Passing the Build Back Better Act will spell the end of oil use worldwide, Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey claimed at a Wednesday press conference.
“The oil era will be over if we pass” the reconciliation package,” Markey said, adding that increasing the use of green energy will decrease the power of Russia and Saudi Arabia. “If we’re afraid of Russia’s agenda right now, Saudi Arabia’s control over our foreign policy in the Middle East, there’s one sure and certain thing that we can do and it’s over the next month. And that is to make sure that we have both of those countries and others like them, on a pathway to bankruptcy.”
“We will be able to say to each and every one of those countries that business as usual has ended.”
Markey, a sponsor of the Green New Deal, argued that passing the climate provisions in the Build Back Better Act is a “matter of life and death.” He also slammed oil companies for raising prices in response to supply-chain interruptions and a decrease in their stocks. Gas prices have increased $1.50 year over year.
“Right now, oil companies are taking American consumers and shaking them upside down at gas pumps all across our country, while simultaneously sending a signal to the Republican Party to kill Build Back Better, to kill a transition to all electric vehicles, to plug-in hybrids, to battery storage technologies, that will lead inexorably, inevitably to the demise of those companies controlling the agenda of our nation,” he added.
At the COP26 United Nations climate conference, President Joe Biden blamed nations in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) for price increases. Critics argue that Biden’s energy policies, including shutting down the Keystone XL pipeline and banning fracking and oil drilling on public lands, have caused the energy crisis. (RELATED: Biden Mulls Shutting Down Pipeline That Supplies Energy To Midwest)
To punish oil companies and OPEC countries for not drilling, Markey urged Biden to release the U.S.’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The reserve, a government facility containing 714 million barrels of oil, can be deployed to stabilize gas prices.
Press Secretary Jen Psaki has claimed that high oil prices are evidence that more left-wing energy policies are needed.
“The rise in gas prices over the long term makes an even stronger case for doubling down our investment and our focus on clean energy options,” she said at her Nov. 12 press conference.