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      The Great Chicago Gas Giveaway and the Return of Stunt Philanthropy

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      Grand shows of largess may be back in style. Recently, driving on the North Side of Chicago, I found myself stuck behind a line of cars long enough that I could not, at first, tell what was causing it. It was only minutes later, after I was able to switch lanes and pull ahead, that I saw the cars were waiting at a gas station. Had something in the news set off a flurry of panic buying? I turned on the radio and soon learned that the people I saw were not, in fact, buying fuel. They were hoping to get some free.This was a giveaway orchestrated by Willie Wilson, a Chicago businessman known locally as a rags-to-riches success story and a serial long-shot political candidate, having run to be mayor of the city (in 2015), president of the United States (2016), mayor of Chicago again (2019) and U.S. senator (2020). On March 17, the day I passed that gas line, he gave away $200,000 worth of fuel at 10 stations around the city, capped at $50 per car. A week later he did it again, this time buying about a million dollars’ worth of gas at 48 stations.Wouldn’t it have been just as effective — as charity, not political theater — to hand out prepaid gas cards?On the morning of the second giveaway, I tuned in to a livestreamed news conference Wilson held at a station in Cicero, a suburb that borders Chicago’s West Side. The more I thought about the giveaways, the more absurd they came to seem. Even setting aside my wish that Wilson had used some of his money to support public transit (a much more robust and environmentally healthy response to oil-price instability), the logistics seemed offensively nonsensical. If the point was to give 24,000 drivers $50 of gas each, wouldn’t it have been just as effective — as charity, not political theater — to hand out prepaid gas cards? Drivers lined up hours early, and in some cases overnight, creating carbon-spewing, commute-snarling traffic jams. Police officers were deployed to manage the lines, meaning that what appeared to be an individual act of philanthropy was in fact partly subsidized by taxpayers. When a CBS Chicago journalist asked Wilson if he would help cover those manpower costs, he argued that the taxes he paid over the years were more than enough. Asked about gas cards, he said: “Don’t nobody tell me how to spend my money. You do gas cards, people come up with counterfeit gas cards, and it doesn’t work right.”Wilson was expected to announce another run for mayor shortly, and if this looked a little like a vote-buying stunt, plenty of others lined up to reap its benefits. As the news conference began, Wilson stood off to one side, watching cheerfully as person after person stepped forward to celebrate his efforts. Richard Boykin, Wilson’s candidate of choice for Cook County board president, served as a kind of M.C. There was a prayer led by Cicero’s police and fire department chaplain. The town president spoke, expressing his admiration for Wilson’s generosity, his disgust at gas prices and some quick thoughts on energy policy (“All they got to do is open up the pipeline. Why don’t they open up the pipeline?”). Representative Danny K. Davis talked about Wilson’s long history of philanthropy. Cicero’s police chief spoke. Someone from the town’s board of trustees spoke, then a local reverend, then a gas-station owner, then the town president’s wife, then another gas-station owner, then a representative from the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH coalition.Finally it was Wilson’s turn. The government wasn’t moving fast enough, he said. “If gasoline prices go up again,” he said, “then we’re going to be compelled to do this again.” As for the people who needed the fuel, he said: “I’m enjoying it more than they’re enjoying it. Because the Lord has blessed me to be able to do it.”It wasn’t long ago that gestures like Wilson’s felt like products of a bygone era of American life, when it was common for the wealthy to sprinkle money down on the masses in ways that, in addition to doing real good, might distract from their rapacious business practices and make them look like champions of the common man. The political “machines” that ran many cities and states had their own versions of this game, dispensing money and jobs to buy votes and curry public favor. But at some point these approaches came into disrepute, at least in their most overt manifestations. Respectable charities put some degree of separation, however cosmetic, between wealthy donors and good work. Respectable politicians are expected to back helpful policies, campaign by explaining their benefits and, sure, show up at ribbon-cutting ceremonies to claim credit for every dollar funneled toward constituents. But anything that looks too much like a handout from the powerful risks seeming like the stuff of robber barons and back-alley politics.Maybe that’s changing. As of 2018, a stray tweet at Elon Musk about the water supply in Flint, Mich., could draw a response pledging to “fund fixing the water in any house in Flint that has