GND dramatically raises gas prices – puts pressure on production of cars, clean energy sources, and everyday essentials

Cathy Phifer’s March 20 letter shows a failure to see totality of problems. Nothing happens in a vacuum. Facts do not support blaming President Biden … alone. The Russian invasion has become a convenient talking point for blame stormers. Gasoline prices are a result of the Green New Deal, underpinnings of which started when oil was last at $100 per barrel in the Obama administration. It was that price point and ability to drill, lay pipelines and transport oil to market that solved those high prices. Today’s buzzword is “supply chain.” The oil and natural gas industry is the poster child for it. Biden granting leases to drill is hollow unless there is oil and gas there. It’s hollow unless drilling permits are awarded. It’s hollow unless oil can be piped to refiners and to distribution depots to be trucked to gas stations. “Drill baby drill” takes years of geological study, engineering and construction before gasoline is pumped. Remember the 2013 shale gas boom / bust that took years and billions of dollars to determine it wasn’t feasible here. The Keystone XL pipeline gets the headlines, but what about Mountain Valley, Penn East and Atlantic Coast pipelines, all killed by endless, ruthless litigation from Green New Dealers? Now they’re trying to stop using operating Enbridge No. 5 pipeline. Are you prepared for $75 gas, grill, propane fillup? Instead of completing pipelines, we ship billions of oil barrels on trains at inflated costs — until the next derailment and uproar. No one will drill and leave oil or gas stranded at the well. This forces prices up. Everything except your virgin cotton or wool sweater contains hydrocarbons, and virgin fabrics use gas and oil to weave and ship. Everything you eat, wear, watch, live in and drive on has hydrocarbon components. Teslas, Rivians and other “clean cars” have barrels of oil in plastics, paints, sealers and yes, batteries. Remember, we always need to consume fossil fuels to charge batteries and to make windmills and solar panels. If you saw the strip mining to harvest nickel and lithium needed to make “zero-emission” batteries, you’d rethink their cleanliness. Rare earth elements needed to make them and electronics / motors are so ecologically destructive to mine that 90 percent are mined in Third-World countries conveniently out of our sight and controlled by Russians and Chinese. The point is, dismantling the oil and gas industry is death by 1,000 paper cuts. We’re killing the lifeblood of this country by dismantling hydrocarbon-based economy without a suitable replacement. Wind and solar won’t cut it. Remember the outrage when we learned we couldn’t buy masks, syringes or aspirin made in USA? It will be the same if we destroy the oil and gas industry. This is your Green New Deal — it isn’t just high gas prices.