Before we look at the Biden-Harris administration’s actions on oil and gas, let’s review how prices are set in a free market economy. When supply goes down and demand stays the same, then prices rise, because more people want to buy a resource that has become more scare, so sellers can raise the price. Now, has the Biden-Harris administration taken action to reduce the supply of oil and gas?

Well, consider what he did right after taking office in January 2021.

CNBC explains:

President Joe Biden on Wednesday signed a series of executive orders that prioritize climate change across all levels of government and put the U.S. on track to curb planet-warming carbon emissions.

Biden’s orders direct the secretary of the Interior Department to halt new oil and natural gas leases on public lands and waters, and begin a thorough review of existing permits for fossil fuel development.

[…]On his first day in office last week, Biden had the United States re-enter the Paris accord. He also cancelled the permit for the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.

The Keystone XL pipeline would have allowed us to purchase oil and gas from Canada, which is much better than buying it from Russia, the Middle East, etc. Biden loves Russia. One might even say that he colludes with Russia to help them invade Ukraine – by helping them build their military. Biden gave approval for Russia to construct the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany, so that they could sell all their oil and gas to European countries.

That’s what Democrat voters voted for in 2020: a pipeline for Russia, so they could sell oil and gas and invade Ukraine.

European countries are desperate for oil and gas, after having exchanged their conventional energy sources for green energy sources. Green energy sources produce low amounts of energy, and are inconsistent, while costing more than conventional energy sources. Since the green plan didn’t work out, the Europeans have to enrich Russia now. They make a show of being made at Russia, but they (like Biden) aren’t willing to develop their own energy.

How did American energy producers respond to having their lease applications denied, and their existing leases and pipelines canceled?

Biden’s moratorium on oil and gas leases won’t end fossil fuel extraction since industry leaders currently hold undeveloped leases. Drilling on public lands generates billions of dollars in revenue but comprises roughly a quarter of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Oil and gas producers have strongly opposed Biden’s move and are expected to challenge the order in court.

“Penalizing the oil and gas industry kills good-paying American jobs, hurts our already struggling economy, makes our country more reliant on foreign energy sources, and impacts those who rely on affordable and reliable energy,” Anne Bradbury, president of the American Exploration and Production Council, said in a statement.

Environmental groups, who have long pushed for the changes sought by Biden, praised the orders.

Has Biden learned his lesson from the huge spike in gas prices? Is he concerned about the widespread inflation that is caused by the spike in energy prices?

Nope!

The Federalist notes:

CBS News revealed the Biden administration canceled more oil and gas leases across the country this week as soaring gas prices reached new heights Wednesday.

The Department of Interior canceled plans to drill in more than 1 million acres in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, arguing “lack of industry interest,” on top of canceling a pair of leases in the Gulf of Mexico over “conflicting court rulings.”

[…]The administration’s relentless animosity towards fossil fuels, showcased in its repeated cancelation of oil and gas projects, has chilled investment in the capital- and labor-intensive industry. This keeps production down despite rising demand at home and turmoil in markets abroad.

[…]In Alaska, upon inauguration Biden canceled leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which is forecast to hold between 4 to 12 billion barrels of recoverable oil. He closed another 7 million acres from the state’s National Petroleum Reserve off from development last month.

What happens when investors see that the Biden administration is taxing, regulating and blocking oil and gas development? They say “we would do better investing our money elsewhere”. Oil and gas producers get the message very quickly, and they stop creating new energy sources. That’s how supply dries up. And when supply is reduced, prices go up.

Biden tried to fix the rising prices by getting Russia and the Middle East to drill more, and by stealing the strategic oil reserve, which is primarily designed for use during a crisis. But Biden considers his falling poll numbers a crisis. And begging our enemies to produce the oil that we should be producing seems right to him.

The president has turned to the nation’s emergency petroleum reserves for desperate political capital ahead of the November midterms… With no plans announced to restock the emergency supplies, Biden ordered the self-proclaimed “unprecedented” release of 1 million barrels of oil a day onto the market for the next six months beginning Sunday.

The new Democrat strategy is actually the old Democrat strategy used by Democrat President Jimmy Carter in the 1970s: to impose price controls on oil and gas:

That led to massive gas lines in the 1970s, because suppliers shut down when they realized they couldn’t make enough money to stay in business. There was no money to be made in producing energy, so energy companies just slowed down or stopped producing. Would you go to work if the government took 80% of what you earned?

People in America would line up around the block for gas, and they could only get a certain limited amount. Gas was only sold during certain hours of the day.

I’m sure that the young people won’t have heard about the results of setting price controls, but it’s in the first few chapters of Thomas Sowell’s “Basic Economics”. But if their teachers have no ability in economics, then how would the student learn it? They can’t.

I was talking about substance dualism with Rose, and showing her new academic books (one, two) about it. So, I decided to blog something related to that. Today’s post is about Jeffrey Schwartz – a research psychiatrist at UCLA. His research shows that mental effort can change your brain chemistry. Would you like a scientific argument for non-physical minds? Read on, and I’ll show you one.

First, let’s see something completely secular, from UCLA Health, just to explain who Jeffrey is, and what he does:

Thanks to neuroplasticity — the brain’s ability to create and reorganize neural connections — people can find relief from anxiety, depression, substance abuse, obsessive-compulsive disorder and everyday mental health challenges, says Jeffrey Schwartz, MD, a research psychiatrist with the UCLA Department of Psychiatry.

Dr. Schwartz outlined his four-step method for dealing with mental health challenges at the Emerging Themes in Behavioral Health conference, April 28, at the UCLA Luskin Conference Center(Link is external).

