There sure is plenty of bad news lately. The US government recently reported a 0.9% drop in 2nd quarter GDP. (GDP, or gross domestic product, is a measure of our nation’s total economic activity.) GDP had already fallen by 1.6% during the first quarter of the year. For those familiar with the world of economics, two straight quarters of declining economic activity is the technical definition of a recession. In times past, this simple and clear definition has been completely uncontroversial. Yet this most recent announcement set off a bizarre series of events whereby multiple members of the Biden administration furiously attempted to subvert reality. Brian Deese, Joe Biden’s director of the National Economic Council, frantically denied that 2 consecutive quarters of GDP decline constitute a recession. Yet Deese has in the past been on the record conspicuously agreeing with this definition. Biden’s Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen eagerly joined in this sudden volte-face. Deception through the Orwellian transformation of words has rapidly become the hallmark of the modern Democratic Party.
Thus, under Joe Biden’s leadership, Americans are now facing a toxic brew of surging crime, border chaos, an overdose epidemic, brutally high inflation, and yes, recession. Astonishingly, just as the news of recession was hitting the presses, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Shumer and West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin unveiled a massive tax and spending proposal called the “Inflation Reduction Act.” The dystopian title of this bill confirms that the Democratic Party is incapable of shame. This legislation will have no restraining effect on inflation. Rather, the bill is certain to drive inflation higher by slamming businesses – particularly manufacturers – with $327 billion of new taxes, thereby discouraging businesses from supplying the goods needed to reduce inflation.
Moreover, one must keep firmly in mind that corporate taxes ultimately result in lower wages for workers and higher prices for customers. On the campaign trail, Joe Biden repeatedly insisted that he would never raise taxes on those Americans earning less than $400,000 per year. Yet the Joint Committee on Taxation found that the burden of the Shumer-Manchin taxes would fall heavily upon workers well below this threshold. Sadly, another example of how Joe Biden lies with impunity.
There is much more to criticize in this bill. The spending side of the bill includes an enormous $369 billion allocation for so-called “green energy.” Much of this money would be devoted to tax credits for electric vehicles, windmills, and solar panels. But instead of slogging through the horrendous details, I would instead like to take a step back and look at the big picture. It seems that this would be a good time to review our knowledge of fossil fuels – that is, oil, natural gas, and coal.
One of the most breathtaking aspects of our culture is how few people understand how the modern world works. The large majority of young people and many adults have been led to believe that the use of fossil fuels is a severe or even an existential threat to the future of humanity. This pervasive belief has even led to a condition known as eco-anxiety, an affliction whereby people – often young children – experience crippling fear of future environmental disasters along with feelings of hopelessness and helplessness. Kids have been told that unless we substantially reduce or even end our use of fossil fuels, humanity is doomed to destruction.
This state of affairs is nothing less than a colossal tragedy. The bright truth is that nothing has done more to benefit the welfare of humanity than fossil fuels. Let’s begin with a little history lesson. For thousands of years, human beings lived in a state of abject poverty. Each and every day, people worked tirelessly just to scratch out a meager existence. From sunup to sundown, they hunted or farmed in hopes of gaining enough food to feed themselves and their families. If storms, floods or drought ruined their crops, they starved. Their shelters were tiny, flimsy, and filthy. They labored ceaselessly to collect enough wood or dung to fuel the small fires whereby they cooked their food and warmed their shelters. Their water supply was often contaminated by human or animal waste. Century after century, humanity was constantly afflicted by hunger and thirst, brutal labor and fatigue, bitter cold and searing heat, disease and death. As in the memorable words of English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), life was “poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
Check out the red line on the chart below, showing worldwide human life expectancy from 1770 until the present. In 1770, the average person only lived until about the age of 29! In fact, if we extended this graph back to the time of Christ, we would discover that over the course of those two millennia, human life expectancy hovered just below 30 years of age. Overall life expectancy was limited by very high rates of infant mortality; historically, roughly one quarter of infants survived their first year of life. Another quarter perished before the age of 15. However, plenty of those who reached adulthood had their lives cut short as well. Women often died in childbirth. People of all kinds met miserable ends because of horrid diseases such as malaria, bubonic plague, or tuberculosis.
