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Biden Wisely Favors Fossil Fuels For Today, But Not Tomorrow

Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine has thrown world energy markets into turmoil. Prices are high; Europe is still dependent on natural gas from Russia; and Joe Biden is urging other countries to boost petroleum output. For his efforts, the president is under attack from both Republicans and Democrats, who are each erring in their own peculiar way.

Biden has banned imports of Russian oil and gas because such purchases would help fund Putin's war. But he is not content to see world oil supplies shrink. On Thursday, he said he would release one million barrels per day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve over the next six months.

The administration has also lobbied the unsavory governments of Saudi Arabia and Venezuela to boost output. The same president who wants to phase out the burning of fossil fuels now wants to ensure that plenty of fossil fuels are available for burning.

His GOP critics accuse him of hypocrisy. Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La), said, "Biden must end his war on American energy production so the United States and our allies can have access to affordable, secure energy." Republicans still live by Sarah Palin's credo: Drill, baby, drill.

But progressives are equally unhappy, urging Biden to take steps to "end the fossil fuel era and petrochemical tyranny" by ramping up renewable energy production. "Putting more oil on the market is not the solution to our problem but the perpetuation of our problem," said Mark Brownstein, vice president of the Environmental Defense Fund.

Both sides make the same mistake, which is failing to understand the difference between short-term necessities and long-term imperatives. In an emergency, your focus is on the immediate need, not the long-term one. But it's important that while attending to the present, you don't forfeit the future.

Biden is capable of meeting both obligations. He understands that letting prices soar is a bad thing for the anti-Putin effort (and the world economy). At the moment, his priority is depriving Russia of the means to fund its aggression.

Biden's Strategic Petroleum Reserve announcement helped, pushing prices down below $100 per barrel. Getting other oil exporters to increase production would further depress prices and make it harder for Putin to sell his most important commodity.

If resisting aggression against Ukraine means making nice with Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, so what? Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt teamed up with Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin to defeat Nazi Germany, and it's a good thing they did. "If Hitler invaded hell," Churchill said, "I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons."

Conservatives think Russia's power over global fuel supplies proves the need to produce more oil here at home. They say that by canceling the Keystone pipeline and putting a moratorium on new oil and gas leases on federal lands, Biden has inflated gasoline prices and doomed Americans to be fleeced by Putin.

But those policies have little if anything to do with the current price of gasoline. Killing Keystone didn't reduce oil supplies, because it hadn't been built. New federal oil and gas leases would take years to generate production. Biden's policies may mean higher fossil fuel prices down the road, but not now, and not soon.

The current supply crunch, we are told, proves the need to increase exploration and drilling. But the supply of oil on the world market — and the price here at home — will always be at the mercy of unpredictable events in foreign lands. Under the oil-friendly presidency of George W. Bush, the price more than quadrupled, topping out at $128 per barrel — the equivalent of over $168 in today's money.

Sunshine and wind keep coming regardless of wars and revolutions on distant shores. Supplies of renewable energy are far more reliable than those of fossil fuels. Real "energy independence" is not producing more oil and gas at home; it's freeing ourselves from the need for either. Putin has far more to fear from solar panels and wind turbines than from the Permian Basin, and so do Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

More important, though, is that clean energy addresses the emergency of climate change — which is less immediate than Putin's invasion but ultimately even more dangerous. Doubling down on fossil fuels is the wrong strategy for a warming world.

The war in Ukraine is a matter of urgent consequence, but it won't last forever. The best energy policy is one that meets the needs of today without torching tomorrow.

Follow Steve Chapman on Twitter @SteveChapman13 or at https://www.facebook.com/stevechapman13. To find out more about Steve Chapman and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

To Fight Russian Aggression, Build More Clean Energy Capacity

To Fight Russian Aggression, Build More Clean Energy Capacity

Russian attacks on Ukraine have spiked the already high price of oil. But going up with that are the economic incentives to ditch this primitive fuel — the environmental reasons being well known.

Russia provides about 40 percent of Europe's imported gas, and its squeeze on supply has forced some factories to cut back on production. The case for moving to renewable energy grows only stronger.

The CEO of the Portuguese utility EDP made this point on CNBC Europe. "These are (indigenous) ... resources — wind, solar — that we have in Europe," Miguel Stilwell de Andrade said. "We need to accelerate (their development) and do it much faster."