water contamination above FDA levels.” The billionaire Robert Smith finished a 2019 Morehouse College commencement speech by saying he would cover student debt for the entire graduating class. (A year later, he would pay millions to the federal authorities to settle a tax-evasion case.) Similar exercises extend into politics. During Wilson’s 2019 mayoral campaign, he gave out money at a South Side church and City Hall, saying he wanted to help people with their property-tax bills. (He argued that because this money went through his nonprofit, and not his mayoral campaign, it was not subject to campaign-finance laws; the Chicago Board of Elections agreed.) That same year, Andrew Yang, who was running for the Democratic presidential nomination, promised to give 10 families $1,000 a month each as a proof-of-concept for a universal basic income. After leaving the race, he started a nonprofit that gave 1,000 Bronx residents $1,000 each; less than a year later, he was running for mayor of New York. You can even make a show of distributing public money, as politicians have long done with things like tax rebates and stimulus checks; in 2020, days before the first individual pandemic-relief checks went out, White House officials scrambled to make sure Donald Trump’s name was printed on them.Wilson’s willingness to drop big cash on gas giveaways says little about how he would actually govern, or address such costs overall. It is intended to broadcast that he cares, and that he acts. This explains, in part, why so many public officials participated in his news conference. (When, in the popular consciousness, government means out-of-touch inefficiency, even insiders want to brand themselves as outsiders.) But like so many shows of generosity, there is a gamble here. Some may see you as a populist savior, but others may be convinced that you’re a huckster, more interested in self-aggrandizement than in actually changing anything. Which reaction prevails will depend: How much frustration and desperation are out there?As political battles over pandemic relief, inflation and gas prices continue, I wager that we’ll see even more exercises like Wilson’s. In the week after Wilson’s news conference, Chicago’s current mayor, Lori Lightfoot, held one of her own, announcing an actual city program that will distribute $7.5 million in prepaid gas cards and $5 million in prepaid public-transit rides. The program has received nothing close to the media coverage of Wilson’s gas giveaway. (Wilson, for his part, had the self-confidence to dismiss Lightfoot’s program as a “political stunt.”) One response, for anyone displeased by this disparity, would be to blame sensationalistic media and despair. The other would be to start cooking up good stunts of your own.Source photographs: Screen grabs from YouTubePeter C. Baker is a freelance writer in Evanston, Ill., and the author of the novel “Planes,” to be published by Knopf in May. More

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      How Conflicts of Interest Are Hurting the Climate

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      Bill McKibben, the environmental activist, explains.From “The Daily” newsletter: One big idea on the news, from the team that brings you “The Daily” podcast. You can sign up for the newsletter here.Conflicts of interest are, by their nature, often obscured. A financial tie here, a family connection there, concealed by the division of public and private life. But what happens when those conflicting interests inform national — and international — policy?In the executive branch, the Trump presidency was dominated by this question. In the judicial branch, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is under pressure to recuse himself from cases regarding the 2020 election and its aftermath after The Times revealed that Virginia Thomas, his wife, was involved in efforts to overturn the vote. And in the legislative branch, Senator Joe Manchin, Democrat of West Virginia, is facing increasing scrutiny of his financial ties to the coal industry.The influence of money and corporations in the federal government is a “growing problem,” said Aaron D. Hill, associate professor of management at the University of Florida. Nearly one in eight stock trades by members of Congress intersects with legislation, and research shows that members of the House and Senate generate “abnormally higher returns” on their investments. Still, Congress members are subject to less stringent (or, at times, unenforced) oversight on conflicts of interests than those in other branches of government.But what is the impact of this lack of oversight? As you heard on Tuesday’s show, at every step of his political career, Manchin helped a West Virginia power plant that is the sole customer of his private coal business. Along the way, he blocked ambitious climate action.So we reached out to Bill McKibben, environmental activist, professor and author, to ask him about the rippling effects of Manchin’s actions on the climate movement. His responses have been lightly edited.You recently wrote: “The climate movement has come very close — one senator close — to beating the political power of Big Oil. But