That is, high market prices for petroleum will fuel the clean energy transition without the government having to take any action.
Biden seems reluctant to ask people to make any sacrifice at all, he's always looking for the easy way out. Perhaps he thinks asking for sacrifices is borrowing against legitimacy he doesn't have, but asking for sacrifices might work the other way: "Don't ask what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."
I don't know how this can be said any clearer. People who are facing real poverty and worried about being in breadlines for perhaps the first time (assuming that there's any bread available given that the entire system for making, processing, and transporting food depends on fuel and people are already talking about potential global famine) aren't going to wax poetic about the vague climate change predictions and the sacrifice needed when their families are scared and desperate.
The US is particularly oil hungry but there should be no illusion that humanity or any nation will use less energy today than it used yesterday. The only salvation would be alternative forms of energy, not elevating energy to a luxury good. If that happens wealth in developed countries will quickly melt.
Poor, hungry or cold people don't care about the environment. We already saw heavy deterioration of ecological goals due to prices and certain conflicts.
You'd better be praying that some billionaire invests in
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injectio...
because that's the only answer that people who think they are poor will tolerate.
A really bad economy will kill millions, perhaps even billions, and ruin the health of the planet far easier than anything else as society breaks down and people resort to depleting available resources far more rapidly and even stealing and ruining infrastructure to try and survive. We know what happens when people starve: there's no debate there.
But there's decades and decades of climate change predictions that have proven to be laughably false. Depending on how old you are, you'd have been subject to predictions about everything from a new ice age caused by pollution, to rapid global warming that would cause the ice caps to be long-gone by now or superstorms that would render much of the world uninhabitable, to acid rain making cities unlivable.
I've somehow survived all of that horror, and I'm fine taking my chances.
> You'd better be praying that some billionaire invests in....
If your solution is along these lines, then I'd say that prioritizing a healthy economy that can sustain life and have the resources to come up with these solutions is vital.
