When we look outside the few wealthy countries in the world, we see that at least 80 percent of humanity, or more than six billion people, are living on less than $10 a day. With billions living with little to no access to electricity, politicians are pursuing the most expensive ways to generate intermittent electricity. Energy poverty is among the most crippling but least talked about crises of the 21^st century. We should not take energy for granted. The burden of expensive electricity and fuels weighs heaviest on those who can least afford it, leading them to “energy poverty.”

Image: Creative Commons under Unsplash

Here is a sampling of a few poorer and oil-exporting countries that have lower prices of gasoline per gallon:

• Malaysia $1.76 per gallon
• Nigeria 1.58
• Angola 1.42
• Kuwait 1.30
• Algeria 1.19
• Syria 1.08
• Iran 0.20
• Libya 0.11
• Venezuela 0.08

Prior to the Biden presidency, we had more crude oil exports than imports for the first time since Harry Truman was president 70 years ago,

Through the fracking boom in the years before Biden, the U.S. attained crude oil independence status, meaning we were no longer held hostage to unstable petro-powers and the vagaries of foreign energy supplies. Under President Trump, America had an aggressive pro-domestic-energy policy, which allowed America to become not only energy independent, which politicians have talked about for decades but energy dominant.

Rather than expand oil exploration in America to restore America’s oil independence, President Biden is focused on ridding America of fossil fuels and is off to visit OPEC nations seeking more oil exports to America. The USA was an oil exporter before Biden took office, but under Biden’s direction, this wealthy country now IMPORTS crude oil from unfriendly foreign countries to meet the demands of the American economy.

California, a state virtually independent of imported crude oil from foreign countries in 1995, today is the only state in contiguous America that imports oil. This fifth largest economy in the world now imports more than 60 percent of its energy needs. 

With today’s price of crude oil well above $100 per barrel, the imported crude oil costs California more than $150 million dollars a day. Yes, every day, being paid to oil-rich foreign countries and depriving Californians of jobs and business opportunities.

Biden appears to be self-motivated to clone the direction that California has taken over the last few decades. Rather than significantly increasing oil production in America, Biden is following California Governor Newsom’s efforts toward further reductions in in-state oil production. This policy increases the already crippling dependency on oil-rich foreign sources, which also have significantly fewer environmental protections than California. Newsom promotes more costs for Californians and more generated emissions for the world.

The poorer countries that cannot subsidize themselves out of a paper bag, and the countries that produce and export oil, have lower costs for gasoline and may also be less incentivized to seek EV’s for their cost-effective transportation needs.

Shockingly, just to reduce emissions to supposedly stop climate change, President Biden is following the lead of Germany, the UK, Australia, and California which now have among the highest costs for electricity and gasoline in addition to the inflation being borne by all.

This article was adapted with permission from a piece originally published at CFact.org