that’s not quite close enough.” How have Manchin’s actions affected the broader climate movement?For Biden and his climate efforts, Manchin’s opposition seems to be excruciating. The Democrats can’t do anything to offend him for fear of forfeiting his vote. So they’ve largely given up executive authority on climate, but he never quite delivers the vote. Now he seems to be saying that if he gives some money for renewables, it has to come with money for fossil fuel as well. I’d say Big Oil has never made an investment with a higher rate of return.On climate, at least so far, we might have been better off without control of the Senate, because then at least we could have gotten what executive action could accomplish.In the case of Manchin, congressional conflict-of-interest loopholes have consequences well beyond American borders. What equity concerns does this illuminate?Ginni Thomas and the 2020 Presidential ElectionThe conservative activist and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has come under scrutiny for her involvement in efforts to keep Donald J. Trump in power.A Long Crusade: The Thomases battled for years for a more conservative America. This is how far Ginni Thomas went after the 2020 election.Her Texts: Weeks before Jan. 6, Ms. Thomas sent a flurry of texts imploring Mr. Trump’s chief of staff to take steps to overturn the vote.Embracing Conspiracies: An examination of Ms. Thomas’s texts shows how firmly she was embedded in the fringe of right-wing politics.Will Justice Thomas Recuse?: Legal experts say Ms. Thomas’s texts are enough to require his recusal from election cases, but Chief Justice John Roberts cannot force it.We’re not just gutting America’s energy future to please one corrupt coal baron; he’s managed to upend global climate policy, too. The plan for Glasgow, I think, was for Biden to arrive with Build Back Better in his hip pocket, slam it down on the table and tell the Chinese and Indian delegations to match it. Instead he arrived with nothing, gave a limp speech — I’m not certain he went to sleep afterward, but the conference did.In 2020, fossil fuel pollution killed about three times as many people as Covid-19 did. This statistic can feel overwhelming. As an activist, what are the most effective strategies you see for generating momentum and a sense of urgency in addressing the climate crisis?The sad thing is, we’ve generated a ton of it. It was the biggest voting issue for Democratic primary voters, and the issue where polling showed Trump’s position was furthest off from the mainstream. But the desire of people doesn’t reliably translate into political action in our system anymore. There’s never been a purer case of vested interest thwarting necessary action. As the Exxon lobbyist told a hidden camera last summer, Manchin was the “kingmaker.” Or, alternately, the man who melts the ice and raises the sea.What is making you feel optimistic about climate action lately?Well, it’s the perfect moment for action, and some places we’re starting to see it. Vladimir Putin has reminded us that the daily carnage of pollution and the existential threat of climate damage are joined by the fact that fossil fuel underwrites despotism more often than not. It could be a pivot point, and, in the case of the E.U., may turn out to be. But so far here, Biden and his team haven’t really messaged it that way. They’ve been way more focused on carrying water for Big Oil.But I can tell you that more and more people are getting it, and not just the young people who have been in the lead of the climate fight. Our crew of over-60s at Third Act [a climate action group focused on mobilizing “experienced Americans”] are joining in large numbers this pledge to take on the banks that back the fossil fuel industry. After the record temperatures in the Antarctic combined with the missile strikes on Mariupol, people have had enough.From the Daily team: Remember cheap oil?In April 2020, we explored why the cost of a barrel of oil dropped into the negatives.Bing Guan/BloombergThis week, we sat down with Michael Simon Johnson, a senior producer, for our series in which we ask Daily producers and editors to tell us about their favorite episodes that they’ve worked on.Michael’s pick is “A Glut of Oil,” from the spring of 2020. It’s an episode that looks back at half a century of American foreign and energy policy to explain how, at the time, the price of a barrel of oil dropped into the negatives. And it’s one that has particular resonance today as parts of the world grapple with how to reduce reliance on Russian oil amid the war in Ukraine.What was “A Glut of Oil” about?It was an episode we did in April 2020, when oil prices dropped into the negatives. It required some context, so a huge portion of the episode ticked through history, starting with the Arab-Israeli War in the ’70s, the U.S. stepping in to provide weapons — not unlike the way we are with Ukraine right now — and Arab countries retaliating by cutting off our oil supply, causing an energy crisis. It felt important to start there because that is where it changes our foreign policy. The whole point of energy independence was so that we can exercise control