$6.00 per gallon gasoline? Looks like it’s happening.
In my novel series, “Backlash,” I examine how political philosophy influences energy policy and how manipulation of energy policy affects ordinary people in their daily lives. In the first book of the series, a punitive gasoline tax on top of existing fuel taxes, increases the price of a gallon of gasoline to $6.00 per gallon. We are seeing prices in that neighborhood today.
Vladimir Putin’s anachronistic war of conquest in Ukraine has thrown a spotlight on United States’ energy policy, as wars often tend to do. Energy policy is linked to foreign policy with a chain that can’t be broken.
Democrats, and specifically Biden administration officials, have put themselves in a double bind. On the one hand they haven’t been bashful about saying they welcomed higher gas taxes, because nothing is more important than getting the US off fossil fuels like oil and coal. They’ve been saying things like that ever since Hillary Clinton torpedoed her presidential election chances by telling coal miners they would lose their jobs if she was elected.
The other side of the double bind is the fact that the 90+% of Americans who drive gasoline or diesel-powered vehicles tend to vote Democrats out of office when gas prices skyrocket on their watch, as they have since the day Biden took office.
Several Biden administration personnel have taken the opportunity of the Russian war of conquest to say, “See, everyone needs to buy an electric car, then you don’t have to worry about the price of gas.”
But, we should all respond, what about the price of electricity?
The proponents of getting rid of fossil fuels never seem to mention that, as if driving electric cars was free. The fact is, charging an electric car at a public charging station can cost MORE than the price of a tank of gas, even now when gas prices are elevated.
A recent article highlights this fact, pointing out that charging an electric car at a Level 3 charging station, which allows you to fully charge in 20 minutes instead of the 8 hours required for a Level 2 station, will cost about $2,100 per year if driven 15,000 miles. A similar vehicle charged with a Level 2 charger would cost about $650 annually. Either way it isn’t free!
Of course, even 20 minutes is going to feel like a long time to spend filling your car to someone accustomed to maybe 3 minutes at the gas station. Level 2 chargers can be installed in homes, so a car can charge overnight, but you can’t forget to charge or you won’t be going to work in the morning! But a Level 2 charger costs between $700 and $2000. So that’s an up front expense that has to be factored in. Forget about having a Level 3 charger of your very own, unless you have a spare $50,000!
Another fact that seems lost on the green cheerleaders in the Biden administration is that electric cars are a LOT more expensive than gasoline cars. Of course I almost always buy used and drive a car until the wheels come off to keep that expense low and I know I’m not alone. If you buy a used electric car, it will likely cost more AND, if it’s time to replace the battery pack, that can cost as much as $20,000 not including labor, according to the article. Batteries need to be replaced after 8 years or 100,000 miles. So if you spend $25,000 on a used electric car, then have to replace the battery pack, you could have spent $50,000 on a used car.
And of course, if more and more people take the Biden administration’s advice and go electric, that will increase demand, which will drive up the price of electricity. “Green” energy is not immune to basic economics, after all. Add to that, the stated objective is to stop using coal and, since 60% of America’s electricity is generated in coal-fired plants, and another 30% comes from nuclear and oil, which are also green no-nos, you have a convergence of economic forces that spell disaster. Currently, 10% of electricity is generated via wind and solar, so wind and solar generation will have to increase more than 10 fold to reach the point of satisfying our demand for electricity TODAY, never mind tomorrow.
Photo by Kindel Media from Pexels
