Gas prices are the newest difficulty for Biden's administration,' as the midterm elections approach.

 A green energy revolution is being pushed by the left. The right is yelling "Drill, baby, drill" as a battle cry. And voters in the United States are fed up with political justifications.

Rising gas costs have given Joe Biden a new worry this election season. Republicans charge him of promoting a "radical anti-US energy agenda." Democrats blamed greedy oil firms and Russian President Vladimir Putin's aggression against Ukraine.

While others believe that adversity brings opportunity, consumers are feeling the pinch in the latest thorny issue for a US president who, after 14 months in office, appears to be unable to catch a break.

"Biden has a cursed presidency," said Larry Jacobs, head of the University of Minnesota's Center for the Study of Politics and Governance. "He's been nailed by the continuation of Covid, out-of-control inflation, a crazed Russian leader, and now increasing energy prices that are striking voters in the wallet." They want to be able to fill up their cars with gas without spending a hundred dollars."

Prices at the pump, which averaged $4.43 per gallon last weekend, were climbing even before Russia invaded Ukraine, as demand rebounded from the coronavirus lockdowns. Biden attempted to recast the embargo on US imports of Russian oil as "Putin's price rise" when he announced it.

Republicans, on the other hand, saw him as a political whipping boy. They claim that Biden ran on a promise to "wage war" on domestic energy production, that he signed an executive order eliminating fossil fuel subsidies, and that he postponed or canceled oil and gas leases on federal lands.

"Nobody believes Democrats' attempts to blame 14 months of failed policy on three weeks of European crisis," Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, tweeted. Long before late last month, inflation and petrol prices had skyrocketed, harming families. Stop attempting to hide your problems and start fixing them," says the White House.

Republicans have also chastised the White House for allegedly considering oil supply deals with dictatorial governments, undercutting Biden's moral credibility at a key juncture in the world. "Now Biden is crawling around the globe on his knees begging and screaming for compassion from Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Venezuela," former President Donald Trump said at a rally in South Carolina.

What is their solution? Increase local oil and gas output dramatically to reduce reliance on foreign nations. Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, who introduced legislation to that goal, said: "To be powerful and free as a nation, we must be energy independent." My bill will undo Joe Biden's tragic energy capitulation, which has permitted Russian energy domination, and instead unleash full-throttle American production."

Critics, however, claim that while "energy independence" looks to be a catchy campaign slogan, it is founded on a flawed premise. Domestic producers do not set the price of oil; it is set on the global market. According to the Energy Information Administration, the United States exported more petroleum than it imported in 2021, while also boosting overall crude oil production.

"We are energy independent by the criteria that people use," said Nikos Tsafos, an energy and geopolitics expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. We are a net energy exporter, and it does nothing to safeguard us, which should come as no surprise to anyone who has studied energy markets."

There is another possible perpetrator. Consumer gas prices normally move in lockstep with oil prices, but there was little relief at the pump this week as oil prices plummeted below $100 a barrel as China's Covid-19 outbreak threatened demand. Democrats accuse big oil companies of profiteering, despite the fact that they already make billions of dollars.

"Oil prices are down, so should gas costs," Biden stated in a tweet. When oil was $96 a barrel, a gallon of gas cost $3.62. It's now $4.31. "Oil and gas firms should not increase their profits by exploiting hardworking Americans."

The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, and Frank Pallone, the chair of the House of Representatives' energy and commerce committee, have asked for oil company CEOs to testify before Congress on April 6th. "The perplexing incongruity between lowering oil costs and rising gas prices smacks of price gouging," Schumer remarked on the Senate floor.

Ed Markey, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, said in an interview with the Guardian that oil firms currently have all the acreage they need to heed Republicans' call to "drill, baby, drill" - but won't because it goes against their economic model.

"Chevron, Exxon, BP, Shell – they made a combined $75 billion in net profits last year, and despite their crocodile tears about the crisis right now, they've already announced that they're going to return $38 billion to their shareholders rather than taking the $38 billion and drilling on the 12,000 oil and gas leases they have on federal land in the United States," Markey said.

"The reason they won't do it is because they are hypocrites and liars." They don't want to drill because higher oil production would cut consumer prices. As a result, it's all a giant deception."

Markey, who helped draft the Green New Deal plan to wean the United States off fossil fuels at home and abroad, applauded Biden's decision to draw into the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which holds 600 million barrels. "In the long run, we need a technological revolution," he concluded. If we go through with it, we'll be looking back in time at all of these firms and countries.

"It's time to 'plug in, baby, plug in.'" We need wind, solar, battery storage technology, all-electric vehicles, and all other innovation technologies that cut greenhouse gas emissions while simultaneously reducing our, Europe's, Japan's, and all of our allies' reliance on oil and gas."

Is Biden still aware of this, despite juggling so many crises?

"I was part of a discussion with the president last Wednesday night, and he made a commitment once again to his endeavor to achieve that energy technological revolution in our country," Markey responded.

Biden is also facing grassroots pressure. More than 200 environmental and indigenous groups signed a letter urging him to use the Defense Production Act, which is typically used by presidents during times of war to compel companies to manufacture weapons, to compel companies to produce solar panels, wind turbines, and other clean energy sources.

"The playbook of fossil fuel executives is clearer now than ever," John Paul Mejia, national spokesperson for the Sunrise Organization, a young movement to combat climate change, stated. They've taken advantage of the war crisis to raise prices at the expense of working people, and the lesson here is that a fossil-fuel-dependent economy is extremely hazardous and anti-democratic.

"We need Biden to use the Defense Production Act to take bold action on the crisis's urgency, extent, and scale, as well as the transition to clean, renewable, and dependable energy."

Biden has made no indication of such a move, instead relying on Congress to act. However, his hallmark Build Back Better proposal, which would have invested $550 billion in clean energy and climate change, appears to be stalling.

One of the most significant roadblocks is West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, who recently stated at an energy conference that he is "extremely hesitant" to see the rise of electric automobiles. Manchin has taken more money in campaign donations from fossil fuel companies than any other senator, making him a pivotal vote in the equally divided Senate.

"One of the things to consider that's special to the United States right now is that the crook CEOs in the fossil fuel sector have a significant influence over American politics in the sense that they've bought out tremendously powerful politicians like Joe Manchin," Mejia continued.

"What we're seeing right now, especially ahead of elections, is so-called conservative Democrats suddenly turning and appearing to be working-class champions as they morph into caring about how working people are feeling at the gas pump right now." But what they're really doing is fulfilling their oaths to their major oil benefactors."

According to polls, Biden's handling of the Ukraine war enjoys broad public support, but with rumors of a new coronavirus outbreak, his list of issues never seems to get any shorter. Regardless of the reasons of inflation, history predicts that people will penalize him at the polls.

The president's legislative agenda for the climate disaster and other issues is poised to collide with midterm elections in which Republicans are expected to capture the House and maybe the Senate. Biden may find himself vetoing laws rather than signing them in the second half of his term.

"If there was ever a time when the need for moving to a 100 percent clean energy economy was more clear than now, I don't know when it would be with a fossil fuel enabled leader attacking another country and throwing the entire fossil fuel global market into chaos," Jamal Raad, co-founder and executive director of the campaign group Evergreen Action, said. This is, in my opinion, a make-or-break situation."