What a difference a year makes in witnessing how rising petroleum pump prices and winter heating costs can bring about a chilling political climate change regarding the importance of fossil energy.

We’re seeing evidence of this consequential rude awakening in reversals of the Biden administration’s anti-oil and gas regulatory edicts, desperate White House pleas for hydrocarbon companies to increase production, and Democrat-sponsored federal gas tax suspension proposals.

Meanwhile, as Europe has moved to reclassify natural gas and nuclear as “green energy,” global coal use now heads for a record high with China and India leading the surge.

Petroleum prices this past year have risen a dollar on average to $3.44 per gallon as crude oil prices which have recently passed $90 per barrel amid geopolitical tensions projected to go higher.

These escalating gas and oil expenses have inflationary ripple effects across the broader economy, raising costs for transportation-related industries such as air freight and trucking.

In addition to increasing costs of everything that must be shipped, consumers must spend greater shares of their reduced purchasing power to fill up their cars, and heat and electrify their homes.

According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), half of U.S. households that primarily heat with natural gas will pay 30% more this winter than they did a year ago, and 50% more if this winter is cold.

These hikes, of course, hurt low-income families without financial cushions the most…according to the U.S. Department of Energy, as much as three times larger hardship burdens than for more affluent households.

EIA also estimates that the volume of natural gas in storage is currently 16.5% less than a year ago, and U.S. power plant coal inventories are expected to fall to the lowest figures since at least 1997.

Recall that America had been the world’s leading oil and gas producer before the COVID pandemic, a distinction that now goes to Saudi Arabia as U.S. companies have cut investment outputs amid an increasingly hostile Democrat climate.

On his first day in the Oval Office, President Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline and its potential to transport up to 830,000 barrels of crude per day from Alberta to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Shortly thereafter, Biden issued a moratorium on new oil and gas leases on federal land including Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and in the Gulf of Mexico.

In November, the EPA announced plans to institute new regulations limiting methane emissions from oil and gas production, thereby making the construction of new wells, storage, transportation and the maintenance of existing facilities more expensive.

Speaking to attendees representing 20 of the world’s largest economies at the U.N.’s November Glasgow, Scotland Climate Summit that same month, President Biden had proclaimed: “We only have a brief window before us” to reduce the emissions from burning oil, gas, and coal that pose an “existential threat” to humanity.

Incredulously, all this was also occurring at a time when President Biden was urging OPEC and other of the world’s largest oil producers to increase supplies.

Then, after being ignominiously rebuffed by OPEC and Russia, the Biden administration asked U.S. oil and gas producers in mid-December to raise output on existing leases of federal lands as rapidly as possible.

This urgent request was delivered by Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm at a mid-December meeting of the National Petroleum Council, pleading: “Consumers, as you know, are hurting at the pump. I hope you will hear me say that please, take advantage of the leases you have, hire workers, get your rig count up.”

So much for fretting over fossil fueling that existential threat.

As noted by Wall Street Journal editors, “contradictions of climate politics keep piling up, and the latest is a call from Democratic Senators running for re-election this year to suspend the federal gas tax.”

Recognizing political mid-term peril, Sens. Mark Kelly (Arizona), Maggie Hassan (New Hampshire), Georgia Raphael Warnock (Georgia), Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen (Nevada), and Debbie Stabenow (Michigan) have introduced legislation to wave the 18.4 cents per gallon tax through 2022.

Skyrocketing energy prices and precipitous shortages are forcing harsh realities on European politics as well, prompting the EU Commission to reclassify natural gas and nuclear as potential green energy sources in a “taxonomy” designed to steer government spending and private investment.

Little wonder that this is occurring as coal plant shutdowns across Europe have left populations more dependent on natural gas — including as backup for heavily subsidized intermittent solar and wind. Gas prices have soared 600% following a lag in wind production last summer, and conditions can only become worse as Europe now enters winter with little reserve storage.

British households can expect to see their home electricity and natural-gas bills shoot up by more than half this year.

Germany, which shut down three nuclear plants in December — with three more to be mothballed this year — will become even more dependent on natural gas potentially supplied by the Nord Stream 2 trans-Baltic pipeline which President Trump had sanctioned and Biden has inexplicably waived.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the global gas supply crunch, which has caused record-high natural gas prices worldwide, has also helped reignite a demand for electricity from coal plants to soar by 9% this year.

Following a steady decline in recent years, coal power generation in the U.S. and U.K is expected to rise by 20% in 2022, up from low levels in 2020.

IEA projects that India is on track to grow its coal-fired electricity generation by 12% this year, while China’s use of coal plants is forecast to increase by up to 9% in response to recent several months of power shortages.

We can all be assured that Beijing and Moscow which aren’t bound to the carbon-cutting commitments of the Paris Climate Accord are giddy to witness the Biden administration’s abandonment of abundant, reliable, and economical fossil fuels in favor of wind and solar energy storage systems that depend upon rare earth materials they supply.

So long as Democrats fixate on climate change and plunging political poll numbers, our truly greatest existential threats can focus more attention on waging attacks on Ukraine and Taiwan.

This piece originally appeared at NewsMax.com and has been republished here with permission.