The four steps combine mindfulness with cognitive behavioral therapy, which results in what he calls “self-directed neuroplasticity.”

Why is this argument for substance dualism? Well, his research shows that when humans exert “mental effort” in certain structured ways, they can actually change their brains. This contradicts the materialist / physicalist view which is that your experience of consciousness is an illusion that is entirely controlled by deterministic chemical processes in your brain.

Here’s a video about his research:

And here’s a summary of the research, published in First Things, and authored by William Dembski.

Excerpt:

Schwartz provides a nonmaterialist interpretation of neuroscience and argues that this interpretation is more compelling than the standard materialist interpretation. He arrived at this position as a psychiatrist specializing in the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

[…]From brain scans, Schwartz found that certain regions in the brain of OCD patients (the caudate nucleus in particular) exhibited abnormal patterns of activity. By itself this finding is consistent with a materialist view of mind (if, as materialism requires, the brain enables the mind, then abnormal patterns of brain activity are likely to be correlated with dysfunctional mental states). Nonetheless, having found abnormal patterns of brain activity, Schwartz then had OCD patients engage in intensive mental effort through what he called relabeling, reattributing, refocusing, and revaluing (the 4 Rs).

[…]Schwartz documents not only that patients who undertook this therapy experienced considerable relief from OCD symptoms, but also that their brain scans indicated a lasting realignment of brain-activity patterns. Thus, without any intervention directly affecting their brains, OCD patients were able to reorganize their brains by intentionally modifying their thoughts and behaviors. The important point for Schwartz here is not simply that modified thoughts and behaviors permanently altered patterns of brain activity, but that such modifications resulted from, as he calls it, “mindful attention”-conscious and purposive thoughts or actions in which the agent adopts the stance of a detached observer.

So mind-brain interaction is not a one-way street. Everyone knows that you can alter your consciousness, beliefs, moods, sensations, etc. by changing your brain, e.g. – with drugs. But it turns out that you can also will to focus your thoughts on certain things in order to change your brain chemistry. So the causation is not just bottom-up, but also top-down.

Mindfulness therapies – which are documented in the research papers published by Schwartz (like this one and this one and this one)- assume the existence of free will. Naturalists don’t like this research because naturalists don’t believe in free will. So what do you find more trustworthy? The evidence? Or the philosophy? Me, I trust the evidence more than the philosophy.

I’m monitoring laws, policies and trials of interest to Christians in outside the USA, so that I can get an idea of what will happen here, if the secular leftists win the elections in November. One country that is particularly troubling on several fronts is the UK. They have problems from their weak immigration policies, their green energy policies, their weak crime policies, and their censorship of speech.

Here’s the latest from Christian Concern, about one of the major gay activists in the UK.

It says:

A patron of Educate and Celebrate, the now defunct government-funded gender identity group allowed into thousands of schools across the UK, has this week been charged with multiple accounts of sex abuse against children.

Stephen Ireland, who is also the founder of gay pride in Surrey, is facing more than 30 charges, including rape of a child under 13, sexual assault, six counts of conspiracy to sexually assault a child, conspiracy to kidnap a child, voyeurism, making indecent photographs of children, arranging the commission of a child sex offence, and possession of an extreme pornographic image.

What’s interesting about this is how differently gay activists are treated compared to Christian teachers and chaplains. Christianity is viewed as the source of all intolerance and bigotry. Far from being seen as moral people, Christians are viewed as predators, because of the official UK religions of “don’t judge” and “follow your heart”. Meanwhile, actual predators are given complete access to children.

Look:

The development raises alarm over how Educate and Celebrate have, for example, been given access to nursery age children across the country, while a Christian chaplain, Rev. Dr Bernard Randall, has been reported to counter-terrorism, sacked and blacklisted as a safeguarding risk to children by the Church of England (CofE), after raising concern about the group.

In 2019, Rev. Dr Bernard Randall… gave a sermon on the Church of England’s (CofE) teaching on marriage and human sexuality in a CofE chapel in a school with a CofE ethos.

Dr Randall gave the sermon, which encouraged debate and critical thinking, after Educate and Celebrate had been allowed into Trent College in Derbyshire, to promote queer theory into the morale fabric of the school.

At a staff training day, the group’s leader, Elly Barnes, got staff to stand up and chant ‘smash heteronormativity.’

Dr Randall’s career has been torn apart since he gave the sermon, despite having been vindicated by a string of secular agencies. Yet still the CofE refuse to give him his permission to officiate licence back.

In contrast, Educate and Celebrate have been plagued by scandal culminating with the group quietly folding in January following a low-key announcement by the Charity Commission.

If you look at a few of the photos of Kamala Harris with LGBT activists and drag queens, then you will understand that for her, her LGBT allies are good people – moral people. But Christians on the other hand – we are the devils.

She used the power of law enforcement to go after Christian pro-lifers when they offended abortion providers who were accused of selling baby body parts for profit. So, I expect that Christians would get the same treatment as Dr. Randall, while gay activists would enjoy the same “soft on crime” treatment that Muslim sex-traffickers in the UK get from their secular leftists.

Remember, as I blogged about before, California is a sanctuary for people who want to trans kids. I blogged about how California rips the kids away from their fathers, and force the dissenting fathers to pay the medical bills, while denying them access to their kids. Is that what you want to live under? I sure don’t. And it’s probably causing a lot of good men to think twice about getting married and having children, since the secular leftists seem to be very enthusiastic about handing over the children of good men to child abusers and child mutilators. If you think that good men aren’t counting the cost of paying their taxes to secular leftists and being ruled by them, then you had better think again. We are watching.