What’s the Real Solution to High Gas Prices?
For decades, we’ve let Big Oil and the Highway Lobby write our energy and transportation policies, making our nation more oil-dependent and auto-dependant than any other country. This has left our workers and families with few options but to use their products – gasoline and roads. For transportation, most people have little choice but to get in their cars and fill their gas tanks with gasoline or diesel fuel. As a result, we are at the mercy of a global oil monopoly that we can do little to control.
Gratuitous oil drilling and highway building are a central part of a failed energy and transportation policy that has not reduced high gas prices; it has locked us into paying them. What we need is immediate relief for working families and real, long-term solutions that will permanently protect American families from high gas prices by ending our addiction to oil.
That’s why Friends of the Earth joined with Representatives Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), Ellen Tauscher (D-CA), and Chris Shays (R-CT) to support the bipartisan Transportation and Housing Choices for Gas Price Relief Act (H.R.6495). This bill provides immediate relief by helping Americans reduce their commuting costs and assisting local governments in providing more frequent, more affordable public transportation service. It provides long-term solutions over time by helping communities invest in public transportation, bicycle, and pedestrian alternatives, and by increasing housing options near public transportation.
This legislation shows that fighting global warming and saving money go hand in hand, because the cheapest, cleanest gallon of gasoline is the one you don’t have to use. By letting more people leave their cars in the driveway and skip the gas pump altogether, we can cut our gas costs and greenhouse gasses at the same time.