On the first day of his second term, President Donald Trump declared that the United States was experiencing a “national energy emergency.” The “harmful and shortsighted policies of the previous administration,” he wrote in an executive order , had left the nation’s energy resources “far too inadequate,” a situation that “causes and makes worse the high energy prices that devastate Americans.” Since then, Trump has attempted to use the emergency declaration to speed up permits for fossil fuel development and bolster the nation’s power grid with more fossil fuel resources.

Almost two years later, as Trump stares down a midterm election, his claim of an emergency has an ironic ring. The United States is experiencing a kind of energy emergency characterized by high fuel prices, but it is not the one he described when he took office.…