Biden Orders Release of U.S. Oil Reserves in Challenge to OPEC+
(Bloomberg) -- The U.S. will release 50 million barrels of crude from its strategic reserves in concert with China, Japan, India, South Korea and the U.K. -- an unprecedented, coordinated attempt by the world’s largest oil consumers to tame prices that risks a backlash by OPEC+.Most Read from...
So one of Biden's first things in office was the ban the massive Keystone pipeline, in an effort to get America off fossil fuels supposedly. This of course has made our gas prices insane, realtive to what our normal is. I know a lot of places in the world have higher gas prices than us even now, especially in places like Autrailia and New Zealand where $6+/gallon is normal.
Now Biden is releasing reserves we had in conjunction with Asian countries in an effort to try and correct the gas prices (but not reenstate the pipeline which I would have thought the obvious solution long term would be, but whatever).
There are several states that have also come forth to make laws that will ban the sale of gas-powered cars by 202X the actual year may vary.
And hey they want to make better climate changes, cool. But the problem with pushing everyone towards electric is that it is a knee jerk short term reactionary plan that isn't even capable of being implimented. For quite a few reasons.
1. They have done no work on making electric vechiles viable for long term use or travel. Meaning that road trips in your electric car is near impossible because there aren't enough (if any) road stops, hotels, charging stations, available to make sure you can plug your Tesla or whatever in over night, or just while you shop to make sure you don't run out of juice.
2. People's electric bills are already extremely high (it costs almost $500/month for me to run my AC during the summer and im not even home much). You are demanding people take on that with no promise of lowered rates or insentives. But this one maybe we can ignore if we replace the cost of gas with the electricity cost. Fine.
3. What about jet fuel and all the vechicles incapable of running electric yet. Big rigs, the maintenence on aircrafts, tow trucks, emergency vechicles. Again this might just fall into my infrastructure complaint but it doesn't seem like any country anywhere is anywhere close to bailing on fossil fuels.
4. Why was nuclear power not even considered as an option? It's exceptionally clean, and exceptionally safe (except when it isn't but that can be said for anything).
I'm all for going "green" if we want to make better changes for the world. But regulations and changes need to be started on an infrastructural level, not the individual level. Look if you made it super easy and cheap for people to drive electric cars, they would do it in a heartbeat. There is a reason as to why only the wealthy are buying Tesla's and other pure electric cars and it's because of cost and the fact that these people often also have a gas powered car for situations beyond just a little cruise around town.
And now I hope the Biden Administration is realizing that they can't expect people to make such a drastic change without the groundwork being done by governments and businesses first. It's the big people that need to change first, not the small guy.
