Summing Up
The central issue at hand in this climate change and the means by which political corruption is delaying the ever-pressing need to address the problem before it reaches a tipping point. That is, if it isn’t already too late for that. Near the end, Maddow sums up the problem in effective and accessible metaphor:
“Climate disaster has put a spotlight on the need for human society to evolve beyond dependence on petroleum, but our very capacity to decide on that—or anything—remains at risk as long as the industry is still ranging like a ravenous predator on the field of democracy.”
Be Careful What You Wish For
The oil industry needed something to save it from certain extinction. Like the dinosaurs, there is a finite lifespan to the plant’s oil supply. And what is still available isn’t as easy to get as it used to be. Something epochal was needed and that it exactly what the industry got: the combination of fracking and horizontal drilling. But the consequences of rubbing magic lamp are notoriously difficult to predict:
“A new genie was out of the bottle. It’s hard to say, even today, if that genie is a friend. But he has had effect.”
Standard Oil Standards
John D. Rockefeller set the template for how to run oil companies with Standard Oil and, of course, that is why they are constantly creating natural disasters costing billions to clean up as a result of not caring about anything but profit. Maddow casts this propensity which runs throughout the industry in mold of genetic mutation:
“Standard DNA is shot through the oil industry, as are Standard’s dominant traits: a penchant for pinching pennies, an eagerness to devour and expand, a mistrust and even hatred of government regulation, a vaguely delusional sense of higher calling, and a wary respect for innovation.”
Explaining Oklahomans
Oklahoman has voted for the Republican Presidential candidate every single year since 1968. It is unquestionably one of the most predictably conservative electorates in the state. The reasoning behind this ideological tilt can be extrapolated from the following metaphor:
“The story of oil and gas in Oklahoma is pretty much the story of modern Oklahoma. As to the chicken and the egg question, there is little doubt— energy came first. Oil was discovered in Oklahoma long before it was a state and still trumps government and governance.”
History Tells Us…
The problem with relying on new-renewable energy resources is that eventually they run out. Of course, the laws of entropy suggest that everything will eventually run out, but there’s a world difference between how long it takes to run out of oil and how long it takes to run out sunlight. It doesn’t take a genius to figure this out since we’ve already gone through it several times:
“Coal is dead. As dead as whale oil and kerosene and every other fuel source we once believed we couldn’t live without. Oil and gas are dead, too—only they just don’t look sick yet. Jobs in those industries must and will become jobs in other industries, which will undoubtedly be a painful adjustment.”
