How Biden’s Climate Agenda has Strengthened Civilization’s Enemies and Hobbled our Citizens
by John D. O’Connor
The following is an article originally published on BizPacReview. Read it HERE.
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In John Prine’s humorous song Dear Abby, each complaining writer to the fictional advice columnist seeks resolution of an unwanted situation which the complainant’s actions have made inevitable. To each, the columnist advised: “Listen up, Buster, and listen up good. Stop wishin’ for bad luck and knockin’ on wood.”
By the same token, President Joe Biden’s close advisors did not wish Russian carnage in Ukraine, nor Hamas slaughter in Israel. Nor did they wish to rescue China’s economy while increasing Taiwan’s vulnerability. But their policy decisions did much to enable, if not directly cause, these horrific events.
As Biden was taking office, Russia was close to defaulting on its sovereign debt. Oil prices plummeted during the COVID pandemic, and had recovered, but only to a seemingly stable plateau of $45 a barrel in November 2020.
Putin always had his eye on the whole of Ukraine after strolling through in 2014 to the Crimea, while President Obama offered the besieged population only blankets and meals ready to eat (MRE), despite three previous Presidential assurances of American security support in exchange for Ukraine’s American-requested forfeits of weaponry. “We cannot win a war with blankets,” fretted President Petro Poroshenko.
But almost immediately upon his victory in 2020, Biden gave Putin, likely unwittingly, a great boost: he declared an end to oil lease sales on federal lands, offshore drilling and fuel pipeline approvals.
The result, unsurprisingly, was an immediate oil and gas price surge, as markets anticipated lack of future supply, quickly increasing by over $30 a barrel. It has hovered only a bit higher since then, as related prices for distillates and natural gas rose correspondingly. The result was an annual windfall to Putin of an increased income of $90 billion annually, with his total export revenue of $123 billion in pre-Covid 2019 rising to $212 billion in exports in 2021.
While Biden later blamed rising gas prices on the invasion of Ukraine, in fact these increases in price occurred pre-invasion, caused by Biden, not Putin. Certainly, this unexpected wealth has funded the Ukrainian stalemate. Put differently, if oil prices were still around $45-50 a barrel, Putin would have been forced into a face-saving armistice, if in fact, he had invaded at all.
Russia’s gain, though, was far less than the pain to American consumers and businesses. Rising fuel prices caused all goods to rise in price. Our clothes, autos, medical and electronic devices and countless consumer items are made of fossil fuels, concrete and steel need massive power to produce, while people and goods all need transportation. With an understated 5% “inflation tax,” Americans have needlessly overpaid at least one trillion dollars annually. At the pump, Americans paid $200 billion more per year annually, with distillates for the transportation industry adding another $100 billion, costing Americans $300 billion annually just for direct costs of fuel.
With national debt soaring, the government’s borrowing costs exacerbate its debt, as T-bond yields more than tripled. Two-year treasury notes averaged 1.58% in December 2019, whereas they hover around 5% today. Debt payments are increasing by trillions annually, it is safe to say, directly caused by Biden’s climate agenda.
We should not forget the effect of the Inflation Reduction Act, a trillion-dollar boondoggle mainly aimed, per Biden, at climate agenda subsidies.
With the nation’s debt and profligate spending becoming unsustainable, many in Congress are questioning the fiscal wisdom of supporting Ukraine. While such support seems wise for our future safety, our spending on climate does not, causing our present legislative disarray.
With the electorate blaming Biden for inflation, justly, and with an election looming, the recently enlightened Biden Administration has feverishly sought to lower pump prices by causing extra fuel supply, but, of course, not from our own abundant reserves. Thus, entreaties to Venezuela and a corresponding 500,000 Venezuelans immigrant green cards.
Biden’s Administration must also beg Iran for help, quietly easing import restrictions. Iran’s sanction-hobbled production was $2.4 million barrels per day in early summer 2023 and years previous. With a wink and a nod, the Biden administration has allowed the Iranian production to soon reach 3.5 million barrels per day, with no sanctions enforcement in sight. An extra million barrels per day is close to $90 million per day, or $30 billion annually. Added to the increased price per barrel previously caused, the windfall to Iran in total, with previous Biden price rises, is about $90 billion annually. So, Biden’s six billion dollar pending release of sanction funds to Iran pales in comparison. Like Russia in 2021, Iran now has American wind at its back as it supports both Hamas and Hezbollah.
While Biden says America stands with Israel, the smart money would not bet on his reinvigoration of sanctions in response to recent Iran-supported Hamas barbarism. Our complicit media, of course, will not breathe a word of this.
