One of the wonders of the modern age is that fossil fuel allows us to avoid freezing in the winter and overheating in the summer.  Climate change fanatics, however, who ignore that the Earth's climate has cycled endlessly between hot and cold for billions of years, desperately want to return us to a pre-modern state.  Their efforts are paying off, for the U.S. government is warning of a 54% increase in winter heating bills.

Upon entering the Oval Office, Biden immediately shut down the Keystone Pipeline and ended new drilling on federal lands.  While Trump had brought America to energy independence and affordable energy, Biden reduced America to a vassal of oil-producing countries.

Thanks to this policy, gasoline prices keep climbing.  In my neighborhood, they've increased by almost 78% in just nine months.  The same is true everywhere.

Like all Biden policies, this is devastating for the middle and working classes, for it doesn't just make commuting more expensive; it increases the price of every single item in America.  Fuel is needed for farming, manufacturing, shipping, wholesaling, and retailing.  Every aspect of life becomes more expensive when fuel prices rise, with the middle and working classes bearing the ultimate burden.

All of this is in the name of fighting alleged climate change.  That is a faith, not a science.  We humans can pollute, and I believe we have a moral obligation to keep our environment clean and healthy, but the whole climate change theory is a joke and a bad one at that.

But around the world, not just in America, energy production has been collapsing thanks to various governments' misguided anti-fossil fuel policy.  Smart governments would have invested in making fossil fuel cleaner.  Stupid governments, which means all of them, decided to focus on renewables that will never be able to replace fossil fuels.  (Only nuclear power will, but lefties make sure nobody has that, either.)  UPDATE: Even China's Xi Jinping foolishly opted for carbon neutrality over clean-burning fossil fuel.

With winter coming, the price we're paying for this mass stupidity is going to be high.  Very high:

With prices surging worldwide for heating oil, natural gas and other fuels, the U.S. government said Wednesday it expects households to see their heating bills jump as much as 54% compared to last winter.

Nearly half the homes in the U.S. use natural gas for heat, and they could pay an average $746 this winter, 30% more than a year ago. Those in the Midwest could get particularly pinched, with bills up an estimated 49%, and this could be the most expensive winter for natural-gas heated homes since 2008-2009.

The second-most used heating source for homes is electricity, making up 41% of the country, and those households could see a more modest 6% increase to $1,268. Homes using heating oil, which make up 4% of the country, could see a 43% increase — more than $500 — to $1,734. The sharpest increases are likely for homes that use propane, which account for 5% of U.S. households.

This winter is forecast to be slightly colder across the country than last year. That means people will likely be burning more fuel to keep warm, on top of paying more for each bit of it. If the winter ends up being even colder than forecast, heating bills could be higher than estimated, and vice-versa.

This will be a worldwide disaster, especially coming on top of all the COVID lockdowns, which, by depriving people of fresh air and exercise and leaving them broke and depressed, has weakened the world population.  The fact is that, for all the decades-long hysteria about global warming, it's cold that kills (if one believes a 2015 Lancet study):

Cold weather is 20 times as deadly as hot weather, and it's not the extreme low or high temperatures that cause the most deaths, according to a study published Wednesday.

[snip]

The study — published in the British journal The Lancet — analyzed data on more than 74 million deaths in 13 countries between 1985 and 2012. Of those, 5.4 million deaths were related to cold, while 311,000 were related to heat.

Biden will not suffer.  Just as Obama kept the White House at a toasty 75 while his policies left Americans in the cold, expect Biden to do the same.  And at home in Delaware, this man, who got fabulously wealthy in politics (it pays to have a bagman for a son), can keep the house as warm as he wants.

It's the rest of us who need to worry.  Stock up on warm clothes and blankets if you can.  The collapse of America's supply system may mean that just when you need those things most, the cupboards will be bare.

I'm going to end the post as more and more of the writers submitting articles to American Thinker do: God help us.

Image: Outdoor thermometer.  Public domain.

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