Americans Suffering Needlessly From Self-Inflicted Energy, Inflation Crisis
In 1980, Ronald Reagan asked what has become a key question in each election since: “Are you better off today than four years ago?”
In some important respects, we are better off now that post-lockdown life has arrived, and we are able to travel, go to the office or school and enjoy a more normal lifestyle again.
But, over the past 16 months, as inflation has continued to creep up and national gasoline prices have gone from a steady increase between February 2021 and January 2022 to all-time disastrous heights today, it is increasingly clear that the U.S. energy system is broken.
It is now apparent that on the important issue of energy, we are decidedly not better off today than we were just a few short years ago. We were promised competent governance, yet record energy prices and inflation persist with few solutions in sight.
There are threats of looming summer blackouts in multiple states all across the country, warnings of fuel shortages, rising prices for everything as a result of astronomically high diesel prices and a willful disregard for taking the simple yet necessary actions to increase energy output to help lower prices.
Four years ago, the national average price for gasoline was $2.91. Today, it is almost $5 a gallon and rising. In the most energy-rich nation on Earth, we are paying at least $75 to fill up, assuming an average 15-gallon fuel tank, and many are paying over $100. A fill-up costs Americans 63% more than a year ago, and 71% more than four years ago.
Clearly, Americans are struggling with our energy situation. Those in disadvantaged communities, living on fixed incomes, or the 13% of the nation living in poverty, face the worst of it. Hispanics have a 20% higher energy burden; Blacks, 43% higher; and 45% higher for Native Americans. This is unacceptable. There has to be a better path toward energy justice which includes prioritizing lower energy burdens for all, and it should be a national priority for an administration that has championed equity.
Gasoline prices hurt all of us, but some now have to choose between a gallon of gas and a gallon of milk.
These are major quality of life issues to which Americans should rightfully be unaccustomed. More pointedly, it’s 2022 and no one should accept energy policies that – intentionally or not – require people to take out a loan just to pay for gasoline.
All this is proof we have a failed energy policy in need of Congressional attention.
The Administration continues to blame Putin for the gas prices, but no one is persuaded –including the Administration itself – since gasoline rose by more than a dollar in the president’s first year in office. The White House’s battery of solutions – three releases from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a waiver for a fuel grade available at barely 2% of the nation’s filling stations, and appeals to hostile nations like Iran and Venezuela and frenemies like Saudi Arabia – have all failed to stop the soaring price climb.
We are seeing, as the fallout of Russia’s Ukraine invasion plays out, what happens when nations willingly give up their own oil and gas production and nuclear power. Germany is Exhibit A – prices blew through the roof when wind and solar, as vital as they are, could not deliver enough power before the war. Now, Germany has been forced to abandon one of Europe’s most aggressive decarbonization plans and accept the reality that we need oil and gas.
Americans need to understand that those failed policies are what are being promoted here. How is now – amid an energy and inflation crisis nearing the scale of the last major one in the 1970s – the right time to repeat the mistake of introducing ideologically-driven policies that surrender American energy security to foreign nations?
It’s foolish and dangerous. It weakens us geopolitically and creates political risk in the U.S. business environment, by introducing regulatory uncertainty that disincentivizes the longer-term investments energy needs.
All this is unfortunate because the fact is that America is leading in overall emission reductions and environmental stewardship, showing that we can produce oil and gas while progressing rapidly toward a net-zero economy. Oil and natural gas will be needed alongside wind, solar, nuclear, hydro, hydrogen and other technologies for the foreseeable future. On this, we should all agree, because there is no reality where this does not occur.
As we head into another election cycle, both parties should now be able to agree that when it comes to energy, we are not better off. Let’s hope the Congress in 2023 joins together in bipartisanship to fix what’s broken about America’s energy policy.
Until then, it looks like it’s just the start of a long, hot summer.
David Holt is president of Consumer Energy Alliance, a U.S. consumer energy and environment advocate supporting affordable, reliable energy for working families, seniors and businesses across the country.
