The Russian Pivot — Not the Military One

“Look, the bottom line is this,” President Biden said at the White House. “Between ramping up production in the short term and driving down demand in the long term, we can free ourselves from our dependence on imported oil from across the world.” What a quandary. The U.S. needs oil. Europe needs Russian gas. Politically, they can’t say it without destroying the climate change narrative they’ve been ginning up since An Inconvenient Truth ran amok in 2006. Not that it matters; most projections for energy independence scoot to 2030 and beyond. It doesn’t take a lot of math to conclude the president will likely have shed his mortal coil when that year dawns upon us. And with higher gas prices and a recession swirling about the news cycle, the midterms may clarify policy questions all by themselves. Today, we’re focused on a different kind of inconvenient truth.