The War on Fossil Fuels is Taking a Toll

The war on fossil fuels is taking a toll, and those mandates are changing union attitudes as well as frustrating the suppliers of that energy.

September 23, 2024

By: Bobby Casey, Managing Director GWP

People take polls about the economy and get these percentiles suggesting things are not so bad. Yet, you can read that poll, but then head into work or hang out with friends, and that’s not what they say. Maybe they aren’t a pink slip away from homelessness, but they feel it. They smile and say they shrank their vacation from a week to 3 days. They are doing a “stay-cation” instead of going somewhere. Maybe a co-worker is asking for a few more hours of overtime.

You can look at what you were spending a few years ago, and know you are spending more on the same things. You can look at your tax returns and see you aren’t making more. You can look around you at work, and see some people haven’t come back from the weekend. It’s not an unsolvable mystery.

It’s voting season in the US, so naturally politicians are trying to convince you at all levels that they can fix what they broke.

The climate agenda, for example, is predicated on there being a man-made crisis that man can then fix. The solution, however, requires we all abdicate our free markets, rights, and tax dollars to a centralized power.

Regardless of what people believe about the climate, we should all be in relative agreement that these global agendas that concentrate power and wealth are not the paths forward. And when you balk or question it, they follow up with identifying a villain and then with onerous initiatives. But it doesn’t take much to realize that the war on fossil fuels is taking a toll.

Who’s the villain?

The politically accepted one is: fossil fuels, or commonly called Greedy and even Lazy Big Oil Companies. Just for some perspective:

The rhetoric against fossil fuels as the main culprit in destroying the earth is over the top. Here’s a recap from Green Peace, which sums up an environmental alarmism speech on any given day:

It’s abundant, affordable, and managed to carry several countries through industrial revolutions while also allowing people to open up their radius for work and see the world.

Seeing the world used to be a treat reserved for either the rich or the royally chosen. It used to be harrowing and deadly. Thanks for fossil fuels, you have airlines offering flights for as low as $49 one way which is affordable on MOST budgets.

Fossil fuels and specifically electricity begotten by fossil fuels, has done a lot to reduce indoor air pollution brought on by burning wood, coal, and animal waste.

Is there room in the market for alternative forms of energy? Sure! And when they become as efficient as fossil fuels the demand for them will grow.

But in the interim, the war on fossil fuels is taking a toll by denying developing countries the opportunity to have their industrial revolutions, and throttling first world countries.

Moreover, if climate change is this existential threat, you’d think the solution would involve avoiding the listed bullets above. No. The goal is to get off of internal combustion engines and move to electric vehicles. The production of their batteries alone requires strip mining. Then you have to charge the battery with electricity… which comes from coal.

I don’t deny that they are for-profit entities. Of course they are. But I don’t see profit as unto itself nefarious. Politicians were dragging the oil industries The oil companies had thousands of leases to drill on. And three major reasons for why they weren’t drilling them while asking for more leases:

Never mind that any policy or even discussions that indicate more investment in the oil industry mitigates the cost of oil because its implications on futures. If the conversation is around regulations and restrictions and moving away from fossil fuels, that signals a constriction on supply and production. The inverse is also true: when the conversations is around new leases and pipelines, expansion of exploration, that signals an increase of supply and production.

What is the toll of these policies?

It’s no secret that the climate agenda has upset the farmers in Holland. They wound up dumping manure all of the the steps of their government buildings and holding up traffic with their tractors.

In the US, the politicians are feeling it. The Teamsters Union will not endorse any candidate this election season, but the Teamsters Union boss, Sean O’Brien did speak at the RNC. That’s because the outcomes under the Biden/Harris administration clearly didn’t meet their needs… whatever those may be.

While union bosses have checkered records, they do represent the core of the working class in the US. The workers themselves are just trying to make a living in a trade.

The ambivalence of the Teamsters Union points to the fact that union members themselves are split on which party will look out for the tradesmen, and that the war on fossil fuels is taking a toll.

The UAW is also interesting. Shawn Fain, the UAW boss, might be pro Harris/Walz, but the workers have watched thousands of their colleagues get laid off because of the EV (electric vehicle) mandates.

Not only does it take less workers to build these EV cars, there’s no demand for these cars which also leads to layoffs. They are building these cars despite the lack of demand and suffering layoffs:

Workers say layoffs aren’t just due to reduced labor but also the tough emissions standards from the Biden-Harris administration. These strict EPA regulations push the industry to produce more EVs, despite lower consumer demand, according to the Post.

You can’t force alternative energy. Obama tried it with Solyndra and it failed. Forcing a mandate of electric cars or solar paneling or paper straws isn’t how anything gets fixed. Just as there’s no political solution to social problems, there’s no political solution to what is a market problem.

The market will solve this. First through greater efficiency, and then perhaps through an innovation that allows for a more pluralistic energy sourcing. The freer the markets, the quicker the response. Until then, if politicians insist upon pick their favorites to win, no one really wins, and the people lose.