Americans, meanwhile, can dismiss conservative claims that President Joe Biden has set back America's "energy independence." Policies to replace fossil fuels with low-carbon energy have hardly shut off the flow of domestic oil and gas. Actually, the U.S. became the world's top exporter of liquefied natural gas this year.

On a related topic, Biden's infrastructure bill set aside $6 billion to stop the premature retirement of nuclear plants. Another $2.5 billion is going for work on advanced nuclear technologies. Biden backed this zero-carbon energy source while fighting off some opposition from the left.

Germany's outsized dependence on Russian oil resulted from former German Chancellor Angela Merkel's unwise decision years ago to shutter her country's nuclear plants — and replace that source of power with Russian natural gas. (Imagine Europe launching its largest fossil fuel project in the year 2022.)

In retaliation for Russia's assault on Ukraine, Germany has suspended approval of Nord Stream 2, an underwater pipeline designed to transport Russian natural gas to Germany. Good for the new chancellor, Olaf Scholz.

Some Europeans are reportedly dealing with the convulsion in fuel prices by installing solar panels and burning wood for heat. Hooray for solar. (Boo for wood-burning, though understandable in an emergency.)

Clean energy means more energy, which, when added to improving green technology, eventually means less-expensive energy. By 2020, solar already provided cheaper power than that from plants fired by coal or natural gas in most countries, according to the International Energy Agency.

The U.S. has just passed the milestone of 200,000 megawatts of utility-scale clean energy capacity, according to the American Clean Power Association. Do you know which state installed the most wind and solar power capacity last year? Texas.

Natural gas prices were, of course, surging before Russia started pummeling Ukraine. That reflected an upturn in demand as the COVID-19 pandemic started to retreat.

But companies in Europe that had made long-term agreements for renewable energy at fixed prices found themselves in a far better place, The Wall Street Journal reports. Orange SA, the huge French telecom company, for one, is securing power from nearby solar and wind farms, as well as its own installations. It plans to obtain half its energy from renewable sources in three short years.

Such businesses, George Bilicic, head of power and energy at the investment banking firm Lazard, said, "should be better positioned than others given current fossil fuel price spikes."

Steep gas prices are, of course, a great selling point for electric cars, not that they need it at this point.

Moving the world away from fossil fuels would erase Russian President Vladimir Putin's biggest nonnuclear weapon. After all, oil and gas accounted for 39 percent of Russia's budget revenue and 60 percent of its exports in 2019.

We, on our part, must make major investments in power grids to accommodate the diverse types of low-carbon energy. But there's nothing like international turmoil at the hands of a distressed country run by an unstable leader to provide a major push in that direction. Let's get pushed.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Yes, We Really Can Save The Earth (And Here’s Proof)

Yes, We Really Can Save The Earth (And Here’s Proof)

Reprinted with permission from Creators

Anyone who lives in the world of scientific reality — which we all do, although some like to pretend we don't — may feel dejected these days by the inevitability of catastrophic climate change. For years now, the news about the fate of the Earth (and the living things that inhabit our planet) has grown increasingly grim, with doomsday projected to arrive sometime before the end of this century.

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Mired In The Present, They Won’t Seize The Clean Energy Future

Mired In The Present, They Won’t Seize The Clean Energy Future

When Henry Ford introduced the Model T in 1908, America had almost no paved roads outside the cities. One of the early owners’ biggest headaches was tires punctured by horseshoe nails left on the road.

“Forget about this car thing,” Ford’s detractors might have said. “We don’t believe in government subsidies for road paving, and we’re protecting the pony cart makers. Anyhow, less than 1 percent of Americans even travel by car.”

Today’s can’t-doers must have been surprised this month when Tesla, the electric-car innovator, drove past Ford Motor Co. in market value while nipping at the heels of General Motors. Both Ford and GM have been doing well of late, but investors have flocked to Tesla stock as a growth rocket. (Days before, Tesla founder Elon Musk’s SpaceX company launched — and landed! — a real rocket.)

All this follows years of conservatives’ carping against Tesla and green energy initiatives. In 2015, the conservative Daily Caller website panned Tesla thusly:

“Liberal entrepreneur Elon Musk’s business ventures have benefited from nearly $5 billion in government subsidies in the past few years, but apparently that’s not enough taxpayer support to stop his electric car business from losing $4,000 on every vehicle it sells.”

IMAGE: Employees carry solar panels at a solar power plant in Aksu, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, in this May 18, 2012 file photo.  REUTERS/Stringer/Files