Jayapal: Gas Prices Will Go Up 'No Matter What' and We Need to Move Off Fossil Fuels

On Saturday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Cross Connection,” Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) argued that we have to move off of fossil fuels so we’re “free of the ability of dictators to blackmail us over oil and gas,” and that increasing domestic oil production wouldn’t keep gas prices from increasing because “no matter what we do, prices of gas are going to go up.”

Jayapal said, “[I]f we ever want to be truly free of the ability of dictators to blackmail us over oil and gas, we should be investing right here at home in renewable energy technologies. We should be weaning ourselves off fossil fuels so that this situation that we’re in does not happen again, in terms of feeling like we can’t stop Russian oil and gas imports because it’s going to drive up prices here at home. By the way, no matter what we do, prices of gas are going to go up. So, any Republicans who try to say that it’s drill, baby, drill, and that solves the problem, it’s wrong. That is not the case. We are going to see gas prices rise, but it is in service to trying to quell a dictator.”

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