Yet in the middle of the 19th century, something truly remarkable occurred: humans began to live longer. In 1900, the average person only lived 32 years. In the following century, life expectancy absolutely soared. By 2000, that figure had more than doubled to 66.3 years! In 2019, worldwide life expectancy reached an amazing 72.6 years.
So, what in the world happened? In order to answer that question, let’s turn our attention to the blue line which represents the life expectancy just in the United Kingdom. (The United Kingdom consists of England along with Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales.) The chart clearly shows that the people of the UK have over the past two hundred years lived much longer than the rest of the world. It wasn’t always that way. Prior to 1750, the English lived only slightly longer. Yet in the early 1800s, life expectancy in the UK began to surge ahead. By 1900, life expectancy in the UK reached 45.6 years (about 14 years longer than the worldwide figure) and by 2000 people in the UK could expect to live 77.8 years (11.5 years longer than the world’s average).
Clearly, whatever it was that helped human beings live longer began in the United Kingdom and then spread from there to the rest of the world. By now, many readers will have guessed the answer to our puzzle: The Industrial Revolution! Scholars generally acknowledge that the Industrial Revolution began in the England in 1760. This was a wonderful time when human beings transitioned from manual labor to machine labor. And these machines were powered by fossil fuels, primarily coal. The development of such machinery allowed the English to be far more productive than their ancestors could ever dream. Crop yields soared thanks to mechanized farming. For example, a farmer toiling by hand can harvest a maximum of 10 bushels of wheat per day; a modern combine can reap and thresh 10,000 bushels per day! Powered by fossil fuels, English factories began to churn out an astounding array of products. Power looms enabled textile makers to flood the markets with inexpensive, high-quality clothing. People could afford to build much sturdier homes to protect them from the elements.
The Industrial Revolution – powered by fossil fuels – literally transformed human life on earth. Now it is quite true that these changes did not come without problems. The burning of coal caused significant air pollution; people flocked to cities to find jobs in factories. For a time, this led to overcrowding, poor sanitation, and crime. Yet the overall effect on human welfare was overwhelmingly positive. People were able to live much longer and better lives than ever before in human history. The blessings of the Industrial Revolution quickly spread throughout the English-speaking world and into Europe as well. Check out the graph below, which demonstrates the remarkable increase in wealth enjoyed by people living in these nations.
We should all rejoice that in more recent times, the benefits of fossil fuels have become even more widespread. Consider the most populous nations on earth, China and India. China has a population just under 1.40 billion people while India has 1.34 billion. These people really weren’t able to experience the miracle of the Industrial Revolution until about 50 years ago. But as the chart below indicates, the widespread use of machine labor and fossil fuels has now allowed both China and India to dramatically raise their standard of living; life expectancy in these countries is surging as well.
Sadly, Joe Biden, the Democratic Party, and their media allies have quite successfully convinced many Americans that fossil fuels are a threat to the future of humanity. Nothing could be further from the truth. The amazing blessings of the energy derived from fossil fuels have greatly benefitted human beings and will continue to do so for many years to come. In fact, the biggest threat to humanity is not global warming due to carbon emissions, but the worldwide movement to restrict or eliminate the use of fossil fuels. As we noted above, the Democrats have proposed an immense expenditure of nearly $370 billion largely for electric vehicles, solar panels, and windmills. Solar and wind power are expensive and unreliable; there is absolutely no possibility that they can replace the cheap and reliable energy coming from fossil fuels. If Joe Biden and Joe Manchin truly understood what will bring about the flourishing of human beings, they would be proposing a much different number for green energy spending: zero.
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