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IN THIS ISSUE:
- Hey, Ho! Biden/Harris Climate Policies Have to Go
- Video of the Week: The Truth About Islands and Sea Level Rise
- Green Energy Schemes Are the Poor Subsidizing the Rich
- Podcast of the Week: Climate Policy at the GOP Convention: What a Second Trump Term Could Look Like
- New Analysis Ties Whale Deaths to Offshore Wind
- Climate Comedy
- Recommended Sites
Watch ALL the Presentations by the ALL-STARS of Climate Realism at the Archive of Heartland’s 15 Climate Conferences
Hey, Ho! Biden/Harris Climate Policies Have to Go
Meet the new boss, worse than the old boss! At least if you care about energy independence and household security.
As hard as it may be to believe, presumptive presidential replacement nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, may be worse on climate and energy issues than is her current boss, President Joe Biden. I’ll explain why, shortly, but first a brief discussion of the present state of energy/climate policy.
From the outset, the Biden/Harris administration pushed an all-of-government approach to fighting climate change, which Biden, with Harris’ support and encouragement, has called the only existential threat facing humanity.
The energy policies flowing from Biden/Harris’s climate concerns have cost the people of the United States and the nation itself, dearly.
From day one, the Biden/Harris administration’s energy policies began to undermine the United States’ position of energy dominance. Biden/Harris have blocked and canceled pipelines, oil and gas leases, and lease auctions, and new liquefied natural gas export terminals. They have imposed new, stricter regulations on power plants, vehicles, and oil and gas production. In response to the market chaos and higher prices these policies have produced, Biden/Harris then began draining our various strategic reserves and begged hostile foreign regimes to provide us with energy we could produce at home—all factors which also harm our allies in Europe, who have become increasingly dependent on the United States for critical fuel.
How much have the Biden/Harris administration’s energy policies directly added to U.S. household energy bills? The Heartland Institute has found that over the past three years: residential electricity prices have increased 23 percent; home heating oil prices have increased 69 percent; oil prices have increased 52 percent; natural gas prices have increased 32 percent; and gasoline has increased $0.97 per gallon, or 42 percent.
The result? After three years of Biden/Harris energy policies, the average U.S. driver has spent at least an extra $548 per year on gasoline, and the average household has expended an extra $318 on electricity per year. In sum, since Biden/Harris assumed the office of Imperial Executive—imposing energy policies through regulations and bans, skipping legislative action—the average American household directly paid at least $2,548 in higher direct energy costs from January 2021 through December 2023, meaning the actual added costs of energy have been even greater since prices have continued to rise in the seven months since then.
Also, that doesn’t even count the trillions of tax dollars and deficit spending on climate change boondoggles that reward Biden/Harris’s politically connected green energy profiteers.
Although it is true that the rate of rise in energy prices has fallen in the last year, they are still going up and are much higher across the board than they were under Trump. Indeed, under Trump, oil and gasoline prices fell from Obama/Biden administration levels, and electric power prices were rising at a much slower annual rate than they are now (and the electric power supply was much more reliable with fewer blackouts and brownouts).
And since energy is a factor in almost every good and service, higher energy prices contributed to the rising prices seen in virtually all goods and services, especially food prices, while spurring inflation. So, when you pay more for bread, milk, and other food staples at the grocery store and your paycheck, or food stamps, don’t buy as much as they used to, or when you pay more at restaurants for your meal, you can give an angry, “Thanks a lot, Biden/Harris, for the higher costs, leaving us with less disposable income and fewer choices.”
The repeated chants of “drill, baby, drill,” calls for a return to U.S. energy independence, and sporadic references to the “climate hoax” at the recent Republican National Convention in Milwaukee served notice that Republicans remember what lower fuel prices were like and how they resulted in a growing economy, with good paying jobs, and lower costs for everything else, including food, since energy costs are part of everything.
However, the higher costs resulting from the Biden/Harris energy policies—polices Harris has bragged about—do not respect political affiliation: rather they hurt Democrats, Independents, and Republicans alike.
Indeed, a recent Heartland/Rasmussen survey of likely voters nationwide found that more people support expanding oil and gas production in the country than believe that the Earth is suffering from dangerous climate change, and few people are willing to pay very much to fight climate change.
And it’s not just Republicans that long for more domestic oil and gas production. The Heartland/Rasmussen poll found that more Democrats favor increased domestic oil and gas production than oppose it. Republicans and Independents favor more drilling by and even wider margin.
