Larry Kudlow: John Kerry's policies have brought the economy to below zero

At the end of our economic segment last night, I asked former Assistant Treasury Secretary Michael Faulkender if there's one thing he could suggest to keep us out of recession. Please take a listen:  

FAULKENDER: I think the most important thing we can do, Larry, is unleash American energy. At the end of the day, low-cost access to energy has broad impact across the economy and so the most that we can do to help economic ingenuity here in the United States is to bring down energy prices and to end the war on American energy. 

LARRY: That is a great answer. 

And it was a great answer, concise, on-target superb answer by a distinguished economist and though the clock ran out on the segment, I wanted to remind everyone what former energy Secretary Rick Perry told me on the radio last Saturday. He said, "free market capitalism and abundant fossil fuel reserves were the greatest contributor to American success and prosperity" and he added 'that most of the rest of the world would agree,’ but not the Bidens. 

The Biden administration on a daily basis has waged war with the American oil and gas industry, which is the best in the world, employs over 11 million people and produces the cleanest fossil fuels anywhere. The Biden war on fossils has been a disaster.  It has contributed to high inflation, killed family budgets, sunk real worker wages and led to recession. It has damaged our economic security at home and our national security abroad —— an unmitigated disaster.  

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Now, Biden climate czar John Kerry, speaking in Egypt today, continued to pound fossil fuels, continued to argue "the math and the science unequivocally make clear we just can’t hit net-zero unless we ‘dramatically' lower investments in fossil fuels." With all respect to Mr. Kerry, I would suggest that his policies have brought the economy to net-zero, indeed below zero. Of course, with record high inflation and I would add that the math and science unequivocally make no such assertion.  

You know, people of good will and common sense have argued for decades in the event of climate change, all power sources should be working side-by-side: Fossils, renewables, hydro, nuclear. You can't just take out 75% of our power without an alternative game plan... which the Bidens have never provided. After the Green New Deal passed this August, fraudulently called the "Inflation Reduction Act," Climate expert Bjorn Lomborg, using the U.N. Climate model suggested that $400 billion of more climate spending might reduce the temperature by 28-thousandths of one degree Fahrenheit.  Mr. Lomborg and others have repeatedly suggested that after spending $5 trillion globally in recent decades the global climate needle has barely moved and I will add, for my part that many in this crowd of climate existentialists don't know the difference between changes in the temperature, or today's weather and long-run climate trends over 50 to 100 years. Just sayin'! They don’t know the difference. 

Now, back to the sensible positions of Assistant Secretary Faulkender and former Energy Secretary Perry. I don't think anybody out there understands how important fossil fuels and resources are to our everyday economy. We all talk about how shutting down the spigots have jacked up inflation and pushed us into recession, but we need to talk about how essential fossil resources are to everyday products in our lives.  

Know what requires fossil fuels: phones, clothes, toothpaste, asphalt, trash bags, laptops... hang on, I'm just getting warmed up here. Don't forget diapers, pacifiers and toys used by parents and babies around the world that are all made with oil or natural gas or both, but hang on a second! In hospital operating rooms that keep us healthy, fossils are used by life-saving products and equipment like pacemakers, MRI machines, IV bags, tubes, surgical instruments, monitors, stethoscopes.  Also, fossils are critical to prosthetics, hearing aids, glasses, contact lenses. But hang on! Chemicals derive from petroleum also help make soaps, antiseptics, aspirin, life-saving pharmaceuticals used by emergency care doctors and physicians.  

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I know I have to end this list somewhere, but there's about 150 more products based on fossils, published by the Energy Department. I can't read 'em all, but going down the list, I see tennis rackets, tents, tires, toothbrushes, backpacks, ball-point pens, beach umbrellas, dog collars, fertilizers, golf bags, golf balls, guitar strings, hair curlers, insect repellent.  

Alright, alright, enough already… I get it. Basically, everything in everyday life uses fossil fuel related resources. You get my point, but here's the problem: John Kerry doesn't get my point. Joe Biden doesn't get my point and finally to my friend Rick Perry, who does get my point and touted free market capitalism along with fossil resources, it is precisely our free enterprise system that will innovate, invent and create the new technologies that will solve whatever climate problems we have over the next 100 years — not the government central-planners, but free people, using their God-given talents. Isn't that really the single most important key point? That's my riff, thank you.   

This article is adapted from Larry Kudlow's opening commentary on the October 25, 2022, edition of "Kudlow."