Certainly, none of this will lower pump prices or inflation, the latter to at least stay high, if not increase, as a result of funding Ukraine and Israel, which will in turn increase the pain to the American taxpayer to the tune of hundreds of billions annually.
It is clear that Biden EV mandates harm the domestic auto industry, while strengthening China, the world’s main refiner of rare earth minerals and producer of solar panels and batteries, as well as EVs. Its centrally managed economy had been slowing, but America is rescuing it with its climate policy.
American’s own economy, it is hoped, will be given a shot in the arm by AI and cloud storage growth. But these technologies require mass expenditures of power well beyond current capacity, which cannot be supplied by windmills. Given the proposed Biden EPA Rule dramatically tightening power plant emission standards, many utilities must shut down in the near future. AI will have to be developed in a more welcoming environment like, say, Taiwan, along with the world’s most sophisticated chips, already attractive potential military spoils for China. Having drained our strategic reserves to (ineffectually) lower pump prices, and going from energy independence to dependence, can we help Taiwan with supplies of fuel? Likely not.
But in spite of all these costs of Biden’s climate policy, isn’t such necessary to avoid the “existential threat” of climate change? Two answers: first, assuming the correctness of the perceived climate threat, none of the present “remedies,” per Bjorn Lonborg, will achieve any substantial improvement, even assuming the larger pipe-dream of a fossil-fuel-free country.
The second issue is whether the hypothesized threat is real. For decades, science mediocrities like Al Gore and John Kerry have been ranting that the climate science is “settled.”
But the Obama Administration’s brilliant “Climate Czar” Steven Koonin, unshackled by politics as of 2020, published the fascinating book Unsettled, the title of which says it all.
To defend the likes of Gore and Kerry, it must be noted that under the simplistic, unschooled assumptions of early climate calculations, only superficially obvious positive “feedbacks,” which dramatically increased the modest, easily calculated direct effects, were plugged into the first embryonic climate formulae. But these computerized Climate Global Models (CGM) have over-predicted warming by a factor of approximately three, causing much head-scratching among the newbie “climatologists”, many not climate scientists at all, but simply computer modelers or mathematicians bedeviled by the “garbage in, garbage out” bugaboo.
Recent advances have shown that predicted “positive” (increase in temperature) feedbacks are greatly, if not completely, offset by more subtle, but powerful, negative feedbacks, with the “iris effect,” and “cloud phase” feedbacks being two, while Henrik Svensmark’s Chilling Stars analysis of cosmic rays and sunspots more correctly predicts climate change, having nothing to do with CO2.
Since the effect of doubling CO2, or “ECS,” (CO2 has presently increased from preindustrial levels only 50%) is 1.1 degrees Centigrade with no feedbacks, these poorly understood feedbacks may prove, and point that way now, that any positive feedback effect is greatly muted by negative feedbacks. If so, and total ECS is comfortably under 2.0, all agree there is no worry. Civilizational suicide, as per the Biden climate agenda, would then be unnecessary.
Joe Biden originally washed his hands of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and it would be unprincipled to suggest that he wished the horrific slaughter by Hamas of Israelis.
In fact, the best defense for Biden to his clear enabling of these stomach-turning depredations is that he and his advisors did not give any of these consequences much thought. The climate lobbyists and Progressives simply told him to do as they dictated, in exchange for political support, and that was that.
Facts are stubborn things though, regardless of Biden’s good or bad faith. His climate policies are the main driver of world disorder, including the daily slaughter of innocents.
He still does not recognize the blood on his hands, as he is presently ordering millions of acres of federal land and offshore sites unavailable for drilling, and plans putting all two hundred forty-five million acres of federal land up for sale via conservation easements, which would prevent any future drilling, even if direly needed for national defense.
The iconic cartoon character, the possum Pogo, frantically marched his rag-tag army through the forest in search of feared forces opposing them. After extended maneuvering and reconnaissance, he declared: “We have met the enemy, and it is us.”
Biden should, but will not, make a similar announcement, as Pax Americana crumbles before our eyes, and the safety of our citizens is no longer assured.
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John D. O’Connor is a former federal prosecutor and the San Francisco attorney who represented W. Mark Felt during his revelation as Deep Throat in 2005. O’Connor is the author of the books, Postgate: How the Washington Post Betrayed Deep Throat, Covered Up Watergate and Began Today’s Partisan Advocacy Journalism and The Mysteries of Watergate: What Really Happened.