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Yes, We can End
the “Tyranny of Oil.” Or Can We?
Rubin Patterson, Ph.D.
Guest Column
“The country
that harnesses the power of renewable energy will lead the
21st Century,” President Obama declared on March
12, 2009 in an address to the Business Roundtable. But back
on January 3, 2008—then Senator Obama announced, on the
presidential campaign trail in his history-making victory
speech as the first African American to win the Iowa
Caucus—that he will “free this nation from the tyranny of
oil once and for all.”
I wonder two
things about Barack Obama with regard to these two
statements he made. First, to what extent did he appreciate
that America could only harness the power of
renewable energy and thereby lead the 21st
Century if and only if the nation could be freed from
the tyranny of oil? Second, did he not understand that only
the American people themselves could free the nation from
the tyranny of oil?
According to a 2009
report, three out of four Americans want the government to
provide much more support for renewable energy research,
development, and commerce. That is the good news. The bad
news is that talk of favorable public sentiment and
formidable public financial support for renewable energy, no
doubt, scares the bejeebers out of Big Oil; that is, the
major oil giants such as Exxon-Mobil, Shell, BP and Chevron.
Big Oil extols competition as a capitalist virtue, but at
the same time Big Oil is out to crush anyone seeking either
to enhance meaningful competition to its form of energy or
to stiffen regulation of the industry.
Big Oil is simultaneously
in a sweet spot, with staggering profits, an addicted public
and unrivaled political power while, at the same time, the
industry is in the midst of declining oil supplies. In 2008,
Exxon-Mobil, Shell, BP and Chevron had profits exceeding
$116 billion. However, the world is now experiencing a
four-to-one burn-to-find ratio.
In other words, we are
using four barrels of oil for each new barrel found. Big Oil
is perfectly satisfied keeping us addicted to a declining 19th-Century
resource rather than getting out of the way so that we can
get on with 21st-Century renewable sources of
energy.
Efforts to eliminate
subsidies for Big Oil (and Big Coal, too, for that matter)
and to plow those subsidies and others into renewable
initiatives tend to be futile. Notes Anthonia Juhasz in
The Tyranny of Oil, “Through lawyers, lobbyists, elected
officials, government regulators, conservative think tanks,
industry front groups, and full-force media saturation, the
oil industry uses its wealth to change the public debate
and, more often than not, achieve its desired policy
outcomes.” In other words, breaking the back of Big Oil is
impossible – or is it?
It is useful to note that
a century ago America took the unlikely action of breaking
up the biggest and most powerful corporation in the world:
Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company. By the 1880’s, Standard
Oil was controlling 90 percent of all US refining and 80
percent of the marketing of oil products.
What’s more, by 1911,
Rockefeller’s wealth was 2.5 percent of the US economy,
which would be over $350 billion today. Imagine breaking up
a corporate entity so powerful today! As challenging as that
would be, to do so still would not be as difficult as
breaking the back of Big Oil and ending its tyranny in
America today.
Transportation by means of
cars, trucks, trains, and planes accounts for nearly 70
percent of all the petroleum consumed in America today.
Think back 100 years ago to an America when a very tiny
percentage of the population drove cars and trucks and
obviously no one was flying around in airplanes.
In other words, oil did
not lubricate the comfortable lifestyle to which Americans
have grown accustomed. “Convincing” the oil-addicted
American public – mind you, without a ready-made and
structured viable option – to give up on oil today is about
as unlikely an outcome as simply trying to counsel drug
addicts to simply put down their drug of choice because
drugs are not good for them.
Therefore, as I said at
the outset, I wonder if presidential candidate and Senator
Obama realized what he was saying when he declared that he
would end the tyranny of oil in America. Presidents can only
lead transformative change under one of two conditions: (1)
when they can illustrate to the major industries such as Big
Oil and Big Finance that the changes are in their economic
interest or (2) when the people themselves demand this
transformative change.
As it stands now, we don’t
have either one. Maybe it isn’t so much that we need better
leaders, but rather we need a better people. (I know that
stings a little!) In other words, Obama can’t bring change –
only we can bring change.
If we just
advocate for an ecologically friendly economy and the
associated green-collar jobs without the simultaneous effort
to break the back of Big Oil, we are just whistling past the
graveyard. We cannot get to where we want to be with just a
pro-green president – which is what we have in President
Obama – and a Democratically-controlled Congress; rather, we
need a pro-green president and a Congress
committed to simultaneously drowning Big Oil
and birthing a whole new ecologically friendly industrial
sector – which is what we do not have.
Getting Congress to
fiercely take on Big Oil
must start with mass education
focusing on environmental issues in general and the
renewable energy issue in particular and, then, the
initiation and follow-through of a social
movement that is bigger and stronger than any we have
witnessed in the last one hundred years. Thus,
our mission is clear – let’s get to it!
An Announcement to Green Column Readers:
Dorceta Taylor, Ph.D., of
the University of Michigan will give a talk at The
University of Toledo in the Student Union, Room 2584, on
February 25 between 3:30 – 5:00 PM. The event is open to the
public, and admission is free. Her talk is titled
“Environment, Social Inequality & Sustainability:
Understanding the Past and Working Towards the Future.”
Taylor is a national leader in efforts to get minorities
interested, prepared, and credentialed to take up leadership
positions in environmental organizations and to help shape
environmental movements, policy and commerce. For more
information, contact the UT Africana Studies program at
419.530.7252.
Rubin Patterson, Ph.D., is
professor of Sociology and the interim director of Africana
Studies at The University of Toledo. |
