As the war in Ukraine rages on, killing thousands, President Biden signed an executive order banning the importation of Russian oil, liquefied natural gas, and coal to the United States, an action the White House says is designed to deprive Russia’s President Vladimir Putin the economic resources he uses to continue his military campaign. European Union states are set to adopt new sanctions against Russian oil companies, but will not ban the purchase of the nation’s fossil fuels.
The sanctions targeting Russian oil sent the price of crude oil skyrocketing on world markets. Every $10 increase in the price of a barrel of oil adds about 24 cents to the cost of each gallon of gasoline. The price of gasoline in the U.S. is now nearing — or may exceed — previous inflation adjusted highs last reached in 2008.
With consumers facing near record high gas prices, many U.S. politicians are calling for increased production of American fossil fuels that could put downward pressure on world oil prices. But more than 200 groups are calling on President Biden to resist short-sighted domestic fossil fuel policies that will exacerbate climate change, and instead invoke the Defense Production Act for Renewable Energy Sources. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Nathan Taft, senior digital campaigner with the group Stand.Earth, who reflects on how the war in Ukraine is focusing attention on the world’s harmful addiction to fossil fuels and the need to rapidly develop renewable energy sources.
NATHAN TAFT: Essentially, we were calling on Biden to invoke the Defense Production Act, which actually dates back all the way to the Korean War, where the federal government can use their power to move private industry to create materials necessary to the national defense. And it’s been used for lots of different things. But most recently, Trump used it to produce ventilators during the first COVID wave, and then Biden has already used it twice, first to produce masks, and then also to actually produce lengths of fire hose during the fire season here in California, where I live, and it’s been used for other purposes before.
So what we’re calling on Biden is, Look, this crisis, this mess is the root is fossil fuels, Putin and Russia. Sixty percent of their exports are fossil fuels. Forty percent of their revenues are from fossil fuels. And we are stuck with high energy prices. All of this circling back to fossil fuels. And so we need to move rapidly away from them, not just because of the climate crisis and the harm they’re causing to our communities, but because they’re empowering tinpot dictators like Putin all around the world.
SCOTT HARRIS: Nathan, in your view — and there have been charges, of course — that big oil is taking advantage of the war in Ukraine not only to push up prices, but to ramp up U.S. production of fossil fuels and deregulate drilling and all other aspects of the fossil fuel production chain here in the U.S. Comment on that, if you would.
NATHAN TAFT: Yeah. I mean, if you’re following the news coverage closely enough, even before the invasion started, the American Petroleum Institute, the oil lobby, was calling for more drilling, for ramping up, drilling more, doing more of this. And they want to expand export facilities, build new infrastructure. And there’s no regard for the communities that will be harmed for that, for the damage that will be done to the climate.
And what’s wild is that ramping up production — we’re already the biggest producer of gas in the world. And doing more of this won’t impact gas prices or oil prices for more than a year, or it could even be longer than that. You can’t just flip a switch. And so to be calling for drilling more and doing this, it’s really it’s shortsighted.
And quite frankly, it’s profiteering. They want to use this crisis. And if the price goes up, they have the highest level of revenues, Big Oil that is, than they’ve had in the past decade. So it’s really just self-serving on their part and really frustrating to see. We haven’t learned that we need to get out of this cycle and move towards renewables.You can’t put an embargo on the sun or the wind.
SCOTT HARRIS: Right. There are many people who look at the situation now with this crisis in Ukraine and the price of oil skyrocketing and say that solar panels and wind turbines are not going to take the place of the energy needed in the coming weeks. How do you respond to the idea that the Defense Protection Act, that you’re asking to be invoked here to ramp up the funding of producing renewable energy? It’s a more of a long-term project than something that can address the energy crisis right now.
NATHAN TAFT: So I think there’s there’s two points to go over there, right? And the first is we need to help our allies in Europe, our allies in Europe. Forty percent of the gas they use to heat their homes comes from Russia. And they absolutely need relief and help to get out from under the thumb of Putin.
And so one of the things that the Defense Production Act could do, and this was raised by Bill McKibben, is that if it was used to ramp up the production of these things called heat pumps, which is basically a way to replace furnaces with things that can warm your home and heat your home but can use electricity. And so ramping up those and shipping them to Europe could have a very immediate impact for our allies who are really at these mercy right now because of where their energy supply is coming from.
So that’s the first point and that’s the immediate point there. As far as what you can do domestically, an investment in electric vehicles, charging infrastructure and also just public infrastructure and public transit, things that require us to drive less. All of these things are going to help insulate us from future shocks and help us not just be stuck back here in five years because the truth is, we’ve had a chance to deal with this ever since the oil embargo in 1973. And we keep choosing to drill more open to tap more and it doesn’t it doesn’t help in the short term. And then we just get stuck with more of this stuff. And right now we have to take urgent action on climate. So there’s quite literally never been a more important time to move away from using this and prevent the next crisis.
Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Nathan Taft (21:53) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the Related Links section of this page.
For more information, visit Stand.Earth at stand.earth.
