I get the idea that the Democrats want to demonize the gas companies for “gouging” but I think that if you want to have progressive environmental policies driven through Capitalist mechanisms, the way you reduce demand is to increase price. The way you increase price is reduce supply. So ironically, this increase in gas price is sort of exactly what’s needed in the long run. In the short run it’s painful, but less painful than if we were suffering this during peak oil.
It’s easy to point to the fact that gas and oil stocks are WAY UP ( https://www.investopedia.com/investing/oil-stocks/ ) and making record profits (https://www.americanprogress.org/article/these-top-5-oil-companies-just-raked-in-35-billion-while-americans-pay-more-at-the-pump/ ) – and indeed in the latter article is pretty firm that rather than “lining CEOs’ and shareholders’ pockets with profits” they should be “using this cash to make the investments needed to help lower the price of oil or to fulfill their climate pledges“.
But energy companies, despite years of subterfuge denying climate change and burying the knowledge that fossil fuels are finite (indeed, the fact that they engaged in this subterfuge points to the fact that they have long known it’s a looming problem) – aren’t going to invest in infrastructure whose usefulness has a visible horizon ( https://www.marketplace.org/2022/05/23/u-s-oil-refiners-margins-smash-records-but-few-plan-to-build-more-plants/ ). They’re not going to build new refineries because the winds are changing and, answerable not to public opinion or cultural whim, ExxonMobil and Saudi Aramco are answerable to their share holders, all of which insist these companies be profitable not just immediately, but long into the future.
That’s not “price gouging”, that’s not even capitalist greed – that’s intelligent corporate planning and future-proofing.
Meanwhile, Republicans and truck owners are gleefully sticking their “I Did That” Biden stickers on pumps and newspaper headlines, being willfully ignorant of world events and how supply chains and gas prices work. I have yet to hear anyone even throw a GUESS at how Biden is supposedly causing oil shortages all across the entire world.
A politician, only able to think 2 – 6 years into the future, focused on their own reelection, would do anything in their power to keep gas prices down. It’s what’s kept us from being able to truly fight oil monopolies for as long as the Green Movement’s existed. Gas prices are a constant reminder of harder times, a red flag on every street corner. The idea that Biden, the Democrats, or whoever, have intentionally “crippled domestic production” (as a recent Facebook “Friend” insists) is absolutely blind to the fact that that’s against their self-interest in about the worst way possible. Maybe if they had filibuster-proof majorities to make sure that no matter who pointed their finger where, they would be able to continue their path unabated, but with the slim majority, there’s very little they can accomplish, and absolutely NOTHING they can do that’s going to stick through the next (no doubt Republican) administration.
And so we continue to point fingers and create useless headline-based legislation rather than face down the very, very real disasters heading towards us, because those disasters are too big to fit on a bumper sticker and MUCH too complicated for a tweet.
Democrats – try to see past Big Corporations Are Bad unless you’re going to actually figure out a way to reconfigure our world to function without them – because we’re going to NEED them to … well… stop building refineries and start building windfarms.
Republicans – at least try to come up with a SENSIBLE narrative? Because you’re just spewing invective and stupidity. Or do you REALLY think that Democrats are so SELFLESS that they’re all sacrificing themselves on the altar or Crippling America for… uhm… Socialism? #BLM? Because I’d Love to say voters can think beyond their next paycheck and their next fill up, but…
I don’t believe THAT for a second.