues its holy war against fossil fuels, all under the guise of “combatting climate change” by curbing and cutting carbon emissions. Net-zero carbon is the absurd pipe dream of a “bright” future.

Curbing carbon emissions has become the de facto justification for granting the Washington bureaucratic state an ever-more intrusive and controlling power over the everyday aspects of Americans’ lives. Regulators target everything from home appliances such as gas stoves and water heaters to the vehicles Americans drive.

Speaking of vehicles, two different agencies within the Biden administration are targeting gas-powered vehicles with new regulations that are clearly intended to force auto manufacturers into producing primarily electric vehicles, and thus force consumers into purchasing more expensive vehicles that continue to have at least one glaring drawback — they lack the freedom of mobility of gas-powered vehicles.

The two agencies in question are the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The NHTSA just proposed stricter fuel economy standards for new vehicles beginning in 2027. Team Biden will require automakers to improve fuel efficiency for cars by 2% year over year until 2032 and by 4% for light trucks over that same time span. Pete Buttigieg’s Transportation Department boasts that this new rule will prevent the release of some 900 million tons of carbon emissions.

Back in April, the EPA proposed another fossil-fuel-squelching regulation aimed at the auto manufacturing industry, this one targeting tailpipe pollutants. Since the EPA cannot directly mandate what types of vehicles automakers manufacture, the Biden administration has instead sought to impose increasingly steep standards in an effort to price gas-powered vehicles out of the market.

As West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey contends, “This administration is hell bent on destroying America’s energy security and independence by making us dependent on resources and components that can come only from abroad.” A great deal of the raw material for batteries, for example, comes from China.

Proving that ideology is running the show rather than sound scientific reality, the Biden administration simply ignores the lack of infrastructure in place to be able to meet the growing demand for electricity across the nation’s power grid. That lack of overall infrastructure includes too few available charging stations to meet the growing demand of an increasing number of EVs on the road. All the ecofascists care about is the pipe dream of reaching “net zero” carbon emissions, no matter how disruptive it is to Americans’ lives.

Meanwhile, the auto industry is trying to meet the Biden administration’s increasingly onerous demands, while at the same time facing the reality that EV sales, while slowly increasing, still made up less than 6% of all vehicle sales in 2022. For Ford, that reality — along with losing $4.5 billion on EVs this year — is why the company recently announced that it’s pushing its total target for the number of EVs produced back at least another year.

Much of the reason for poor sales has to do with the high cost of EVs, which averages $55,000. Indeed, it is also thanks to EVs that gas-powered vehicles have been increasing in cost, as the federal government has put its thumb on the scales, which has artificially raised the cost of gas-powered vehicles in order to offset the cost of EVs. And now everyone is losing, including the planet.