over our foreign policy and not have other countries dictate who we help and why — or where we invade.We spent 50 years trying to solve that problem and we succeeded. Then the pandemic happened and we literally had the opposite problem — what happens when we have too much oil?Why is it one of your favorite episodes that you’ve worked on?What it did for me was take all of these aspects of American history that I don’t tend to think of as related and it drew a line between them; they’re actually all part of a single continuum. I re-evaluated modern American history through the lens of oil, and I saw so many more connections because of that than I would have seen otherwise. Going back in history allowed us to go on this amazing journey through history and through archival tape.How important is it for there to be historical context in climate episodes?Historical context is one of the first tools we turn to when we’re making an episode in general, but it’s not specific to climate episodes. We are generally trying to arm listeners with the tools they need to understand and to have more context for what is happening. We want people to understand what is happening as some part of a continuum.On The Daily this weekMonday: The story of Iryna Baramidze, one of the millions of Ukrainians who have fled their country amid the war.Tuesday: Inside the investigation into Manchin’s conflicts of interest.Wednesday: How Justice Thomas and his wife, Ginni, came to be at the heart of the conservative movement.Thursday: Why this year’s midterms could have the fairest congressional map in a generation.Friday: What is happening inside the besieged Ukrainian port city of Mariupol?That’s it for the Daily newsletter. See you next week.Have thoughts about the show? Tell us what you think at thedaily@nytimes.com.Were you forwarded this newsletter? Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox.Love podcasts? Join The New York Times Podcast Club on Facebook. More

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      Republicans Wrongly Blame Biden for Rising Gas Prices

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      They have pointed to the Biden administration’s policies on the Keystone XL pipeline and certain oil and gas leases, which have had little impact on prices.WASHINGTON — As gas prices hit a high this week, top Republican lawmakers took to the airwaves and the floors of Congress with misleading claims that pinned the blame on President Biden and his energy policies.Mr. Biden warned that his ban on imports of Russian oil, gas and coal, announced on Tuesday as a response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, would cause gas prices to rise further. High costs are expected to last as long as the confrontation does.While Republican lawmakers supported the ban, they asserted that the pain at the pump long preceded the war in Ukraine. Gas price hikes, they said, were the result of Mr. Biden’s cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline, the temporary halt on new drilling leases on public lands and the surrendering of “energy independence” — all incorrect assertions.Here’s a fact check of their claims.What Was Said“This administration wants to ramp up energy imports from Iran and Venezuela. That is the world’s largest state sponsor of terror and a thuggish South America dictator, respectively. They would rather buy from these people than buy from Texas, Alaska and Pennsylvania.”— Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, in a speech on Tuesday“Democrats want to blame surging prices on Russia. But the truth is, their out-of-touch policies are why we are here in the first place. Remember what happened on Day 1 with one-party rule? The president canceled the Keystone pipeline, and then he stopped new oil and gas leases on federal lands and waters.”— Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California and the minority leader, in a speech on Tuesday“In the four years of the Trump-Pence administration, we achieved energy independence for the first time in 70 years. We were a net exporter of energy. But from very early on, with killing the Keystone pipeline, taking federal lands off the list for exploration, sidelining leases for oil and natural gas — once again, before Ukraine ever happened, we saw rising gasoline prices.”— Former Vice President Mike Pence in an interview on Fox Business on TuesdayThese claims are misleading. The primary reason for rising gas prices over the past year is the coronavirus pandemic and its disruptions to global supply and demand.“Covid changed the game, not President Biden,” said Patrick De Haan, the head of petroleum analysis for GasBuddy, which tracks gasoline prices. “U.S. oil production fell in the last eight months of President Trump’s tenure. Is that his fault? No.”