Big Oil’s Predations are not Your Fault | Informed Comment

Big Oil’s Predations are not Your Fault | Informed Comment

Now, part of what the pundits are saying when they say the Gulf oil gusher is your fault is that you like to drive your car inexpensively to work, and so you are part of a consumer market that motivates BP to drill. But it is grossly unfair to blame you, the worker, for the difficulty of getting to work by much more efficient rail or for allegedly rejecting electric vehicles powered by .e.g. wind farms.

The US government gives and has for decades given massive hidden subsidies to the petroleum industry that make gasoline seem far less expensive than than it is, and auto, cement and oil corporations successfully lobbied for taxpayer subsidies for highway systems rather than for rail and public transport.

You did not ask them to do that.

Joe Blumenauer notes:

‘Oil companies receive special deductions lowering their effective tax rate to about 11 percent, compared to 18 percent for non-oil industries. This has cost an estimated $200 billion since 1968 and, with soaring industry profits in recent years, is growing at an ever-increasing rate. ‘

The cost of licenses for offshore drilling have been mysteriously slashed by the Department of the Interior, a way of transferring your money to the oil companies and of actually promoting offshore drilling, with all its potential to harm you environmentally and economically. Do you remember lobbying the Mines and Minerals Service for that one?

Even the wars you are paying for in the Perso-Arabian Gulf and in Central Asia, as well as the aid given Israel and Egypt, amounting altogether to over $100 billion a year, must be seen as a subsidy to big oil.

And then, the cost of water, soil and air pollution is not figured into the price of a gallon of gasoline. It is charged to the taxpayer in various ways. And, global warming is also not figured into the cost of gasoline.

In fact, the various deep subsidies that you are involuntarily giving Big Oil are being used in part to buy a propaganda campaign to convince you that climate change has been exaggerated and is nothing to worry about. Ironic, ain’t it?

But that is not your fault, either.

People keep saying that wind power is ‘just about’ competitive with oil and gas. But in fact if the true cost of oil and gas were properly calculated, and all the hidden subsidies were removed, wind would be revealed to be much cheaper than these other power sources are. Even solar might make a good showing in that case. (Don’t bother complaining to me about the limits of wind turbines and solar cells; they have those limits because not enough research and development money has been thrown at them by the government and by government-engineered incentives to private business. A reader complained that the investment had not worked with regard to fusion but that is silly. Wind and solar are proven but infant technologies and Germany has already shown that government support makes a big difference here.)

The subsidies for petroleum are unlikely to be lifted. This outcome is not because you will lobby congress and the senate to keep supporting big oil with your tax dollars. It is because of legislative capture. Too many elected representatives secretly run on the Big Oil Party ticket. (And no, it is not true that President Obama is more guilty of that than were his opponents).

It would help if the US Supreme Court did not recognize corporations as persons and did not confuse political campaign money with free speech, and if it would allow Germany’s practice of making campaign ads free. Then our elected representatives would not have to spend all their time raising money for television commercials from corporations in return for legislative quid pro quos. But the Court is appointed by the politicians who are victims of legislative capture, and it therefore represents the interests of Big Business.

I don’t know how to turn this thing around. I don’t know how to get free campaign commercials, or less money in politics, or stop legislative capture or halt the enthronement of the New American Business Aristocracy, with its all too frequent focus on short-term profit over long-term public welfare. I don’t know how to stop offshore drilling or wean us all off petroleum-fueled automobiles (I know that such a weaning would in any case take decades–but we haven’t even begun). Me, I ride my bike into work 9 months of the year.

I do know that many congressional Democrats see the current tragedy as a once-in-a-century opportunity to reformulate energy policy away from petroleum, and that they will need an outpouring of public support and of public donations to pull that off.

If you don’t support them in this push to begin getting away from hydrocarbons, then whatever follows– will be your fau