Oil and the Politics of Fear

Abstract

Washington politics is no longer about issues. It is about fear. To succeed, a politician has to play on the public’s fears, most of all fear of terrorism and fear of global warming. Republicans capitalized on fear of terrorism in 2002 and 2004 to win national elections. Democrats chose fear of global warming, and they have experienced political success with it. Strangely enough, both groups, riding a platform of fear, come to the same conclusion: Oil is the enemy. For Republicans, oil finances terrorism. For Democrats, oil causes global warming. For both, dependence on oil is a disaster in the making. A third group, mostly but not exclusively Democrats with neoconservative attitudes-let’s call them Republocrats-has also called for eliminating dependence on oil to foster democracy in the Middle East. They believe that eliminating dependence on oil will lower prices and decrease the flow of money to Middle Eastern governments’ coffers. According to this view, lower oil revenues will force governments to be more democratic. The three groups that dominate American politics now have a single enemy: oil. For all of them, if you eliminate dependence on oil, you solve the world’s most pressing problems: terrorism, global warming, and dictatorship. I wish it were that easy. Fear of terrorism, global warming, dictators, and consequently of oil has allowed politicians to spend billions of dollars to promote substitutes for oil. This spending has in turn created new and powerful industries that thrive as long as their oil-bashing supporters are in power. Amazingly, even the private sector has launched a war against oil.