Higher gas prices make small dent in emissions

As Congress and now the Supreme Court stymie the Biden administration’s efforts to curb climate change, one thing the president doesn’t want — sky high gas prices — actually is nibbling away at emissions of heat-trapping gas.

Gas prices in much of the United States shot past the $5 a gallon mark last month before a slight drop, and Americans have responded by driving a bit less, two sets of data show. June gas sales are about 5% below pre-pandemic 2019 levels and 2.6% below a year ago, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Americans in April, the last month data was available, drove 6% fewer miles than the same month in 2019, according to transportation analyst Michael Sivak, a former University of Michigan professor who is a longtime tracker of driving habits. That 6% drop is tiny compared with the 40% plunge in driving miles in April 2020 as the pandemic kicked in.

Yet, a 6% drop in driving roughly translates to only a 1% drop in overall U.S. carbon emissions, Sivak said. The U.S. climate goal is to cut carbon emissions in half by 2030 compared with 2005 levels.

“High fuel prices are a really difficult thing because they’re a double-edged sword,” said Samantha Gross, director of the energy security and climate initiative at the centrist Brookings Institution. “So prices that are high and expected to stay that way have more of a longer term ability to cut demand and my guess is the administration wouldn’t mind seeing that, but the problem is that people hate it.”

High gas prices are “unequivocally” good for fighting climate change because people use less fossil fuel, but the poorest people, who don’t have other options also “suffer the most,” said climate economist Solomon Hsiang, director of the Climate Impact Lab at the University of California, Berkeley.