Great data collected by Bloomberg News reveals how the poor financial condition of major oil companies is quite possibly one of the biggest contributors to them funding, aiding and abetting the lie-about-everything-at-all-costs victory of Donald Trump and the Republicans in the 2016 election.
Let’s think back to the 2000 election for a second (yes, I know, an uncomfortable memory, but bear with me). George W. Bush won for any number of good or bad reasons, but thinking of our friends the Koch brothers and other robber-baron oil magnates, one of the reasons that he won was Big Oil’s doldrums. Crude oil prices had hovered at about $40/barrel for most of Clinton’s years in office, fueling the Clinton “Goldilocks economy” boom at the expense of oil company profits. As far as our oil barons were concerned, that wasn’t anything like their idea of fun.
Enter the “W” years, in which oil prices climbed steadily to a peak of $141/barrel in July 2008 — while efforts to foster affordable alternative energy sources were slow-tracked by Bush’s Washington. What could be better? Well, oil prices then collapsed, along with that other fool’s gold known as the junk-bond-fueled housing market, and the rest is economic and political history. Obama as a candidate was all set to usher in a huge push for renewable energy, but this was slow-tracked by T. Boone Pickens and other energy magnates who wanted to unleash fracking on the American economy. Renewables grew, but nowhere nearly as fast as the energy industry had feared.
Along the way, oil prices plummeted again to Clinton-era lows, in part because cheap natural gas from fracking made crude a less desirable alternative. In the meantime, oil exploration costs soared, and oil companies began to look more an more like bad bets. Their debt soared, and many teetered on the edge of insolvency. What to do? Surely the Democrats weren’t going to help them, and the Middle East was looking like a poorer and poorer bet for cooperation and dictatorship-fed stability that the oil industry relies on for steady supplies and profits.
Ah, saith the oil industry, let’s get someone who will play nice with our oil buddies in Russia. That’ll take care of matters rather nicely.
For more than forty years, much of America’s political fate has been tied to the economic fate of our energy industries. Their ads fuel much of the profitability of big media, their lobbyists infest legislatures at the state and federal level, they play a global game of manipulating governments to plump up their profits. And now, as much of the world has tired of their games, they are seeking one last big roll of the dice to keep them from going under and becoming the has-been industry that they’re meant to become.
Don’t underestimate this underlying reality to American politics. And don’t underestimate what it will take to unseat it. We’ve got a lot of work ahead, but one of the biggest tasks is developing a strong counter-narrative to the narratives developed by oil companies through legions of social media and mainstream media sock puppets.