March 15, 2023

There are striking parallels — and contrasts — between Jimmy Carter’s leadership during the 1970s Oil Crisis and Joe Biden’s initiatives during the current “Climate” Crisis.  The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) instigated the 1973 crisis in U.S. gasoline prices that sparked inflation, and Jimmy Carter responded by supporting conservation and alternative energy plans (as well as a shift to “plentiful coal”).  In contrast, Joe Biden seeded current fuel price inflation with wasteful overspending and attacks on oil production, and embraces yet more inefficient spending on renewable manufacturing projects that accelerate pollution and increase American vulnerability to China and Russia.

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In 1973 Henry Kissinger ominously proposed that “Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.”  This was the year that OPEC tightened oil supplies and America faced gasoline shortages and inflation. Carter’s comprehensive response aspired toward increased American energy independence.  On April 18, 1977, Carter advised that the nation must “stridently reduce dependence on overseas oil with a fervent, unified effort that was the moral equivalent of war.’”

Awareness of the threats of American dependence on foreign energy did not wane following Carter’s election loss in 1980:

Every U.S. president since Richard Nixon has pledged allegiance to the goal of “energy independence,” even as the United States has remained dependent on imported oil. And as China’s appetite for fossil fuels surpasses America’s, energy anxiety has gone global…

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The Biden administration embraces a very different priority list.  Liberal media seek to compare Biden’s policies to Carter’s, presenting the current energy crisis as one in which Joe Biden is similarly the victim of conditions beyond his control.  The New York Times claims:

Today another American president faces rising fuel prices, spurred by a challenge mostly out of his control, an invasion of Ukraine by Russia… On top of the old challenges are new energy threats that are only just emerging as world leaders try to wean their nations off fossil fuels. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has been keen, along with China, to acquire strategic materials found around the world necessary for the adoption of renewable energy and electric vehicles.

U.S. energy costs spiked prior to the Ukraine conflict, aggravated by Biden’s anti-oil rhetoric and reckless spending follies.  Yet the Times admits the push toward renewable energy is still dependent on finite resources, and on fossil fuels themselves — that is how “strategic materials” are mined, processed, and transported.  All so-called renewable energy is completely dependent on availability of oil or other energy sources for its manufacture.  The creation of enough solar panels (manufactured from coal and oil) to power the electric grid would devour more natural resources than the world possesses.  It is a bootstrapping scheme, more akin to a perpetual motion machination than sound environmental policy. 

And yet this fantasy of energy “independent” from the energy used to create renewable alternatives persists:

Since the days of President Jimmy Carter and the 1970s oil crisis, the United States has relentlessly pursued the utopia of energy independence. ….the United States will never achieve true energy independence while still relying so heavily on fossil fuels. Indeed, some experts now contend that the only one surefire way to be completely and indefinitely energy independent is by adopting 100% renewable energy.

This farcical delusion is promulgated by President Biden, who flatly stated that his goal is to unilaterally eliminate all fossil fuel production in favor of (Chinese-manufactured?) fossil-fuel-dependent boondoggles: