Archives for July 2022

“Freddie Prinze Jr.’s Fred walked so Ryan Gosling’s Ken could run.”

This July 4th, as you fill up your car or truck, you might be tempted to blame President Joe Biden for high gasoline prices.

You shouldn’t, say some experts. It’s Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fault, they say. The US had to cut off Russian oil imports to punish Putin for invading Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Biden himself has blamed the American energy industry.

“At a time of war,” Biden wrote in an open letter to the industry on June 15, “high refinery profit margins being passed directly onto American families are not acceptable… companies must take immediate actions to increase the supply of gasoline, diesel, and other refined product.”

But US refineries are already operating at 94 percent of their capacity, with US refineries in the Gulf of Mexico running at 98 percent, which is the highest rate in 30 years. Running refineries at a higher capacity than that risks damaging the equipment. As such, Biden isn’t just wrong, he insulted some of the hardest working people operating in one of the most dangerous industries in America.

If Biden wants more American fuel, then he should allow the building of new refineries, right?

But, on May 12, Biden’s Interior Department blocked a proposal to open up more than one million acres of land in Alaska for oil and gas drilling. Two days later, Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency blocked plans to expand an oil refinery in the US Virgin Islands.

Biden and his defenders said he had to block the expansion of the Virgin Islands refinery, given how polluting it was.

But had Biden’s EPA allowed the Virgin Island refinery to expand, the owners would have poured nearly $3 billion into retrofitting the plant so it produced gasoline and other products more cleanly, while significantly increasing production at the same time.

Furthermore, anybody who cares about air pollution and climate change should want more oil and gas drilling, not less. US emissions declined 22% between 2005 and 2020, mostly because cheap natural gas has replaced coal.

In truth, there are many things Biden could have done, and still should do, to lower energy prices. He could invoke the National Defense Act to accelerate the rate of oil and gas permits. He could set a floor of $80/barrel for re-filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), which would be a powerful incentive for the industry, because it would prevent prices from falling to unprofitable levels. Biden could announce trade agreements with American allies to supply them with liquified natural gas, which would incentivize more natural gas production and lower prices.

If Biden got America on a wartime footing, as he should be given Russia’s aggression in Europe, we would see the lowering of oil, gas and petroleum prices in less than one year.

Why won’t Biden do it? Because he has declared war on fossil fuels. “I guarantee you, we’re going to end fossil fuel,” Biden promised a student climate activist in 2019. “I am not going to cooperate with them,” he said, referring to the oil and gas industry.

And indeed, he hasn’t. When oil and gas executives visited the White House in June, Biden snubbed them by refusing to attend the meeting. Instead, at the very same moment, he met with wind industry executives. A few days earlier, Biden administration officials signaled they may support a large new tax on the oil industry proposed by a Senator from Oregon.

All of this has soured the oil and gas industry on investing in production. “If you were an oil company,” a senior executive at a major US bank told me, why would you invest hundreds of millions of dollars into expanding refining capacity if you thought the federal government or investors would shut you down in the next few years? The narrative coming from the administration is absolutely insane.”

And it’s about to get more insane. At the G-7 meeting in Germany earlier this week, French President Emmanuel Macron was overheard telling Biden that he couldn’t count on Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to produce much more oil. Implicit in Macron’s remarks was that the US needs to produce far more than Biden has been willing to allow.

The problem is that Biden is in the grip of a pro-scarcity ideology that demands humankind return to relying 100 percent on renewables, like we did before the industrial revolution. But that’s a delusion. Solar panels and electric cars, which rely on lithium battery power, have indeed become cheaper in recent years, but that’s mostly because China uses coerced Uyghur Muslim labor to produce those batteries. If those technologies were made in the US by workers paid a living wage, they would never be affordable.

On energy, as with so many other issues in recent years, you can’t believe the experts. They, too, are motivated by the pro-scarcity, romantic delusions that animate Biden’s energy agenda.

And so, when you fill up your car or truck, and you feel tempted to blame President Biden for high gasoline prices, go right ahead. Because it really is his fault.

Michael Shellenberger is a Time Magazine Hero of the Environment and best-selling author of “Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All.”

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Members of the liberal mainstream media didn’t appreciate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ joke about having Elon Musk’s support on Wednesday.

After the Tesla CEO announced that he voted for a Republican for the first time ever on Twitter, Musk also mentioned that he was leaning towards supporting DeSantis as a presidential candidate in 2024.

When DeSantis was informed of Musk’s support, he told the press that while he’s primarily focused on the 2022 gubernatorial election, he welcomes “support from African-Americans,” referencing Musk, who is White and was born in South Africa.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at Miami’s Freedom Tower, on Monday, May 9, 2022, in Miami. 
(AP Photo/Marta Lavandier, File)

Many mainstream media pundits attacked this quip by interpreting it in the most uncharitable light possible, suggesting that the joke reveals DeSantis’ racism.

“If [sic] said before that @GovRonDeSantis is a humorless, more openly fascist version of Trump. Here he is displaying the former quality in that for him, ‘humor’ means mocking Black Americans with his own, idiotic and offensive version of replacement theory. Black Floridians take note,” MSNBC host Joy Reid tweeted.

“Is there a joke somewhere in here? I don’t get it,” CNN commentator and “The View” co-host Ana Navarro wrote.

CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen tweeted, “I understand the ugliness of what he‘s doing here because I am a member of a minority too. We are not a punch line & neither are Black Americans. Jokes about skin color & physical features have no place. This is sick.” 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at a press conference at LifeScience Logistics 
(Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

“F*ck all these people,” The Nation correspondent Elie Mystal wrote.

ABC contributor Yvette Simpson tweeted, “And we thought we couldn’t do worse than Donald Trump. They are saying the ‘racist part out loud’ and laughing about it. No more white sheets—-it’s all out in the open now.”

Musk also received backlash for his tweet about voting for Republican Mayra Flores, including from Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y.

“Elon Musk is not a leader. He’s just another Republican billionaire who supports white supremacy and authoritarianism because he doesn’t want his workers to unionize or to pay his fair share in taxes,” Bowman tweeted.

Elon Musk announced on Wednesday that he voted for a Republican for the first time
(Getty images  |  istock)

Flores won the special election for Texas’s 34th Congressional District on Tuesday despite the district previously being under Democrat control for decades. Flores became the first Mexican-born American to be elected to the U.S. Congress.

Lindsay Kornick is an associate editor for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to lindsay.kornick@fox.com and on Twitter: @lmkornick.