As gas prices are still sky-high, one State Department office tweeted that he actually prefers high has prices because it means less driving and lower carbon emissions.
“I prefer high gas prices = less driving, less CO2,” Senior State Department Foreign Service Officer Alan Eyre tweeted on Friday on a now-deleted Twitter account, Fox News reported.
According to Fox, Eyre was responding to a Twitter post from President Joe Biden about prices going down from the previous peak.
“Today, America’s drivers will spend on average $30 less per month on gas than they did during peak prices,” Biden tweeted.
Today, America’s drivers will spend on average $30 less per month on gas than they did during peak prices.
For families like the one I grew up in, ending the month with a little extra in your pocketbook counts for something.
— President Biden (@POTUS) July 22, 2022
Though prices may be down from previous peaks, the national gas price average is still $4.36, AAA reported. On Jan. 20, 2021, the day Biden was sworn in, the average gas price was $2.39 a gallon, according to a Fox News report from June 4.
When Eyre tweeted about high gas prices being a good thing, many harshly criticized him for praising an economic difficulty that is hurting Americans.
Former Republican California state Senate candidate Ron Bassilian called Eyre a “ghoul,” and pointed out that gas demand is “inelastic,” Fox reported.
Have you been trying to drive less due to high gas prices?
Eyre responded to Bassilian saying, “Perhaps, but I don’t think it is inelastic and I remember in the 1970s the oil embargo led to a massive increase in renewables.”
Before Eyre deleted his Twitter account, he described himself in the bio section as “gov’t bureaucrat” and used the phrase “kindness, always kindness,” according to Fox.
Bassilian played off those words in his response.
“Be kind?” Basslian wrote, according to Fox. “Perhaps be kind to the billions of people left high and dry in this situation you praise. Saying a famine is a good way to start a diet is not kind.”
After criticism, Eyre deleted his Twitter account.
These comments also come after Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg requested that Congress subsidize electric vehicle purchases as a response to Americans struggling with gas prices, the New York Post reported.
“The more pain we are all experiencing from the high price of gas, the more benefit there is for those who can access electric vehicles,” Buttigieg told the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
With comments like this from Buttigieg and Eyre, many are unhappy with how Democrats are responding to the gas price crisis.
In the past months Democrats have tried to spin that high gas prices could be helpful for pushing the American public towards using more sustainable energy and transportation.
However, many Americans cannot afford electric vehicles and cannot cut back on driving just because gas prices are high.
The average cost of electric vehicles is about $56,000, according to the personal finance firm Lantern Credit, about $10,000 more than the industry average. That is beyond what many Americans with middle and low incomes can afford for a car.
Meanwhile, there has been no major shift in driving habits of Americans, even when gas prices are this high, Time reported at the beginning of July.
This means that Americans are simply spending more money on gas, not driving less and slowing carbon emissions, as Eyre suggested.