The fact that a large plurality of Democrats support increased oil and gas production is especially interesting since, according to the same survey, 75 percent of them believe “the [E]arth is experiencing a dangerous level of climate change,” with more than half attributing the dangerous climate primarily to human actions.
If climate change is such an important crisis, one must wonder why so many Democrats support increased oil and gas production, which Biden/Harris and company blame for climate change.
Perhaps they recognize, as Republicans and a large number of Independents do, that the Biden/Harris administration’s climate efforts have not just resulted in higher prices, rippling throughout the economy, but also has resulted in leaving the country economically and geopolitically vulnerable to our competitors and enemies. Or perhaps, like most normal people, they are simply worried about bottom-line pocketbook issues.
As horrible as the impact of Biden/Harris’s climate and energy policies on peoples’ pocketbooks has been thus far, based on her past statements, the climate and energy policies flowing from a Harris/whoever ticket are likely to be even worse. As my colleague Chris Talgo pointed out in a recent article, Harris is even more radical than President Biden when it comes to energy policy.
As attorney general of California, Harris brought multiple lawsuits against oil companies trying to sue them, if not out of existence, at least into subservience to political masters. She’s also been a staunch opponent of offshore oil drilling, called for a complete ban on fracking, endorsed a tax on carbon dioxide emissions, and has thrown strong support to electric vehicle mandates and renewable energy subsidies with the goal of making the U.S. economy “carbon neutral” in just a few decades.
Indeed, Harris’s plans seem less intended to prevent climate change than to assert federal control over the entire economy. The evidence for this is that, as a senator, she was an original co-sponsor of the radical Green New Deal, an effort lead by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), which her chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, described as a “how-do-you-change-the-entire economy thing.”
This isn’t a partisan issue. America can’t afford another four more years of Harris/whoever’s energy policies that leave people with less money in their pockets and leave the country vulnerable to the whims of foreign powers.
Sources: The Heartland Institute; Townhall; Heartland/Rasmussen Poll
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Video of the Week
The Heartland Institute’s Linnea Lueken examines the claim that island nations like Tuvalu are threatened with disaster because of modestly rising sea levels associated with climate change. The complicated and non-alarmist truth is here.
Green Energy Schemes Are the Poor Subsidizing the Rich
New research published by the National Bureau of Economic Research finds that the vast bulk of the $47 billion in tax credits for green energy technologies, like electric vehicles, roof-top solar panels, high efficiency appliances, and energy efficient window installations, between 2006 and 2021, have been claimed by households in the highest income brackets. In other words, the subsidies amounted to welfare for the well to do.
As The Daily Caller describes the study’s results, “households in the top 20 percent of earnings nationally received about 60 percent of clean energy tax credits, while the bottom 60 percent of households received just 10 percent.”
The paper is authored by Severin Borenstein, Ph.D., the E.T. Grether Professor of Business Administration and Public Policy at the Haas School of Business and a research associate of the Energy Institute in the Haas School at the University of California–Berkeley, and Lucas W. Davis, Ph.D. a distinguished professor and chair of the Haas Economic Analysis and Policy Group at UC–Berkeley.
With regard to EV tax credits, Borenstein and Davis found the top 20 percent of earners claimed 80 percent of the tax credits, with those in the top 5 percent of incomes garnering about 50 percent of the credits by themselves. Seriously, billionaires and multimillionaires need tax credits to purchase electric vehicles?
Indeed, the study found limited “correlation between greater green tax credits and the adoption of technology such as heat pumps, solar panels, and EVs.”
“The cost effectiveness of tax credits hinges on their ability to increase adoption of clean energy technologies,” the study noted. “Overall, we find little correlation between tax credits and technology adoption.”
This means, in short, the rich claimed tax credits they didn’t need, since they would likely have bought the green energy tech without them. Increasing various green energy tax credits did not increase or broaden adoption. The poor who couldn’t afford (or didn’t really desire the technology) before the credits, still couldn’t afford them (or didn’t want them) after support was increased. For heat pumps, for example, the authors concluded:
[A] credit was introduced in 2006, yet adoption decreased in that year. The credit was not available in 2008 and 2018, but there is no discernible decline in heat pump shipments during those years. Moreover, during 2009 and 2010 the credit increased from 10% to 30%, yet there is no pronounced increase in heat pump shipments those years.
Sources: The Daily Caller; Â National Bureau of Economic Research