John Klar: Biden worse than Jimmy Carter

By John Klar

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”).

John Klar

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 Gatespatented 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 is an attorney and farmer residing in Brookfield. This commentary originally appeared at American Thinker.

Image courtesy of Public domain

8 thoughts on “John Klar: Biden worse than Jimmy Carter

  1. the fact is the Arabs were told by Kissinger to raise oil prices, so they could pay for US fighter jets that he and others wanted sold to show a positive balance of payments for the election.

    And no one with a working brain who knows anything about power loads and generation has ever thought renewables could ever or will ever replace fossil fueled power generation, anymore then candles can replace electric lights.

  2. President Carter came into office after Gerald Ford, who was installed when “they” set up and pushed Nixon out after “watergate”. Hindsight is 20/20 when it comes to the glorious 1970’s political shenigans right Nelson Rockefeller? Besides Billy Beer and Roselyn being viewed as a really nice lady, Carter was handed a big bag of domestic dung and a Middle East ready to blow up bigly. I don’t fault the man, I fault the industrial military complex and the CIA (Daddy Bush’s agency.) The resident, Biden, is not in charge of anything. As Obama giddily proclaimed he would love to be in the “basement” with an earpiece. You don’t say? As we teeter on complete disaster, comparing Carter to Biden is another BS narrative that means nothing. It is a tactic to divert attention away The Biden family business, Jeffrey Epstein’s client list, and who really is controlling the controllers.

  3. Jimmy the peanut farmer at least had a IQ above that of a vegetable. He just didn’t apply it to his political thinking. Anyone who could become a nuclear engineer has to be kinda on the ball. biden on the other hand has always been one of the low IQ’s in the Senate and built his career around his ability to Lie convincingly to remain in power. You’d think after 50 years in the swamp the nations people would have caught on but apparently you can’t underestimate the stupidity of the US voters. *alive and dead*

  4. I remember those days. Carter may have been incompetent, but he was not vicious and retarded like the current moron in the White House.
    I’m so done with “global warming”. That false narrative didn’t stick, so now it’s “climate change” as if that never happened naturally.
    There is no evidence that the planet can run out of oil, nor that more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is bad!
    I found a terrific source for information about CO2: https://co2coalition.org/
    Our world is at a historic low level of CO2 in the atmosphere, barely enough to sustain plant life.
    It is NOT poison. And whatabout that geoengineering? Nobody can tell me that’s not real. I’m old enough to remember when jet contrails generally dissipated, not like the ones today that plume and create cloud cover. THAT causes climate change, and who knows what else (depopulation).

  5. For those not old enough to have experienced the Carter years, it was the first time since WW2 that gas rationing was implemented. License plate numbers ending in a odd number could buy gas one day and even numbered plates another day. Recreational activities requiring gas vehicle like snowmobiles were regulated. The interstate highway speed limit was reduced to 55 miles per hour, home mortgages sky rocketed and inflation took it’s toll on everyone. The snowmobile industry suffered as did automobile sales and then we had the Iran hostage crises. All of you young people who think that democrats are going to save you or even help you need to read some history. People like me experienced it. Ronald Reagan was elected after 4 years of the Carter disaster and the country was returned to sanity and propriety. His famous quote is true today. ” The most terrifying 9 words you will ever hear are these, I’m from the government and I’m here to help”. Words of wisdom!

    • Now compare what’s going on today with the Carter years. Those of us who lived them as young people starting out couldn’t imagine how it could be worse. And here we are, another democrat president destroying the country with one executive order after another and all unconstitutional. Enjoy your misery and thank a dem/prog for voting in the insanity.

  6. Don’t forget what Obama said of Joe Biden…”Never underestimate the ability of Joe to f**k things up”.

    At least Carter acted as a president and decision maker. Biden is a sad puppet….with obvious dementia… merely a mouthpiece to do what he is told to say & do (and, he has a very hard time remembering his “lines”)….by people behind the “curtain”….deep State power and Woke agenda’s..

  7. Thanks John for all the supporting research and history to come up with your “worse than Jimmy Carter” conclusion. Now Carter can pass away in peace knowing that he is only the third-worse president…after Biden and Obama…and Biden still has almost 2 years left to bolster the argument.

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