Just in time for election season, climate leftists have discovered the price of gasoline. On cable news, in Congress, and across social media, Democrats are eager to remind drivers what they're paying at the pump. Their outrage stops where their climate agenda begins.
On October 5, the national average for regular gasoline stood near $4.37, according to AAA, after the most expensive September on record. Compare state averages by the governor's party, and Democrats have a problem.
The real existential threat was never at the pump. It's sitting in Tehran. Voters should remember which threat leftists actually treated like one.
Across the 26 Republican-governed states, regular gas averaged about $4.24 a gallon. Across the 24 Democrat-governed states, it averaged $4.53 — nearly 7% more. Diesel showed a similar gap: about $6.15 versus $6.50. Those are unweighted averages of state prices, not the entire explanation for the difference. But state policy adds to the bill.
The cost of climate policy
California, Washington, and Oregon have all placed transportation fuels under climate programs with costs that can reach motorists.
California's cap-and-trade program and Low Carbon Fuel Standard added about 42 cents per gallon in January 2026, according to the state’s Energy Commission. Washington’s Climate Commitment Act requires covered fuel suppliers to buy emissions allowances. Oregon’s Climate Protection Program caps emissions from fossil fuels, including gasoline and diesel.
These policies don’t account for every cent at the pump. Refining constraints, geography, and global crude prices count too. But Democratic officials chose to make fossil fuels more expensive to advance their climate goals.
The early October prices tell the story: California, $6.38 a gallon; Washington, $5.48; Oregon, $5.04. Those Democrat-run states enforce climate mandates on top of ordinary fuel taxes. Their leaders should answer for the costs they have chosen to impose.
We've heard this before
In June 2022, the national average for regular gas reached a record $5.01 a gallon. What answer did Americans hear from Democratic leaders as prices climbed? Buy an electric vehicle.
In November 2021, President Joe Biden said EV owners could save $800 to $1,000 in fuel costs that year. He had recently test-driven an electric Hummer priced above $112,000. In March 2022, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg joined Vice President Kamala Harris to promote electric transportation and the administration's $5 billion charging network. That June, then-Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) told a Senate hearing that she had driven her EV from Michigan to Washington, passing gas stations where the price no longer mattered to her.
For families who couldn't afford a new electric car, the advice offered little relief. The administration presented electrification as its answer to expensive gasoline. Climate policy had its price, and drivers were expected to accept it.
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A threat beyond the gas pump
Then came October 7, 2023. Iran-backed Hamas terrorists crossed into Israel and murdered about 1,200 people in the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust. The danger came from armed men serving a terrorist organization supported by Tehran, not from a projected rise in sea levels.
Iran's nuclear ambitions remain largely unchecked. Before the U.S. and Israeli strikes on its enrichment facilities, Tehran had enriched uranium to 60% purity, close to weapons-grade. It has since refused international inspectors access to bombed sites and failed to account fully for its stockpile. The status of its enrichment capacity remains uncertain, but it's no longer a hypothetical threat decades away.
The war with Iran has also helped drive oil and gasoline prices higher. Climate Democrats now want credit for noticing the cost. Fine. They should explain why raising fuel costs to meet climate targets is defensible but paying more to confront a regime that arms terrorist proxies and refuses to account for highly enriched uranium is beyond the pale.
The real existential threat was never at the pump. It's sitting in Tehran. Voters should remember which threat leftists actually treated like one.