OPINION:
A perverse benefit of today’s high gas prices: They are a bitter forewarning of what will soon become normal as President Biden continues to bring in more severe climate-change and renewable-energy policies (“Gas prices double since Biden’s presidency began,” Web, June 5). After all, Mr. Biden has made clear that pleasing the extreme left in the Democratic Party and their activist allies in the climate-change movement is a higher priority than taking action to boost fossil-fuel production to keep prices low.
Why else would Mr. Biden, on his first day in office, have cancelled the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have delivered secure, inexpensive and environmentally friendly petroleum from Canada, America’s closest ally?
Climate campaigners want higher energy prices across the board. This, they believe, will force Americans into electric vehicles and make wind and solar power more competitive. Activists are obviously in agreement with the edict of environmental doomster Paul Ehrlich, who said, “Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.”
In reality, it is the exact opposite. Giving society cheap, abundant energy makes us better able to care for the environment and our most vulnerable citizens.
Just before he was appointed secretary of energy in the Obama-Biden administration, Steven Chu, then director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, put the goals of Mr. Biden’s climate activist allies into perspective by saying, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”
Well, congratulations, Mr. President. You are halfway there.
TOM HARRIS
Executive director, International Climate Science Coalition
Ottawa, Ontario
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