There are striking parallels -- and contrasts -- between Jimmy Carter’s leadership during the 1970s Oil Crisis and Joe Biden’s initiatives during the current “Climate” Crisis.  The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) instigated the 1973 crisis in U.S. gasoline prices that sparked inflation, and Jimmy Carter responded by supporting conservation and alternative energy plans (as well as a shift to “plentiful coal”).  In contrast, Joe Biden seeded current fuel price inflation with wasteful overspending and attacks on oil production, and embraces yet more inefficient spending on renewable manufacturing projects that accelerate pollution and increase American vulnerability to China and Russia.

In 1973 Henry Kissinger ominously proposed that “Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.”  This was the year that OPEC tightened oil supplies and America faced gasoline shortages and inflation. Carter’s comprehensive response aspired toward increased American energy independence.  On April 18, 1977, Carter advised that the nation must “stridently reduce dependence on overseas oil with a fervent, unified effort that was the moral equivalent of war.’”

Awareness of the threats of American dependence on foreign energy did not wane following Carter’s election loss in 1980:

Every U.S. president since Richard Nixon has pledged allegiance to the goal of “energy independence,” even as the United States has remained dependent on imported oil. And as China’s appetite for fossil fuels surpasses America’s, energy anxiety has gone global…

The Biden administration embraces a very different priority list.  Liberal media seek to compare Biden’s policies to Carter’s, presenting the current energy crisis as one in which Joe Biden is similarly the victim of conditions beyond his control.  The New York Times claims:

Today another American president faces rising fuel prices, spurred by a challenge mostly out of his control, an invasion of Ukraine by Russia… On top of the old challenges are new energy threats that are only just emerging as world leaders try to wean their nations off fossil fuels. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has been keen, along with China, to acquire strategic materials found around the world necessary for the adoption of renewable energy and electric vehicles.

U.S. energy costs spiked prior to the Ukraine conflict, aggravated by Biden’s anti-oil rhetoric and reckless spending follies.  Yet the Times admits the push toward renewable energy is still dependent on finite resources, and on fossil fuels themselves -- that is how “strategic materials” are mined, processed, and transported.  All so-called renewable energy is completely dependent on availability of oil or other energy sources for its manufacture.  The creation of enough solar panels (manufactured from coal and oil) to power the electric grid would devour more natural resources than the world possesses.  It is a bootstrapping scheme, more akin to a perpetual motion machination than sound environmental policy. 

And yet this fantasy of energy “independent” from the energy used to create renewable alternatives persists:

Since the days of President Jimmy Carter and the 1970s oil crisis, the United States has relentlessly pursued the utopia of energy independence. ….the United States will never achieve true energy independence while still relying so heavily on fossil fuels. Indeed, some experts now contend that the only one surefire way to be completely and indefinitely energy independent is by adopting 100% renewable energy.

This farcical delusion is promulgated by President Biden, who flatly stated that his goal is to unilaterally eliminate all fossil fuel production in favor of (Chinese-manufactured?) fossil-fuel-dependent boondoggles:

“I would transition from the oil industry, yes,” responded Biden, who later added that the oil industry “has to be replaced by renewable energy over time.” ...[A]t a September 2019 campaign event in New Hampshire, he told one young girl, “I want you to look at my eyes. I guarantee you, I guarantee you we’re going to end fossil fuel…”

This is an impossible fantasy, plunging the nation into mind-boggling debt, dependency on foreign powers, and an avoidance of effective environmental stewardship.  Manufacturing EVs and solar panels pollutes the planet: the same old industrial toxins are packaged into shiny virtue-signaling cars that eventually join combustion engines in landfills.

Climate change alarmists would have America sacrifice its very nationhood, and national security interests, in blind pursuit of a demonstrably failed plan that accelerates resource depletion to profit a handful of speculators.  What's next? Abolishing cows so all humanity eats Bill Gates’ patented vat meat manufactured with fossil fuels and synthetic fertilizers?

Biden is opening up drilling in Alaska’s Cook Inlet while blocking future oil and gas developments in 16 million Arctic acres.  (Carter protected some 156 million Alaskan acres, though drilling there dates back to the 1950s).  This conflicted pattern has revealed friction within Democrat ranks.  Unhappy with gargantuan debt incurred for salvific “renewable” energy independence, more Dems are waking up to the scam:

“While the Biden administration has continued to play political games and incorrectly frame the [Inflation Reduction Act] IRA as a climate change legislation, the truth is that the IRA is about securing America’s energy independence for the coming century,'' [Senator Joe] Manchin wrote.

“The Biden administration continues to ignore congressional intent on critical components of the IRA... to illogically advance a partisan climate agenda and appease radical activists,'' Manchin added.

Biden has proposed a $6.9 billion budget that is as far from fiscal restraint as it is from Carter’s calls for conservation:

Although the bill mostly funds a vast, ambitious menu of energy efficiency and renewable energy manufacturing and deployment efforts, it “also includes generous incentives for a set of lower-carbon technologies and fuels where oil and gas executives argue they hold a big advantage,” the Times explains. “Oil companies are starting to plough cash into projects to capture and lock away carbon dioxide, to retool refineries for making biofuels, and produce low-emission hydrogen, all supported by the IRA’s green subsidies.”

This shift to Biden’s idea of “energy independence” depends on sourcing the precious raw materials necessary for their energy-consuming manufacture:

The President said the second part of his plan to address the rising prices is to create American energy independence in the long term. “Ultimately, we and the whole world need to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels altogether. We need to choose long-term security over energy and climate vulnerability” ...Biden also will issue …spur domestic production of critical minerals needed to manufacture batteries for electric vehicles and long-term energy storage.

Shifting from one dependency to another under the utopian guise of creating infinite free energy, Biden has ignored the economic health that Carter favored.  The national deficit increased by $1.45 trillion in FY 2022.  Biden now proposes to increase the nation’s $31.6 trillion debt by another $17.1 trillion, to $48.7 trillion in a decade.

This poses an existential threat to America greater than OPEC’s embargo, aggravated by a Russia-China alliance that seeks to colonize the world to dominate in the production of fossil fuels and raw materials, both required for renewable energy manufacturing.  Boundless spending is a greater threat than climate change, and will crash the currency. 

Jimmy Carter warned “We are grossly wasting our energy resources and other precious raw materials as though their supply were infinite.”  Today we are wasting those resources in profit-driven pursuit of “alternative” energy dependent on traditional fossil fuels increasingly controlled by our adversaries.

The contrast between Presidents Carter and Biden could hardly be more stark.

John Klar’s upcoming book addresses these issues in depth.

Image: Gage Skidmore, Susan Lawler