By Kevin Roberts, The Daily Signal | September 28, 2024
“We are not going back,” Vice President Kamala Harris has promised. But where are we heading? And who is being left behind?
Concerned Americans asking these questions can find answers at this year’s Climate Week NYC, a gathering of liberal activists and elites who claim that we are heading away from a “fossil-fuel society” and toward a “green economy” that “will drive a seismic change… in the way we build, live, and learn.” Unfortunately, they might be right.
Make no mistake, this revolution isn’t the organic byproduct of a free market and a free people, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. For more than two decades, a well-coordinated group of federal bureaucrats, corporate leaders, and radical activists have worked together to transform America from the top down. From the $30 trillion now being managed in ESG funds to the more than 1.4 million electric vehicles sold in 2023, the manifestations of their success are everywhere in American life. A Kamala Harris presidency would represent the culmination of all their efforts.
But there’s one major problem with their “push towards unstoppable progress.” When you’re “always moving forward,” you end up leaving a lot of people behind. The people being discarded by the climate change revolution are America’s hardworking men and women, as well as the global poor. The “fossil-fuel society” that they disparage is also the foundation of the American Dream, where everyday people could work hard, get ahead, own things, and pass them on to their children.
The reason that affordable, reliable energy is so essential to reducing poverty and creating prosperity in America and around the world is that almost everything we do requires it: modern medicine, clean water, cool homes in the summer, warm homes in the winter, interstate travel, manufacturing products, the list goes on.
Those gathered in the City that Never Sleeps this week should consider something as basic as keeping the lights on.
In 2020, one in four American households reported struggling to pay their energy bills, and the problem has gotten much worse under the Biden-Harris administration. Since January 2021, the national average price of electricity has increased 30% to nearly 17 cents per KWH according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For many people, these increases mean monthly bills close to $1000, cutting into working families’ savings and outpacing what most can afford to pay.
This energy inflation is aggravating inequality, but it isn’t an inevitable trend. In fact, the national price of electricity increased only 1.5% over four years under President Trump. So, what is causing the exorbitant increase in energy prices? The answer is simple: the Left’s radical climate policies.
For evidence, look no further than the vice president’s home state. In California, policies that Kamala Harris endorsed—such as a cap-and-trade carbon tax—have driven prices to nearly 33 cents per KWH, almost double the national average, and left tens of thousands of people in the dark.
That’s right, in 2023, 215,000 people in the Golden State had their power disconnected because of inability to pay the state’s exorbitant prices, and by the end of the year 40,000 of those households still had not seen their services restored. Now, many of these families are at risk of homelessness as their residential lease and mortgage terms are violated and homeowners’ insurance policies are canceled because of their inability to keep utilities connected.
This, of course, is the exact opposite of the American Dream of ownership and upward mobility.
The problem is even worse in developing nations, where 800 million people still live without access to any electricity and 3.3 billion people have access to less electricity than the average American refrigerator. Things are so bad that 2022 was the first year in decades that the number of people with access to electricity decreased. And this trend will almost certainly continue if Kamala Harris and other climate radicals are able to enforce their agenda for another four years.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. The good, albeit distressing, news is that this is a self-imposed crisis.
If we pursue policies that ban fracking in Pennsylvania, undermine American auto-manufacturers in Michigan, and increase gas prices across the Sun Belt—as progressive Democrats have promised they will do—even more people will be stuck in poverty and darkness.
But policymakers also know how to reduce energy costs and restore the American Dream. In fact, they did just that under the Trump administration, bringing back energy jobs, making the United States an energy exporter for the first time in decades, and saving the average American family $2500 a year compared to what they’re paying today.
As more and more Americans lose access to electricity and heat in their homes because of this administration’s radical climate policies, it is a great and tragic irony that Kamala Harris wants to keep them on the dark with respect to her energy plans for the next four years.
This article was originally published by RealClearPolicy and made available via RealClearWire.
Kevin Roberts, Ph.D., is president of The Heritage Foundation and Heritage Action for America.
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