Gas prices are rising and the options for policy makers are few and getting fewer, but there are some good ones.
Let’s be clear. The US barely uses Russian oil (most of which goes to Europe and Asia). Still, it’s true that without buying from Russia, the world’s available supply of oil and gas is smaller and reduced supplies tend to result in higher prices. But do they have to? The simple answer is no.
Even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Big Oil was posting record profits. According to the US government watchdog group Accountable US, Chevron, Shell, Exxon and BP made over $75 billion in 2021, a record sum. The oil companies are awash in wealth. They could at any point choose to lower prices for a beleaguered public in wartime. Instead, their executives are choosing to puff up dividends and CEO salaries and they’re buying back their own shares; stock buy-backs being win-wins for shareholders.
Now Republicans and their Big Oil buddies are threatening to spread anti-Biden lies all the way to the midterms by blaming price spikes on White House bungling and its refusal to open the last protected bits of public lands to drilling.
Bad options number one, two and three are drill the lands, give into the Big Oil thugs and lose the midterms.
Bad option number FOUR would be to go groveling to Saudi Arabia to beg them to pump more oil so as to increase supply, a move the White House is clearly considering. To plead with the Saudis right now, would be to plead with a nation that’s just executed 81 innocent men – mostly professors, for unpatriotic acts – and regularly executes LGBTQ people in public. And let’s not forget the House of Saud’s role in standing with Russia, and the wagers of the just-as-deadly war in Yemen.
There are some better options: stand strong against the bloody House of Saud and big oil and their pals. Stand strong against GOP strong arming (resist drilling), and side with beleaguered Americans and their progressive allies in Congress and expand Jan Schakowsky’s Covid 19 Price Gouging Prevention Act to include gas and energy profiteers. Send the proceeds from a tax on gougers to families in need.
Better yet, win the midterms by standing with the planet: impose a war tax on carbon profiteers and spend the proceeds on transitioning to renewables. The shift to clean energy doesn’t have to go slowly. Electric car sales rose 43% in 2020 over 2019, and 108% last year. Stocks in renewables are out performing oil and gas right now. Tipping points tip and this could be one of those.
If anything good could come from this grim, ghastly time, this could be it. We have certainly hit the bottom of the gas and oil barrel.
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