Amy Jaffe, executive director of energy and sustainability at the University of California, Davis, is thankful for lower oil prices’ “Robin Hood effect.” She says it is redistributing income to people of limited means from “Saudi princes and oil billionaires” — and, we might add, from billionaires like Vladimir Putin. While Jaffe notes that cheaper oil is hardly welcome news to many folks in oil-producing states, selling oil for $70 does not spell hard times. “It will be more like going from swimming in champagne to just drinking it,” she says.
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