During Monday’s White House Press Briefing, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki tried to blame Russia and our “dependence on fossil fuels” for surging gas prices and then made a ridiculous claim about fossil fuels. It was during an exchange with Fox News White House Correspondent Peter Doocy, which never ends well for her.
“It sounds like you are blaming [Vladimir Putin] for the increase in gas prices recently,” Doocy pointed out. “But weren’t gas prices going up anyway, because of post-pandemic supply chain issues?”
Rather than admit that this is true, Psaki chose to double down on the notion that Russia’s invasion is what caused prices to go up, and pretend that prices haven’t been rising since Biden took office. You could sense that she knew Doocy had outsmarted her already at this point, but our favorite Circle Back Girl chose to dig herself deeper.
Doocy responded by pointing out that, despite claiming they were doing “everything” they could “to reduce the impact that high gas prices have on Americans,” the White House is only asking other countries to pump more oil. “Why not just do it here?”
Psaki had no good answer to this because there is no good answer, so Doocy pointed out that Joe Biden signed an executive order to halt new drilling leases on public lands on his first day in office and canceled the Keystone XL pipeline.
“Are you suggesting that would solve the gas prices issue?” Psaki asked.
“Well, do you think that would maybe affect prices faster than getting the whole country off of fossil fuels?” Doocy responded.
“I actually don’t think it would,” Psaki said.
Okay, so let’s unpack this. First, according to Psaki, it would be easier to get our country off fossil fuels than it would be to lower gas prices by building more pipelines and expanding oil and gas drilling.
We rely on fossil fuels for many things, but let’s just focus on the transportation sector. Despite the increased popularity and availability of electric cars, “Less than 1% of the 250 million cars, SUVs and light-duty trucks on the road in the United States are electric,” according to a recent estimate by Reuters.
Joe Biden’s goal is for half of new car sales to be electric by 2030. Yet, Reuters admits, “If half of all cars sold by 2030 were electric, EVs could make up between 60%-70% of cars on the road by 2050.”
So, even if we just focus on the transportation sector, and if we assume these estimates are accurate and not ridiculously optimistic, we’re won’t even get that industry off fossil fuels by 2050. Yet, according to Jen Psaki, it would be faster than reducing gas prices with more drilling and pipelines.
Did she really think she’d get away with saying that?
Even Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of Tesla, thinks “we need to increase oil & gas output immediately.”
“Extraordinary times demand extraordinary measures,” he tweeted on Friday. “Obviously, this would negatively affect Tesla, but sustainable energy solutions simply cannot react instantaneously to make up for Russian oil & gas exports.”
It goes without saying that Musk is smarter than Psaki, but you don’t need to be a genius to know that we are not even close to being able to be weaned off fossil fuels.