Oil Fights Back

Those engaged in the War Against Oil must not underestimate the potential of oil to muddy the waters.

Their chief weapon is to question the premise of that war, namely global warming.

Doubt is their ally, because doubt prevents  action. To that end any scientist who questions global warming is being trotted out. These range from industry shills to thoughtful men like Freeman Dyson, who realize science offers nothing like an "airtight" case. 

All this is driven by right-wing "think tanks" like the Cato Institute and Heartland Institute, whose thoughts always lean to the golden rule — he who has the gold makes the rules. But what many liberal bloggers don't understand is that, while orders come from the top and people follow with a devotion that would make Mao proud, their belief in this ideology is real.

Look carefully at the conservative comments under this New York Times blog post on Michele Bachmann, a "hatie" from Minnesota whose attitude towards Obama is identical with that of Jerry Rubin's 1969 attitude toward Nixon:

• What reasonable people take issue with is that the cause for climate change is somehow related to human activity.
  
• Conservatives are not invested in denying climate change – they are invested in denying man-made climate change which is a myth ginned up by liberal kooks pusing their agenda.
• The right doesn’t want to have more of our money confiscated, just to further motivate scientists and researchers and businessmen to invent a competitive solution (that currently doesn’t exist), to a problem that might not even be real.
• I believe that the earth may be warming slightly, but I am not convinced that anything that man does will alter this shift one way of the other.
  

This "belief" makes it possible to claim that public commitment to a War Against Oil is fleeting, that green energy is an economic sinkhole, and that rolling back fossil fuel use is a money-loser.

In fact the opposite is the case. Whenever there is a hint of economic growth oil prices spike. (The curve on this crude oil price chart will spike upwards.)

This will continue to happen as long as economic growth is tied to the use of hydrocarbons. Real growth depends on that link being cut. Any cry of "not during a recession" becomes, in an economic sense, an excuse for a never-ending recession.

The fact that 10, or 100, or 1,000 scientists are willing to state they don't believe in global warming does not make the consensus for reality any less true. I remember, in college, being visited by Sir Fred Hoyle, a British physicist then roundly denouncing the "Big Bang" theory. Such dissent is an integral part of the scientific method. Consensus is not the same thing as everyone agreeing. It's a broad-enough agreement on which to base a conclusion and decisions. That we have.

The danger here isn't from Republicans. It's from Democrats who would seek to finesse the issue, returning to budget gimmicks in order to avoid the "controversy" a cap and trade system would create. The new system can't be forced through without Americans gaining a much stiffer spine against the spineless who won't enlist in the War Against Oil.

The time has come to make a nationalistic argument rather than an environmental one for a War Against Oil. Hydrocarbons retain our dependence on the people we hate. Hydrogen creates jobs for the people we love.