“Anti” means “anti-fossil fuel.” Being anti-fossil fuel is a wholly insane philosophical position to take, yet many in the Democrat Party have taken that position. (Yes, we’re calling some Democrats insane.) People like Sen. Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren, Sen. Ed “Lackey” Markey, and Sen. “Crazy” Bernie Sanders, and others in Congress, bash away and demand the end of fossil fuels. Yet those same antis who demand an end to fossil energy have just sent a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) demanding FERC do something to lower the price of oil, natural gas, and electricity in their blue states. Why? Because they don’t want to be voted out of office for their obviously failed policies.
Some 41 members of Congress (anti-fossil fuelers) sent a letter to FERC Chairman Richard “Dick” Glick last week telling him to do something about high prices. The sleazy politicans signing the letter maintain there’s price manipulation going on that causes prices to go high. They are either completely ignorant of basic Economics 101 and how prices work in a free society, or lying. Take your pick.
When the government (i.e. people like Warren and Markey and Sanders) pick winners and losers and force new regulations on the industry to shut it down, it shuts down and doesn’t produce, driving up prices. How obtuse can members of Congress really be? We suspect they understand and are simply engaging in Politics 101–blame the victim for your own failed policies.
The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal has noticed the hypocrisy (and stupidity) of the left and runs the following column under the amusing title of, “No Climate Warriors in Frozen Foxholes.”
The climate warriors of the Democratic Party aren’t lacking for chutzpah, give them that. The latest example is a letter from 41 Members of Congress to federal regulators, fretting about “the effect that anticipated increases in heating and energy costs will have on our constituents this winter.” You don’t say?
The letter’s signers include Massachusetts Sens. Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the head of the House progressive caucus. This gaggle of greens normally thinks oil is drilled straight from hell, but they’re now asking the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to exercise its “power to influence retail rates for natural gas and electricity.”
Naturally, their theory is that higher costs are a result of “market manipulation,” “profiteering,” and “high oil and gas exports.” Maybe they should read—OK, their staffs should read—the underlying document cited by their own letter. “We expect households that use natural gas as their primary space heating fuel,” the Energy Information Administration says, “will spend $746 this winter, 30% more than they spent last winter.”
Part of that is a forecast for colder weather, but there’s also basic economics. “The main reason wholesale prices of natural gas, crude oil, and petroleum products have risen,” the EIA says, “is that fuel demand has increased from recent lows faster than production.”
The report cites record exports of liquefied natural gas, but selling energy to American allies should be counted as a win, both economically and strategically, since it reduces the leverage of players like Vladimir Putin. The U.S. has enough gas to go around, and abundance is the ultimate fix for high prices.
But President Biden, encouraged by the signers of this letter, has made clear that U.S. fossil-fuel production must be phased out. The Atlantic Coast Pipeline and the PennEast Pipeline were both canceled even after beating opponents at the Supreme Court. Getting gas to Mr. Markey and Ms. Warren’s Massachusetts is so difficult that sometimes it comes into Boston Harbor on a tanker from Russia. And they wonder why heating prices are high.*