In a move sure to be challenged in court, the Biden Environmental Protection Agency this week enacted a de facto ban on many gasoline-powered vehicles in the form of final regulations on allowable tailpipe emissions.
of regulation It is designed to force two-thirds of new light-duty cars and 46% of medium-duty cars sold in the U.S. to be electric by 2032, and is the most important component of the Biden Green New Deal energy policy. That’s one bad plan. .
In a press release accompanying the new rule, EPA said the new rule would “avoid more than 7 billion tons of carbon emissions and provide nearly $100 billion in net benefits to society annually, including $13 billion annually in environmental improvements.” It also includes public health benefits for the dollar.” “Air quality will improve and annual fuel costs will be reduced by $62 billion” is all such nonsense that no one seriously believes it. But this kind of fantastical narrative forms the very basis of current Democratic thinking on energy and climate policy.
in statement, Tom Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, fired back at the EPA’s talking points, calling the regulation “another example of President Biden’s attack on the middle class.” Pyle correctly points out that the new rules “will raise the price of cars and ultimately make fewer cars available to Americans.” By now, we’ve become accustomed to incredibly harmful and stupid rules from the Biden administration, but this one is in a league of its own. ”
But of course, rising new car prices in the United States is a feature, not a flaw, of the Green New Deal that Mr. Biden and his regulators are pushing.according to saved data According to the St. Louis office of the Federal Reserve Board, when Mr. Biden took office in January 2021, the consumer price index was 150.131. By February 2024, it had skyrocketed to 179.311, an increase of 14% in just three years. By contrast, the index rose just 1% during Donald Trump’s first term.
It’s no secret that rising energy costs are a central goal of the climate alarm activist movement in the United States and around the world. The conceit is that if you can force energy costs high enough and fast enough that ordinary consumers can’t bear them, you’ll force people to economize, and thus save money. As Mr. Pyle rightly points out, this is a significant increase in society’s middle and lower classes, given the fact that rising energy costs essentially act as a regressive tax, impacting the poorest the most. It is a direct attack on
This is the core belief system that controls Democratic Party policy today. There is absolutely no question about that at this point. Literally every action this administration takes related to energy policy is intentionally designed to increase energy costs for all Americans. Consumers are seeing that in higher gas prices at the pump — prices now more than 50% higher than when Biden took office. They see this as rising household utility bills. They see it in Mr. Biden’s irrational policy actions, such as his push for offshore wind industry projects that continue to require more subsidies and higher rate guarantees before major developers can proceed. They attribute this to the administration’s policies aimed at weakening the domestic oil and gas industry. They see it as a policy deliberately designed to destroy the reliability of the nation’s power grid.
And now they’re finding it in this new EPA power grab. The announcement comes as U.S. automakers have spent the past six months scaling back their EV development plans, prompting governments to reconsider their irrational and destructive approach in light of slowing EV demand and the huge economic losses that come with it. This was in response to my request. The majority of Americans simply don’t want to own an EV, and forcing automakers to build them regardless of market demand would create the “disaster” for the domestic industry that President Trump predicted last week. This is the most reliable method.
It’s madness, plain and simple, and if voters give this government another four years, disaster will become inevitable.
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent his 40 years in the oil and gas business, specializing in public policy and communications.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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