Ecclesiasticus 34:22 reads, "He who takes away his neighbor's living slays him; and he who defrauds the laborer of his hire is a bloodshedder."

Biden's cavalier attitude toward the loss of American jobs must be judged according to the biblical standard.  The elimination of hundreds of thousands of jobs is a serious matter, and its effects are indeed bloody.  Deprived of their jobs and their self-respect, workers are without support and purpose, and it's likely that many will come to harm.

The most recent weekly jobless claims were higher than expected, and consumer confidence fell 11.3% to the lowest level since February.  A Forbes columnist predicts recession by early 2022, with some believing we have already entered recession.  One industry has been especially hard hit, and not because of the normal business cycle.  The decline in the oil and gas industry is almost entirely Joe Biden's fault, and instead of apologizing for it, he brags about it.  The long-held dream of the left is to force energy prices high enough that consumers will turn to wind and solar.  With gas prices heading toward five dollars a gallon, electric cars may seem more attractive.

There should have been a huge recovery in U.S. oil production, what with oil prices more than quadrupling since their COVID low.  That has not been the case, and that is why gas prices have remained high — as have prices for heating oil, natural gas, and other petroleum products.  The most recent rig count figure is 392, down from 900 or more through most of 2019 and 2020.  Current drilling is not much improved from the lows of 2021 when economic activity stagnated due to Biden's handling of the epidemic.

Drilling is less than expected because Biden has carried out a war on fossil fuels, including his executive orders halting the Keystone XL pipeline, banning new drilling on federal lands including ANWR, and strong-arming banks not to lend to energy producers.  The massive infrastructure bill and proposed BBB contain green energy subsidies and mandates that would further restrict fossil fuel production, even as Biden pleads with the rest of the world to produce more and releases 50 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (a release that has had the opposite of the desired effect on the price of energy for consumers).

According to the American Petroleum Institute, the oil and gas industry supports 10.9 million jobs in America with the potential for another 2.3 million jobs in the industry by 2035.  In a 2015 study, Wood-Mackenzie analyzed the effects of proposed regulatory restrictions on the oil and gas industry — less severe restrictions than Biden has enacted in just his first year.  These included damage to our national security, reduction of employment, reduced revenue at all levels of government, lower GDP growth, and increased household energy expenses.  All of these destructive effects have come about under Biden policies in just one year.  The future will be only more devastating as Biden ramps up his climate change agenda.

Those who work in the oil and gas industry, and the coal industry as well, are collateral damage from the climate change agenda.  Biden — and before him Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama — has shown no remorse for what he has done in cutting fossil fuel jobs.  Biden's suggestion that highly paid pipeline workers "retrain" to become low-paid solar panel installers is both ludicrous and mean.  But it follows Hillary's heartless cackling at the idea of eliminating 100,000 jobs in the coal industry and Obama's disdain for almost everyone who performs manual labor.

According to the Bible, these heartless liberals are all "bloodshedders."  They are defrauding the laborer of his hire by promoting the Green Energy Hoax — the lie that fossil fuels contribute to global warming, while green energy does not.  The production of electric car batteries involves the mining of billions of tons of minerals (500,000 pounds of minerals per battery), which causes methane release from disturbed soils.

In the U.S. alone, 1.8 million electric vehicles were registered in 2020, thus requiring the mining of close to one trillion pounds of surface material.  Intensive mining and manufacturing are also involved in the production of windmills and solar panels.  The Green Energy Hoax is nothing but history's greatest pay-to-play scheme, with well-connected green energy producers receiving a trillion dollars in grants and subsidies and then returning a large share back to Democrat coffers.

But what about the common man, the oil field worker who relies on his hourly earnings to support a family, and the average American who is paying close to twice as much for gasoline, heating oil, and natural gas as he did under President Trump?  What about the five million related jobs that may be lost due to Biden's war on fossil fuels?  Those who work in the production of drilling equipment, transportation of fossil fuels, food and housing services for oil and gas workers, and all the other related areas are being "defrauded of their hire" by a cold-hearted president who seems blind to anyone who would not advance his political power and wealth.

Biden likes to pretend he is a friend to the working man.  That is not true in the case of a man who would brutally deprive workers of their livelihoods without even a hint of remorse.  Biden also pretends he is a devout Christian, but even without reading Ecclesiasticus, he should know that one does not deprive his fellow man of dignified labor, especially in the nonchalant manner in which he has done so.

There's nothing Biden can do to entirely make up for what he has done to workers in the energy sector.  The damage has been done, and a million workers have been harmed.  But he might begin by rescinding his many restrictions and encouraging the use of oil and gas produced in America.

According to Ecclesiasticus, Biden is a bloodshedder, and he and his administration, and the Congress that works with him, all have the blood of ordinary Americans on their hands.  Americans must recognize the destruction that Biden has wrought and shun him and his party in the years to come.

In the 1896 presidential campaign, in reference to the damage the gold standard was doing to poor people, William Jennings Bryan famously declaimed, "Thou shalt not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold."  Biden is crucifying the men and women of America's fossil fuel industry upon his own cross of Green Energy.  His war on fossil fuels is both mean and irrational, and it should be rejected with a crushing defeat in the midterm elections.

Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books and articles on American culture, most recently Heartland of the Imagination (2011).

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.