“The pandemic brought us to our knees,” Mr. De Haan added.In the early months of 2020, when the virus took hold, demand for oil dried up and prices plummeted, with the benchmark price for crude oil in the United States falling to negative $37.63 that April. In response, producers in the United States and around the world began decreasing output.As pandemic restrictions loosened worldwide and economies recovered, demand outpaced supply. That was “mostly attributable” to the decision by OPEC Plus, an alliance of oil-producing countries that controls about half the world’s supply, to limit increases in production, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Domestic production also remains below prepandemic levels, as capital spending declined and investors remained reluctant to provide financing to the oil industry.Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has only compounded the issues.“When you throw a war on top of this, this is possibly the worst escalation you can have of this,” said Abhiram Rajendran, the head of oil market research at Energy Intelligence, an energy information company. “You’re literally pouring gasoline on general inflationary pressure.”These factors are largely out of Mr. Biden’s control, experts agreed, though they said he had not exactly sent positive signals to the oil and gas industry and its investors by vowing to reduce emissions and fossil fuel reliance.Mr. De Haan said the Biden administration was “clearly less friendly” to the industry, which may have indirectly affected investor attitudes. But overall, he said, that stance has played a “very, very small role pushing gas prices up.”President Biden announced a ban on imports of Russian oil in response to the country’s invasion of Ukraine.Tom Brenner for The New York TimesMr. Rajendran said the Biden administration had emphasized climate change issues while paying lip service to energy security.“There has been a pretty stark miscalculation of the amount of supply we would need to keep energy prices at affordable levels,” he said. “It was taken for granted. There was too much focus on the energy transition.”But presidents, Mr. Rajendran said, “have very little impact on short-term supply.”“The key relationship to watch is between companies and investors,” he said.It is true that the Biden administration is in talks with Venezuela and Iran over their oil supplies. But the administration is also urging American companies to ramp up production — to the dismay of climate change activists and contrary to Republican lawmakers’ suggestions that the White House is intent on handcuffing domestic producers.Speaking before the National Petroleum Council in December, Jennifer M. Granholm, the energy secretary, told oil companies to “please take advantage of the leases that you have, hire workers, get your rig count up.”Understand Rising Gas Prices in the U.S.Card 1 of 5A steady rise. More

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      Norway’s ‘Climate Election’ Puts Center-Left in Charge

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      Global warming and the future of the country’s oil and gas industry dominated the election campaign, yet smaller parties with ambitious approaches on climate fared less well than expected.Voters in Norway ousted their conservative prime minister on Monday, turning instead to a center-left leader following an election campaign dominated by climate change, and the growing contradictions between the country’s environmental aspirations and its dependence on its vast oil and gas reserves.The vote came at the end of a tumultuous summer in Europe, marked by scorching temperatures and flooding in many countries. Once a distant prospect for many Norwegians, global warming became a more tangible reality that all political parties in the wealthy Nordic nation of 5.3 million could no longer ignore.Though smaller Norwegian parties with the most aggressive stance toward fossil fuels fared less well than expected Monday, the vote offered evidence that the climate issue may be shifting the balance of power to the left in some European countries, among them Germany, which is holding its own election in just two weeks. The Social Democratic candidate there has been leading in the polls, and the Green candidate is ranking third.In Norway, the Labour Party, led by former Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store, won around 26 percent of the votes in the country’s parliamentary elections and was poised to form a coalition with the Center Party. But he may also have to include a smaller left-wing party that has demanded a more aggressive response to tackle climate change, and that could make any coalition deeply divided over fossil fuels and taxes.The release in August of a United Nations report on the irreversible impact of global warming put climate change at the forefront of the Norwegian vote, buoying green parties in the polls and leading observers to describe it as a “climate election.”Deadly floods in Germany and Belgium, and fires in Greece and Italy, made the climate emergency more real for many Norwegians, who have called on their leaders to confront the environmental cost of Norway’s oil and gas industry.