Shapiro: Environmentalist NIMBYism Means Foreign Policy Disaster
Ben Shapiro
March 9, 2022
This week, as the Russian invasion of Ukraine dragged on, gas prices in America soared to their highest levels since 2008, increasing over 57 cents in just one month. In parts of the United States, gas at the pump costs in excess of $7 per gallon.
The answer to this challenge is obvious: The United States ought to open the drilling floodgates. In 2019, net imports of crude oil and finished products were exceeded by American exports of such products for the first time on record. That was due to the massive increase in American production thanks to fracking over the course of the prior decade. This did not mean that the United States had stopped importing crude oil. But as of 2019, we were importing some 3.8 million barrels of crude oil per day, radically down from over 10 million in 2005. More production, generally speaking, means less dependence.
And that matters, as we’re now seeing. Europe, which is far more dependent on foreign oil than the United States, has seen its energy prices skyrocket since the Russian invasion. That’s why Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced, “Europe has deliberately exempted energy supplies from Russia from sanctions. Supplying Europe with energy for heat generation, mobility, electricity supply and industry cannot be secured in any other way at the moment.” U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson agreed: “I think there are different dependencies in different countries, and we have to be mindful of that.”
https://heartlanddailynews.com/2022/03/shapiro-environmentalist-nimbyism-means-foreign-policy-disaster/
