All Hail American Unity Over Banning Russian Oil - Until Summer Driving Season and Midterm Politics
For one shining moment, most of the country seems unified around punishing Putin. What happens when we need to sacrifice during summer driving season?
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Mood alert: I have to preface this post on the Russian oil import ban by noting I'm recuperating from cancer surgery on Monday that removed half of my thyroid gland. All's well but the world may be brighter than I see it. Do read on.
Gas rationing during World War II was more to conserve rubber than fuel, and was fought by many in Congress.
Unselfishness in tough times
After a dinner at the end of a weeklong Vatican meeting on human and environmental sustainability in 2014, I asked the great oceanographer Walter Munk, then 97 years old, what he thought would be needed for our species to successfully navigate the 21st century.
Munk, who among many achievements helped win World War II by co-developing a surf forecast aiding beach landings, paused. I assumed his answer would be something like fusion.
“This requires a miracle of love and unselfishness,” he said. Munk left this world in 2019, at age 101, but his statement resonates continually for me in these troubling days.
We’re nearly all capable of love. I’m sure you’ve seen that binding force overcome all kinds of barriers once in a while.
It’s the unselfishness I worry about. Part of unselfishness is giving up something for the sake of someone else. We seem to have a hard time with sacrifice.
I worry particularly in times like these, with gasoline prices already spiking even before President Joe Biden’s announcement that the United States will stop buying oil or other fuels from Russia.
Lawmakers across the political spectrum had called for such a ban as a non-military way to squeeze President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s power brokers into stopping the brutal intensification of the invasion of Ukraine.
And a Quinnipiac poll released on Monday showed across-the-board support from American adults for a ban on Russian oil even if that results in higher gasoline prices. The overall breakdown was 77 percent for, 22 against, with Democrats 82 percent for, 12 percent against, independents 70 to 22 percent, and Republicans 66 versus 30 percent.
But will such sentiments hold up as the summer driving season approaches, followed by the fall explosion of poisonous politics ahead of the midterm elections? I'd love to hear your predictions.
I have my doubts.
Even during World War II, the gasoline rationing system - imposed to save rubber for the war effort but cutting driving - was resisted in Congress, as Tony Long described in Wired in 2009. President Franklin D. Roosevelt essentially forced the system through in ways that could never be replicated now. (A detailed analysis from the Eno Center for Transportation provides a trove of links to original sources.)
The war-era posters in the banner image above were thus not capturing America's mood; they were trying to shape it. Note the one in the middle that I fiddled with. Here it is again. Do you see anyone you know this summer carpooling for the sake of halting Putin's war on Ukraine?
Maybe that America is out there somewhere.
I’d love to think that, not just for the sake of millions of suffering Ukrainians but for all freedom-seeking people, we can work together to cut down on driving, flying and other other energy-sucking behaviors this spring, summer and fall and onward.
But Putin’s murderous invasion of Ukraine remains abstract to most Americans, and the sanctions and oil ban are in lieu of sending American troops into harm’s way, not aimed at protecting them.
There are also big technical questions about the efficacy of an oil ban of this sort unless it is followed by a suite of measures to cut off other sales. In a valuable Twitter thread, the energy and security analyst Eddie Fishman, noted this tough reality: "The West has avoided targeting Russia's oil sales for two reasons: first, concerns about spiking domestic gasoline prices; second, if oil prices ⬆️ by more than Russia's sales ⬇️, sanctions could perversely benefit Moscow, as it could earn more cash selling less oil."
Hopefully I am too downbeat. Others are brimming with ideas.
My longtime companion through my climate-reporting decades, Bill McKibben, has called for an electric-vehicle carpool brigade and heat-pump construction surge. I was happy last week to see him also acknowledge Germany might want to keep its last nuclear plants running as a way to reduce its natural gas use; it'd be patriotic to support keeping such plants running here, as well, given what's happening with natural gas use and emissions where they're closing.
Will Bunch proposed something simpler in the Philadelphia Inquirer today, calling for us to keep doing what we've been doing propelled by the pandemic, but now propelled by our desire for peace in Europe - working from home.
As Bunch wrote, "The exact numbers are unclear, but some studies say telecommuting at the current rate reduces U.S. gasoline use by 30 million gallons per day."
I'd personally propose cutting way back on flying, as well. I haven't flown now in more than two years - after a string of Platinum years - and don't see many reasons to resume, and now see a fresh reason not to.
But Bunch lamented that competing political pressures around the pandemic, energy prices, climate and Putin have Biden pinwheeling from one pledge and priority to another - including last week calling for workers to go back to their offices.
"Talk about mixed messages!" Bunch tweeted today. "Just days before Biden's righteous Russian oil ban, the president urged remote workers to head back to the office, which would mean a surge in driving and gas use."
In a way, just about everyone in the world is pinwheeling for the moment, everyone except Vladimir Putin.
Putin is unwaveringly and dangerously walking a straight and unnerving path that has all who are paying attention deeply worried.
I'll close by encouraging you to listen to the March 1 Oxford Union conversation about Putin with Sir Robert John Sawers, former chief of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service MI6 and a frequent "plus one" in meetings former Prime Minister Tony Blair held with Putin. He sees the same change in Putin's demeanor that unnerved Rod Schoonover, a former U.S. national intelligence officer I had on a recent Sustain What webcast:
On that cheery note, stay engaged, work for a world in which energy access is universal and sustainable and not tied to despots, support Ukrainians now (see the link below), and spread love and unselfishness as much as you can.
Hope is a verb
The prime need right now is to help those in peril in Ukraine, or on the run. This Ukrainian aid and information hub still seems an ideal starting point.
click to help Ukraine and Ukrainians
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Parting tweet
Salwan Georges, a Washington Post photographer, took this timeless bit of video in Odessa: