More now, less later. “Look, the bottom line is this,” Biden said at the White House. “Between increasing production in the short term and reducing demand in the long term, we can break free from our dependence on imported oil from around the world.”
Biden’s plan to lower gas prices
The President authorizes the release of an unprecedented 1 million barrels of oil per day (180 million barrels total) from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
He also wants oil companies to increase production and for Congress to punish companies that don’t produce on federal land.
Will these moves work to lower prices?
Even Biden admits he really doesn’t know, and how global oil markets perform will largely depend on how much other oil producers add, or don’t add. to its production.
At most, he said that we are seeing a reduction in costs of 10 cents to 35 cents per gallon when additional oil effect is activated in the market. The national average for regular gasoline it was $4.24 on Wednesday, which was lower than the record set in early March.
Caught between ambition and reality
CNN Senior Climate Editor Angela Fritz told me that Biden is “caught between progressive ambition to take meaningful climate action and the reality that the United States remains extremely dependent on fossil fuels and people want cheap gasoline.”
Meanwhile, the climate crisis is taking its toll.
‘Delay means death’
“The facts are undeniable. This abdication of leadership is criminal,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement. “The world’s biggest polluters are to blame for the arson attack on our only home.”
He also said “current events” showed the world was too reliant on fossil fuels, calling them “a dead end”, in an apparent reference to Ukraine’s conflict and energy crisis.
Evidence of the climate crisis
Thawed Antarctica
Fritz also pointed to reports this week of a change in Antarctica, which has so far been less affected by the climate crisis than its Arctic counterpart.
Why do we care about Antarctica? There is so much ice on the continent, if even a fraction of it melts, the world could see sea level rise of several feet.
The daily reality of people.
However, Antarctica is very far away and many Americans could be more focused on the cost of Arriving at work.
Biden sought to place much of the blame for rising gasoline prices on Russian President Vladimir Putin for invading Ukraine, saying it is worth the price to take on the autocrat.
