Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. He had previously expressed support for higher gas prices for consumers, which he argued would drive the market toward electric vehicles.
Kennedy argued in several media appearances and at least one speech in 2003 that eliminating subsidies to oil companies and requiring them to absorb some of the costs of oil production would reduce the “real price” of gasoline to $22 per gallon.
“The number one thing we should do as a nation is get away from foreign oil, whatever it takes, and I think if we had true markets, we would be spending $5.2 trillion a year subsidizing the carbon industry, and that doesn’t include the $8 trillion we spend on wars primarily to protect oil pipelines,” Kennedy said. During an Interview Last year.
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. expressed support for higher gas prices to shift the market toward electric vehicles. (Getty Images)
“If those companies were forced to internalize those costs, the real price they would pay for gasoline is about $22 a gallon, and we have to find other ways to avoid that using American initiative and our industrial ingenuity,” he said.
Kennedy made a similar argument During a speech in 2016 In a lecture at the University of California, Berkeley, he told the audience that if oil companies were “forced” to internalize the costs of the industry’s impact on nearby populations, such as health care costs, crop damage, damage from acid rain, and other pollution costs, this would be reflected in the price of oil.
He said, “We’ll pay $12 at the pump, and we’ll send the right signals to the market. And the market will say, we need an alternative to the gasoline car because every American will say, ‘Well, it costs about 0.30 cents per mile to drive an electric car, and once you buy a gasoline car it costs about $4 per mile.'”
“We will bring about change very quickly, and you would encourage all those who are working on increasing efficiency in lithium-ion batteries to consider different battery systems.”
He further argued that the federal government should create an “ecosystem” that encourages the most efficient technologies available and “penalizes the inefficiencies of oil and coal.”
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks at the Libertarian National Convention on May 24, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Kennedy also wrote similarly 2014 article for the Huffington Post “If the oil industry had to pay the true cost of bringing its product to market, gas at the pump would cost more than $12 a gallon.”
“Most Americans will be rushing to buy electric cars,” he wrote. “With cheap, fast and efficient electric vehicles and low-cost disruptive technologies like solar and wind technologies poised to displace Big Oil, the industry is using its control over the Republican Party to permanently embed itself in our economy while destroying science, American democracy, free market capitalism and our sacred faith in a moral God.”
Kennedy Featured on CNN in 2003 And it was then argued that removing subsidies for oil companies to the extent that consumers had to pay more at the pump would trigger a market reaction.
“There is no stronger proponent of free market capitalism than me, and I don’t think the government should be telling people what to buy or what Detroit should make. The problem is that the free market has been distorted in this case,” he said. “We pay the oil industry $6 to $15 billion in direct subsidies each year. That allows big oil companies to artificially depress the price of gasoline to about $1.89 a gallon, as it is today.”
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. addresses attendees during a campaign rally at Brazos Hall on May 13, 2024 in Austin, Texas. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
“If we were paying the right price for gasoline, we’d be paying the same price as in Europe and elsewhere, $5 a gallon. Then Americans would be screaming at Detroit to give us cars that get 40 miles per gallon. And Detroit would be giving us SUVs that get 40 miles per gallon.”
Kennedy was asked why auto manufacturers did not build more electric vehicles at the time if they could make billions of dollars by luring consumers unhappy with gas prices, but Kennedy argued there was no demand for these at the time because gas prices, which averaged less than $2 at the time, were “still relatively low.”
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“If we sold it at more than $2.50 a gallon, they would build 40-mile-per-gallon SUVs in two or three years and we would buy them,” he said. “And the problem is that we have a distortion in our free market caused by these massive subsidies to the oil industry.”
Kennedy’s campaign told Fox News Digital that “Mr. Kennedy believes the transition to clean energy should never come at the expense of those least able to afford it.”