“Norway tries hard to act as a pro-nature, pro-diversity society, but our main source of wealth comes from oil and fossil fuels,” said Thomas Hylland Eriksen, a professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo. “That tension became increasingly visible with this climate election.”While several smaller parties with ambitious approaches on climate appeared to be gaining momentum in the weeks leading to the election, on Monday they enjoyed only mixed results.That raised questions about Norway’s readiness to take a hard look at its economic dependence on fossil fuels. Several parties shared a pro-climate platform but differed on other issues, scattering green votes and keeping the parties under 8 percent.With electric cars now accounting for 70 percent of new vehicle sales in the country, with an already ambitious tax on carbon dioxide emissions that could triple by 2030, and with emission goals in line with those of the European Union, Norway, which isn’t part of the bloc, has tried to champion a range of environment-friendly policies.It is electrifying its fleets of ferries, and Oslo’s city center has become mostly car-free. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Erna Solberg, the Conservative Party leader defeated on Monday, Norway has also sought to establish a global and legally binding agreement to tackle plastic pollution, and it has been a leader in rainforest conservation.But such efforts are dwarfed by the environmental cost of Norway’s fossil fuel activities, according to climate scientists, who say that only concrete measures designed to move away from oil and gas exploitation will make a difference. Norway is the leading petroleum producer in Western Europe, and the world’s third-largest exporter of natural gas behind Russia and Qatar.The country has built so much of its wealth on oil and gas fields discovered in the North Sea in the late 1960s that most politicians argue it will take decades to transition from an industry that brings 14 percent of Norway’s revenues, employs nearly 7 percent of its work force, and has fed a $1.4 trillion sovereign-wealth fund, the world’s largest.Still, Bard Lahn, a researcher on climate and oil policy at the Oslo-based Center for International Climate Research, said Norway reached a turning point in May, when the International Energy Agency called for a halt to new oil and natural gas projects.“The International Energy Agency had been an important source of expertise and credibility for both the government and oil companies in justifying the continuation of oil and gas exploration,” Mr. Lahn said.The energy agency’s conclusions and the U.N. report on climate change both shifted the debate during the campaign, Mr. Lahn said. “Climate wasn’t necessarily supposed to be such a central issue, and all of a sudden, it was,” he said.Despite the soul-searching, the four main political parties all back continued oil exploration and production for the moment, as economic inequalities also dominated the campaign. Mr. Store argued that the revenues from oil could be used to finance a transition, but that stopping exploration and production would only hurt the country’s economy.Five smaller parties, including some that could participate in a coalition led by Mr. Store, have pushed for an end to oil and gas exploration. The Greens, which made gains in the polls after the release of the U.N. report, even campaigned for an end to all such activities by 2035. But on Monday, they won less than 4 percent of the vote.A former foreign minister, Mr. Store, 61, had long been a prime contender to lead the country, but he was defeated twice by Ms. Solberg, in 2013 and 2017. During her two terms, Ms. Solberg lowered taxes and increased public spending. Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, Norway has had one of the lowest death rates in Europe.Ms. Solberg will also be remembered for having formed a coalition with the anti-immigrant Progress party that joined her government in 2017. It then left the coalition in January 2020 in protest against the repatriation of Norwegian families who had joined the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Since then, Ms. Solberg had been leading a minority government.Critics and climate scientists say Ms. Solberg did too little to address climate change during her time as leader. But her successor will also face considerable challenges in trying to take climate change policies to the next level, like how to support workers in the oil and gas sector.“Until now, Norway had been picking the low-hanging fruit in climate change mitigation policies,” said Fay Farstad, a senior researcher at the Center for International Climate Research. “Now that we may be getting into the harder part, there has been more attention to the fairness of such policies, and making sure that the costs are being shared.”In a victory speech on Monday, Mr. Store vowed to lead a “fair environment policy” and to deliver on the fight against climate change, although he may have to compromise with other parties that may make up his coalition and have diverging interests on oil and taxes.Mr. Hylland Eriksen, the social anthropologist at Oslo University, said another challenge will be to reconcile all Norwegians with the fact that their oil bonanza may have to come to an end.“Many feel that it’s too little too late,” he said, “Others who are in favor of oil argue that we’re only five million. But if we, as the richest people in the world, don’t make efforts, then who is going to?”Henrik Pryser Libell More