CAN'T GET LOOSE WITHOUT THAT JUICE, or LET THERE BE FRACKING
These aren't campaign ads per se, but they're thoroughly political spin jobs, and too numerous to keep track of. It's a public relations full-court press from the oil, gas, and coal industries.
Exxon Mobil, Conoco Phillips, BP, Shell. The American Petroleum Institute. The Ohio Oil and Gas Association. The American Coalition for Clean Coal Energy. America's Natural Gas Alliance. So many others of their ilk. And they are all spending large -- Large! -- to convince us that they are simply wonderful!
With minor variations, the common themes of this PR blitzkrieg are:
We are safe, safe, ever so safe! No spills, no leaks, no nuthin'! (BP Deepwater Horizon? Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch Mine? And that "fracking fluid" -- thousands of undisclosed toxic chemicals buried in the ground?)
We are clean, clean, squeaky clean! No pollution goin' on here! No sir! (Clean coal? Oxymoron!)
Horrible regulations are killing our margins, and we always pass these costs straight on to you (plus a little extra, just for fun). So if you want lower energy costs, please make the EPA go away. (And get yourself a gas mask.)
If you let us have our way, more people will have jobs sucking every last bit of carbon-based fuel out of Mother Earth (using ever more risky methods). And everybody knows we need more jobs. You want your kid to have job, don't you?
You should vote for Republicans, because we've paid them off and they've promised to do whatever we want. ("Call Robbie Portman and thank him for standing up against job-killing energy taxes. Then call Sherrod Brown and tell him he's a fuckin' Communist.")
OK, OK, I totally understand that we're not gonna wean ourselves off fossil fuels next week. I have a big car that sucks the gasoline, a natural gas furnace, and AEP burns mountains of coal so I can send you this crap I typed on my computer while the lights are on. None of this will go away anytime soon. Not in my lifetime. But it will, inevitably, sooner or later, and sooner will be better than later.
We must quit fucking around and move decisively in the direction of cleaner, more sustainable energy. We need a new and different model, which will take time, but we gotta pull the trigger and make some sort of big move. The only thing holding us back is our collective, spineless lack of will. And our fear of paying more, but pay we must, I believe.
So, yeah, we'll keep doing things as we have been in the short run, but we must take a clear, hard look at the ongoing oil/gas/coal PR campaign, and compare it with what our world needs for the long run. Like people, businesses have a natural life cycle -- birth, growth, maturity, decline. The fossil fuel industry is in decline, and it's OK, it's natural, but they're spending shitloads to persuade us they're actually still growing. And if we look the other way, we just might believe it.
Don't. Businesses in decline typically resort to ever more ethically ambiguous, risky, dangerous behaviors to maintain their market position and some return for their investors. When you feel you must drill for oil further out to sea or deeper into wildlife refuges and national forests; when you need to actively flaunt safety regulations in order to more profitably run your coal mine; when inefficiently cooking tar sands to extract oil which will be pumped across two countries in a giant 1700 mile pipeline seems like a good idea; when you inject god-knows-what-all sorts of shit into the bedrock trying to get gas from shale or blood from turnips; when environmental laws are your enemy; when all this occurs, you are desperate, venal and grasping at straws.
The last thing we should do is suspend rules, regulations and common sense so oil/gas/coal can squeeze out some additional bucks. They make plenty of bucks with things the way they are. More "help" is not required, and not desired.
Oil/gas/coal can play out the string, but they must do it responsibly. And we must make some hard decisions and figure out what comes next. Probably not for us, but for future generations.
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