In a planned visit to Pueblo next week, President Joe Biden will champion economic policies that harm the community. He should stand there, with a straight face, and tell the locals how soaring utility bills are good for them.

The White House website explains the president will “highlight how Bidenomics is driving record investments in Congresswoman Lauren Boebert’s district.”

“Earlier this year, CS Wind broke ground on an over $200 million expansion to their Pueblo facility and directly attributed their investment to the Inflation Reduction Act and the President’s Bidenomics agenda,” the White House explained in an October press release about the visit, which was postponed in October because Hamas attacked Israel.

CS Wind is something to celebrate, given the company’s plans to establish 850 new jobs in Colorado by 2026. We have no doubt the president’s “inflation reduction” spending bill helps the company.

It will be great for those who get the new jobs. Their wages will circulate throughout the community. While harnessing wind is no energy panacea, it is a great way to further diversify humanity’s energy assets.

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Despite the upsides of CS Wind, Biden’s energy policies are devastating Pueblo and other low-income communities throughout the United States. If we credit Biden’s energy policies for 100% of the anticipated 850 jobs at CS Wind – and assume they all go to Pueblo residents – this expansion directly benefits 0.7% of Pueblo’s 112,868 residents. Meanwhile, the subsidized transition from fossil fuels jeopardizes hundreds of thousands of Colorado’s mining, drilling, transportation and administrative jobs throughout the state.

Aside from those employed by CS Wind, the president’s climate agenda serves a luxury concern of wealthy activists in Aspen, Vail, Boulder and other high-income enclaves throughout the country. In Pueblo – where the median household income barely exceeds half the state average – tens of thousands of residents hope to get through another winter without choosing between energy and food.

They suffer off the radar of environmental activists, while the state and federal governments impose virtue-signaling energy mandates that are futile in reducing global emissions and mitigating climate change.

The political war on coal, oil and natural gas has driven electric rates so high thousands of Pueblo residents cannot afford them. Consumers buy less of everything because of high electric and gas bills. Businesses struggle, laying off employees or closing dwon. Community leaders describe a downward economic spiral directly related to high utility rates.

Sister Nancy Crafton, a Catholic nun, worries about climate change as a social justice concern. Yet, she battles in trenches a more tangible and immediate problem: the human toll of the costly race to renewables. She runs the non-profit El Centro del Los Pobres (The Center for the Poor) just outside of Pueblo. With private donations, she helps hundreds of households facing electricity shut-offs as rates go up.

Sister Crafton can never keep up, telling of elderly residents, young families and disabled people losing homes and freezers full of food to soaring utility costs.

Denver attorney Frances Koncilja grew up in Pueblo and served on the Colorado Public Utilities Commission as Black Hills Energy, which serves Pueblo, replaced energy assets to join the war on conventional fuels. A Democrat, Koncilja supports renewables but also knows the transition forces relentless rate hikes that enrich Black Hills and other large utility companies.

“The way utilities make money is to build new infrastructure and build it into the rate base,” Koncilja said. “They needed to build gas generation and close down coal.”

That came at a cost, just as natural gas came under the same condemnation as crude.

“Pueblo is a poor community and can’t pay for it,” Kincilja told a member of The Gazette’s editorial board. “When prospective employers learn about Pueblo’s rates, they turn away and the community doesn’t get the jobs. It becomes a vicious cycle of new infrastructure, higher rates, more poverty, and no economic growth.”

President Biden may ignore this inconvenient truth while telling Puebloans how good they have it.

Colorado Springs Gazette Editorial Board