Gasoline prices are up 75 cents a gallon since December and now double what they were when President Obama was inaugurated. Motorists in southern California are already paying more than $5 a gallon and prices are headed resolutely skyward. What could be the reason?

First, understand that soaring gasoline prices are not due to double-digit inflation of the type the United States experienced during the administration of Jimmy Carter. Indeed, the prolonged recession and shrinking economy under Barack Obama help keep inflation in check.

Neither are soaring gasoline prices due to an embargo by OPEC, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela or any other oil producer. So motorists’ miseries can’t be blamed on malevolent foreigners trying to punish the Great Satan.

Soaring gasoline prices are definitely not due to a shortage of crude oil. Indeed, new technologies have facilitated extraction from shale deposits and traditional oil fields in the United States.

Soaring gasoline prices cannot be blamed on declining car sales. Indeed, car sales continue to climb and the vast majority of the new vehicles sold are powered by gasoline engines.

Gasoline prices are soaring for a simple reason: that’s what president Barack Obama and his fellow climate-change fundamentalists want. Recall that Steven Chu, Obama’s former energy secretary said the administration had to figure a way to make U.S. gasoline prices equal those of Europe. In climate-change orthodoxy, high gasoline prices force the nation to think about mass transportation, alternative energy sources, electric cars and such.

Gasoline prices will continue to soar because president Obama is likely to reject the Keystone pipeline that would bring 700,000 barrels of crude oil from Canada every day. That would decrease dependence on OPEC but the president has expressed little concern about that. Canada is pushing for U.S. acceptance of the pipeline but the president shows little concern for the economic well being of longstanding friends and allies.

The president no longer faces reelection and climate-change fundamentalists have been demonstrating in Washington and demanding that he reject the pipeline to preserve his environmental legacy. That will be hard for the president to resist. So embattled Americans should look for gasoline prices to climb even higher. That’s what the president wants.