Sometimes the present looks like the past, only worse.
Just a year ago, Americans were hoarding toilet paper. Everyone acknowledged it was just panic buying. But that didn’t stop us. For months, when a store did get a delivery, shoppers cleared those shelves within hours. There must be millions of Americans still with closets full of TP.
This year, the product we are panic buying is gasoline.The shutdown of the Colonial Pipeline created a short-lived shortage, and many reacted by stockpiling all the fuel they could.
That was a problem for me. I learned of the shortage on a Tuesday when I stopped in the middle of Tennessee. The attendant told me I was lucky to have stopped at her outlet; nearby stations were already running out as people filled their tanks and their gas cans. Luckily, I was able to get enough gas to get to Nashville and back to Richmond. But on Wednesday, getting gas required stops at almost 10 stations to find one that still had fuel.
One person who should be happy about the shortages is President Biden. After all, he’s made it clear he’d prefer to see us use less oil. On Inauguration Day, for example, Biden couldn’t wait to shut down construction on the Keystone XL pipeline out of Canada. “Leaving the Keystone XL pipeline permit in place would not be consistent with my Administration’s economic and climate imperatives,” his executive order explained.
But faced with an actual crisis, he wants pipelines flowing again. “This is a whole-of-government response to get more fuel more quickly to where it’s needed and to limit the pain being felt by American customers,” Biden announced on May 13. It’s a nice soundbite, but we’d be better off with an “all of the above” approach, empowering the public and private sectors to boost all sources of energy.
This crisis and the Texas deep freeze a few months ago highlight that we still need fossil fuels such as gasoline and natural gas, and that we need better supply lines. By all means, let’s make pipelines obsolete by developing using more solar and wind energy. But let’s acknowledge pipelines aren’t obsolete yet.
Also, let’s admit that the federal government’s red tape is a big obstacle to progress. There’s a reason the Colonial Pipeline dates to the 1960s: In recent decades, federal overregulation has stymied energy infrastructure projects.
Consider attempts to obtain clearance for long distance power lines. The book “Superpower” explains how a private company, Clean Line Energy Partners, was eager to build several power lines to deliver wind-generated electricity from Oklahoma to Tennessee. The company invested its own money in the project. Yet activists were able to use regulation on the state and federal level to kill most of those privately funded, zero emissions energy projects.
An “all of the above” strategy would also include hydro projects, such as the massive TVA dams built during the FDR administration to control flooding along the Tennessee River and deliver power to the south. These dams are still a zero carbon dioxide source of more than 10 percent of TVA’s electricity. Yet when Biden was vice president, the Obama administration opposed hydro projects. “You will never see another federal dam,” then Interior Deputy Assistant Secretary Deanna Archuleta told a conference in 2009. Has Biden changed his mind? If so, another TVA would be a useful infrastructure project to propose. If not, why not?
The president’s response to the gas shortage seemed to focus on the wrong problem. “I want to update you on what our administration is doing to accelerate this process, to mitigate shortages, and to protect you from price gouging — to protect the American people from price gouging,” Biden announced.
But by opposing price increases, the administration was working to prevent Americans from having the information we needed. If prices had jumped immediately, only people who needed gas would have filled up.
For example, I may have had to pay $5 per gallon, but I would have been relieved to be able to obtain gas hundreds of miles from home. People who didn’t actually need fuel to get through the week would have waited, because they would have assumed that the price would soon come back down. Instead, stations couldn’t raise prices amid panic buying, and they simply ran out.
Americans should be optimistic about the future. Vaccinations are allowing the economy to open back up and pent-up demand is boosting businesses. Washington could help by passing a bipartisan infrastructure bill that invests in building things, especially more pipelines and power lines. We don’t need to hoard. We simply need more energy. The Colonial Pipeline is a warning. Let’s not make this mistake again.
Richard Tucker is a communications professional in the Richmond area. He blogs at evenbetterwords.com and has taught a class in persuasive writing at George Washington University.
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