Nationalizing fossil fuel industry solves inflation.
Polychroniou 22 — C.J. Polychroniou, political scientist and political economist, member of Truthout’s Public Intellectual Project, 2022 (“Nationalizing Fossil Fuel Industry Is a Practical Solution to Rising Inflation,” Truthout, Available Online at https://truthout.org/articles/nationalizing-fossil-fuel-industry-is-a-practical-solution-to-rising-inflation/, Accessed 07-07-2023)
The more basic solution here would be for the government to take over the U.S. fossil fuel industry. Under a nationalized fossil fuel industry, the necessary phase-out of fossil fuels as an energy source can proceed in an orderly fashion. The government could then set fossil fuel energy prices to reflect the needs of both consumers and the imperatives of the clean energy transition. At present, the U.S. government could purchase controlling interest in the three dominant U.S. oil and gas companies — ExxonMobil, Chevron and Conoco — for about $350 billion. This would be less than 10 percent of the $4 trillion that the Federal Reserve pumped into Wall Street during the COVID crisis. More generally, these costs should be understood as trivial because nationalization would end these corporations’ relentless campaign of sabotaging the clean energy transition.