Gas prices “are going to go up” and we “can’t do much” about it.
Those are words that no American president wants to say, but that’s exactly what President Joe Biden told reporters after announcing his decision to block Russian-produced oil from entering the United States.
According to polling by the Wall Street Journal, Biden’s decision was backed by 79% of respondents — even though it meant a rise in gas prices — a remarkable display of unity in our often deeply divided nation. Vladimir Putin may have not yet succeeded in toppling Ukraine’s democratically elected government. But by waging a campaign of needless death and devastation, he may have done something once unthinkable in Washington — taken the political sting out of higher gas prices, at least for now. Biden is right to take this important step to help starve the Kremlin’s war machine.
It is no surprise that, in relation to the rest of the international community, Americans are particularly sensitive to the price of oil. When it comes to how we get around, our nation is a global outlier. Only 20% of Americans live within a 10-minute walk to a grocery store, as compared with nearly half of Canadians.
Decades of car-centric land-use decisions have created a landscape where owning a motor vehicle is practically mandatory. As a result, Americans currently consume 20% of the world’s oil despite having less than 5% of the planet’s population.
Car dependency is also expensive. American households spent an average of nearly $10,000 on transportation in 2020 as compared with an average of less than $3,000 in the European Union. There’s a human cost as well. America has more than twice the number of road deaths per capita as the rest of the world’s most industrialized nations. While other developed countries have plenty of cars, most did not go as far as the United States in reshaping their built environments around vehicular traffic.
While our collective dependence on cars (and gasoline) has often been criticized by climate-change activists (for its environmental impact) and by urbanists (for aesthetic harms), the conflict in Ukraine has underscored how much car dependency is also a national security concern.
Beyond Putin’s Russia, other top oil producers include such adversaries of the United States as Iran and China. Elsewhere, authoritarian leaders like Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia and Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela are able to leverage their control of oil production to deflect American concerns about their commitment to human rights and other issues.
It’s essential that this crisis leads us all to make a deeper investment in electric vehicles and other alternatives. Beyond that, it is time to look at the public investments, rules, and regulations that have made driving more of a necessity than a choice in so much of our nation.
While making public transportation and walking a realistic option for more Americans will take time, there may be few better occasions to begin doing so than right now.
Pennsylvania transportation officials can start by redirecting money earmarked for unnecessary highway expansions toward worthier transit projects, including the Roosevelt Boulevard Extension.
While bringing the price of oil down immediately might not be feasible, there are steps that the federal government can take to ease the pain at the pump for those who can least afford rising gas prices. One way to make life easier for families would be to restore the now-expired monthly Child Tax Credit, or to issue another round of stimulus checks meant to compensate Americans for a war that, like the pandemic, few were planning for.
Paying higher prices at the gas pump is something almost no one is ever excited to do, but if it keeps money out of Putin’s coffers — which might ultimately help save lives and ensure a free Ukraine — the cost is worth it. And if paying a bit more spurs Americans to think differently about how we get around, even better.
— The Philadelphia Inquirer (TNS)
