President Biden ends energy independence achieved by President Trump
Gas exceeded $6 a gallon Thursday at Chevron and Mobil stations in Goleta. On Friday, the average price in Santa Barbara County was $5.71 a gallon, according to the American Automobile Association.
I would like to present some facts about energy here, of which most people are likely unaware. They have not been reported by our media, so very few people understand these things. But they are very important things to understand if we are to know the truth.
1) President Donald Trump actually made this country “energy independent” (i.e. net energy exporters) for the first time in 75 years. It simply had not happened previously. When he left office, our production had risen to 17 million barrels a day, and gasoline was $2 per gallon.
I’d been watching these numbers for many years, and I was very impressed (and happy) with President Trump’s success with increasing domestic production, thereby decreasing prices. A welcome fact.
2) President Joe Biden, in his first week in office, did several things that reversed the Trump success. The net result was that our energy production went from 17 millions of barrels per day, down to 11 million barrels a day — a significant decrease.
Buellton resident Stan Bernstein said gas prices doubled during President Joe Biden’s first year in office because of his decision to decrease production.
Of course, everyone was aware that gasoline prices doubled during President Biden’s first year in office, to $4 per gallon. But I don’t think people knew that was a direct result of his executive orders, which decreased production. The fact is that by presidential edict, production was significantly decreased. A simple fact, generally not reported.
3) The fact is that Russian President Vladimir Putin did not invade Ukraine while Mr. Trump was president. I think that he feared Mr. Trump, who was strong and sometimes unpredictable — both good things when dealing with a man like Mr. Putin. He waited for Mr. Trump to leave office, then carried through on his long-held plan to invade Ukraine (when a relatively weak man had been elected president). That’s easy to see as a fact unless we think of Mr. Biden as a strong leader and Mr. Trump as a weak leader. But that would just be the “R” and “D” thing talking, and I’m not referring to politics here. Just facts.
4) The fact is that electric vehicles are powered by coal, oil and natural gas. While that is obvious to many, as that’s what produces the electricity that powers electric vehicles, most people just don’t “get it.” They think that because there is no tailpipe, there is no pollution — as if the massive power plants that produce the electricity that powers the vehicles by using fossil fuels, are pollution-free. They’re not.
EVs may, in fact, be responsible for producing overall more carbon pollution than gas-powered vehicles, when we take into account the massive problems with production and disposal of lithium-Ion batteries.
5) The fact is that this country is strongly divided. The problem is that when the media doesn’t present the basic facts (such as the ones I’ve stated here, which have never been widely reported), then it’s very difficult for people to know the truth.
The fact is that the vast majority of our media leans to the left. I think most people understand that. But if the media were more balanced, I don’t know whether people would be better informed, because of the lack of facts being reported by both “sides.”
6) We see people still walking around with cloth masks on, thinking that they and others are being protected from getting and spreading COVID. The fact is that while N95 masks can work to help control the disease, cloth masks are useless when it comes to a virus. That’s a fact. That fact is also obvious from the fact that the disease has continually spread widely in spite of the widespread wearing of masks.
The same is true of the vaccines, which did likely help to keep down some of the severity of its symptoms among vaccinated people, but they did not stop the spreading of the disease, a fact which we’ve known since last year (when the large number of vaccinated people who got sick were labeled “breakthrough” cases).
These are not opinions, they’re facts. But when we have a truly mad man like Vladimir Putin actually waging a Stalinist war (another basic fact), then I think it becomes necessary for people in our divided country to agree at least on the facts if we expect to ever get along, especially in times like these.
Stan Bernstein
The author lives in Buellton
