weekly response

Subsidies and the End of Oil
By Leo Brown
[President Obama's Weekly Address]

If only because I read (the print edition of) Ranger Rick as a little boy, I have long taken for granted that oil companies are greedy, heartless, and dangerous for the health of our planet. Glossy spreads of charismatic megafauna and a bright future powered by sun and wind inspired my young convictions.

I'd like to think that my views are a bit more sophisticated today; I understand that we need oil in the near-term. But my distrust of fossil fuels and the lords of the extraction industry remains, and I can't help but expect that some day, maybe in my own lifetime, we will no longer depend on their opiate.

Environmentalists, scientists, and some politicians have been saying for decades that we need to invest in alternative forms of energy. This drumbeat reached a fever pitch in the summer of 2010 as the events of BP's Deepwater Horizon explosion unfolded. 24-hour submarine video feeds dominated the airwaves. Members of Congress lambasted BP CEO Tony Hayward and delivered impassioned soliloquies in defense of the spill victims. In the wake of the worst environmental catastrophe of our nation's history, the case against Big Oil was laden with populist fury and disgust over the industry's latest disaster.

To speak in defense of the oil industry was not a political option (as Rep. Joe Barton quickly discovered). It seemed that, perhaps, we had reached a tipping point that would require lawmakers to clear the path for alternative energy's emergence as a big business in its own right.

Today, President Obama rides what remains of this sentiment and invests his political capital in the inevitability of a green energy revolution. Oil companies don't deserve taxpayer money, he contends. They are wealthy enough already, and we need to look towards a green, sustainable future.

In his argument, the President does not announce outright that he hopes to see the oil industry recede and, ideally, transform into a producer of alternative energy. (Such a transformation would probably be necessary in order to avoid massive loss of employment.) His omission of this position leaves him vulnerable to the legitimate criticism that he is unfairly singling subsidies to the oil industry. Their tax relief is like that of any other big business, and as a result, his argument that oil companies don't need our money, while true, isn't particularly compelling. A more salient point would be that, in the interest of national security, economic viability, and concern for the environment, the oil industry needs to end.

In other words, the government should not pay for what it does not need and does not want. Even if government would, in the end, lose revenue - a very possible outcome - President Obama needs to make the case that this would be a worthy sacrifice.

Oil subsidies are not unique or especially heinous aside from the industry they maintain. If President Obama wants to get rid of them, he needs to move beyond the populist argument that oil CEOs are filthy-rich scoundrels and focus on the fact that the oil industry is what tethers our economy and our environment to the dirty 20th century.