For more than a decade, the West has been cutting its domestic oil and gas production to virtue signal about "emissions reductions" and combating "climate change." These are nice ideas, but reality shows the United States and Europe still need oil and gas, as alternative energy fails to effectively deliver. Instead of producing oil and gas themselves, the West is buying it from adversaries. Last week, this behavior and decision making process, based on emotions and ideology instead of rationality, came home to roost.
While Russia is committing war crimes in Ukraine, slaughtering civilians and destroying cities with cluster bombs, Europe and the U.S. are funding it. With the daily import of 600,000 barrels of Russian oil into the U.S., President Vladimir Putin sees an influx of millions of dollars for bombs and propaganda.
President Joe Biden, who has made "combatting climate change" a center piece of his domestic and foreign policy agenda, has boxed himself in. If he increases domestic production of oil and gas, his leftist base goes nuts. If he stops importing Russian oil, gas prices increase exponentially above an already high price, causing his 37 percent approval rating to decline even further. It's the same reason Russian oil hasn't been sanctioned and why foreign banks processing Russian energy transactions haven't been cut off.
The solution to extraditing the U.S. from funding Putin's war in Ukraine and lowering gas prices at home is to produce energy domestically. This logical and rational concept isn't just supported by Republicans, but Democrats in Congress and former diplomats.
"It is morally indefensible for the U.S. to still be importing Russian oil," former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, who served under President Obama, tweeted.
"The entire world is watching as Vladimir Putin uses energy as a weapon in an attempt to extort and coerce our European allies," Democratic Senator Joe Manchin said this week. "While Americans decry what is happening in Ukraine, the United States continues to allow the import of more than half a million barrels per day of crude oil and other petroleum products from Russia during this time of war. This makes no sense at all and represents a clear and present danger to our nation's energy security."
Regardless, the Biden administration is committed to an alternative energy transition. The pain at the pump for Americans and the slaughter of Ukrainians in the streets be damned. Biden's ideological war on domestic oil and gas is the priority.
"We're working through, we're working through an energy transition," Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said this week. "We have to take some time to get off of oil and gas — we recognize this — this is a transition."
"We are in the middle of a long-term transformation," Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg echoed during an interview with CBS News.
Lowering gas prices for American families isn't a priority because the cost crunch is a tool. The pain is the point. Biden administration officials are trying to convince Americans that gas is too expensive, but alternative energy will eventually give them relief. For them, the current expense of oil is worth the long term goal of forcing Americans onto the left's preferred kind of energy.
Under the Trump administration, Americans benefited from domestic oil and gas production, which gave them lower energy costs and protection from wars waged thousands of miles away. President Biden has eliminated both, making Americans poorer and held hostage to energy production from brutal regimes.