In a move that is certain to be challenged in the courts, the Biden Environmental Protection Agency enacted a de facto ban on many gas-powered cars this week in the form of a final regulation on allowable tailpipe emissions.
The regulation is designed to force two-thirds of new light-duty cars and 46% of medium duty autos sold in the United States to be electric vehicles by 2032, one of the more hare-brained schemes that make up the Biden Green New Deal energy policies.
In the press release accompanying the new rule, the EPA boasts that the new mandates “will avoid more than 7 billion tons of carbon emissions and provide nearly $100 billion of annual net benefits to society, including $13 billion of annual public health benefits due to improved air quality, and $62 billion in reduced annual fuel costs,” all of which is so much nonsense that no one really believes it. But this kind of fantasy narrative forms the very foundation of current Democrat party thinking on energy and climate policy.
In a statement, Tom Pyle, President of the American Energy Alliance, fired back at the EPA talking points, calling the regulation “another example of President Biden’s assault on the middle class.” Pyle correctly points out that the new rules “will make cars more expensive and ultimately make fewer cars available for Americans. By now, we have gotten used to incredibly damaging and stupid rules from the Biden administration, but this one is in a class by itself.”
But of course, raising the price for a new car in the United States is a feature of the Green New Deal policies pushed by Biden and his regulators, not a glitch. According to data kept by the St. Louis office of the Federal Reserve, the consumer price index when Biden assumed office in January, 2021 stood at 150.131. By February of 2024, that had skyrocketed to 179.311, a rise of 14% in just three years. By contrast, the index rose by just 1% during the first term of Donald Trump.
It is no secret that increasing the cost of energy is a central goal of the climate-alarm activist movement, not just in the United States but across the globe. The conceit there being that if you can force energy costs high enough and fast enough to make them unbearable to ordinary consumers, you will force people to conserve, i.e., do without. As Pyle correctly points out, it is a direct assault on the middle and lower classes in society, given the fact that rising energy costs essentially function as a regressive tax that impacting the poorest classes the hardest.
This is the core belief system that controls policy in the Democrat party today. It is simply beyond question at this point – literally every action this administration takes related to energy policy is designed to intentionally increase the cost for energy for every American. Consumers see it in the rising price for gas at the pump – more than 50% higher today than it was when Biden took office. They see it in skyrocketing home utility bills. They see it in irrational Biden policy actions like pushing offshore wind industrial projects, where big developers continue to demand more subsidies and higher rate guarantees before moving forward. They see it in the administration’s policies designed to depress the domestic oil and gas industry. They see it in policies intentionally designed to destroy reliability on the nation’s power grid.
And now they see it in this new EPA power grab. It comes after U.S. automakers have spent the last half year scaling back their plans for EV development and begging the administration to reconsider its irrational, destructive approach in light of the slowing demand for such cars and the ensuing massive financial losses. The vast majority of Americans simply do not want to own an EV, and forcing automakers to manufacture them regardless of market demand is the surest way to create the “bloodbath” in the domestic industry that Trump predicted last week.
It is madness, plain and simple, and if voters give this administration another four years in office, disaster will become inevitable.
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized 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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