The Biden administration's assault on U.S. energy independence is continuing even as the White House tries to shift the blame of rapidly climbing inflation and energy costs on Russia.  The energy crisis is being used to push the same old lines, limiting your ability to travel, control what you eat, and other socialist claptrap.

Yes, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has aided greatly in the price hikes, but a lot can be done here that is not being done, and the things Biden's people are doing will only make the situation here worse, and I think they know it.

Biden's administration and the leviathan bureaucracy have used a vicious multi-front attack on American natural gas in particular.  It's not enough for them to just cancel major pipeline projects like the oft-mentioned Keystone XL.  It's not enough that they have maneuvered the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) into taking much stronger stances against new pipeline projects.  Our government has also banned delivering Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) by rail.  Our ability to move what we produce from gas wells is being slowly strangled to death.

That is why it's absurd when White House press secretary Jen Psaki says the oil and gas producers are not doing their part to increase production.  It is the "mean girls" approach to domestic energy policy — petty and juvenile.

The same goes for our crude oil industry.  Upstream, the administration encourages the development and expansion of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) metrics, which accelerate divestment from fossil fuel–related projects.  A little down the river, at the planning and drilling stage, you have barriers to leasing and permits (despite what the White House claims), and even farther down, the government wants to skim more royalties from the oil and gas it allows to be produced.

The brain trust in the Democratic Party has even started proposing taxing oil company profits in order to pay for even more stimulus checks for Americans.

Meanwhile, Western governments (ours and abroad) are now pushing for the kind of gasoline rationing that hasn't been seen since President Carter was in office.

The International Energy Agency (IEA), for example, recently released a "10 Point Plan to Cut Oil Use" — a set of measures that are supposed to be followed by every developed country.  The measures are predictably elitist, suggesting that people limit air travel, work from home, have alternating private car use, and take public transportation.  Our government officials, I am sure, will find a way to guarantee that none of those measures impacts their travel plans.

Many points in the plan have the effect of reducing one's ability to travel long distances at all.  It will take longer to get there, and one will need to depend on shoddy, often dangerous, public transportation.

These measures, lest you think they are a temporary oil-saving emergency plan, are meant to be permanent.  As the IEA report states:

Looking further ahead, this report also suggests a path for countries to put oil demand into structural decline in the medium term, building on measures already included in economic recovery packages introduced to deal with the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic. Adopting the immediate and longer-term recommendations would put the countries on track for a decline in oil demand consistent with what is required to reach net zero emissions by 2050.

We are in a tense struggle between people trying to regain pre-pandemic freedom and government agencies trying to wrest more control over We the People.

Already, Biden has declared that food shortages are looming.  Moreover, as inflation ravages Americans' wallets, the mainstream media, ever obedient, have leapt to give suggestions that Americans are perfectly in line with the out-of-touch ideas propagated by the likes of Klaus Schwab.  A Bloomberg writer recommends that you stop eating so much meat and take the bus, for example.

Every single problem, according to our so-called leaders, can be solved very easily if we reduce private property ownership, oil use, freedom of movement, and — bizarrely — meat-eating.

Perhaps these elites should look inward and decide to relax their stranglehold on American industry and liberty.  They always point at us, the citizens, and demand that we make sacrifices so they can continue to restructure our economies and societies to better suit their vision.

To those in government: We will not all live in tiny pod apartments.  We will not give up our freedom of movement.  And we will not eat bugs!

Linnea Lueken (llueken@heartland.org) is research fellow with the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute.

Image: Ralph Kränzlein.