This is what Joe Biden should do to protect the US from a spiraling oil crisis
Joe Biden has taken a firm stand against Vladimir Putin and announced a ban on Russian oil imports. “This is war,” Senator Joe Manchin said when he supported Biden’s ban, which is likely to push energy prices higher. “For better or worse, Americans need to understand that this is the price we all pay for a safer world,” said former Obama Council of Economic Advisers chairman Jason Furman. The president himself announced: “Defending freedom is going to cost.”
There is even some bipartisan support, at least for now. Across the aisle, Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski signed on to sanctions. So did Mitch McConnell: “Ratchet the sanctions all the way up.”
Yet higher gas prices pose a clear political threat to the administration. The fraught situation brings back memories of the 1970s, when the political standings of Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter were severely damaged by an energy crisis that became worse amid international turmoil.
But this is not your grandfather’s (or the young Joe Biden’s) energy crisis. Biden can survive the politics of “Putin’s price hike”, as he called it, and has the opportunity to take bold government action that leaves Americans more secure than before.
The 1970s were different. In 1973, the Arab embargo that cut off Middle Eastern exports of oil to the United States came as a total shock to the electorate. Few Americans knew that the geopolitical landscape of global energy production had been rapidly changing. American production was declining as demand was increasing. Because energy had been so cheap, Americans lived an energy-intensive lifestyle. More than three-quarters of Americans drove to work and most did so alone. Between 1970 and 1973, the amount of imports doubled to meet demand.
As shortages
Read more on theguardian.com
