I've wanted for some time to explore why the right-wing of politics is so wedded to the oil and gas industry. This is just me expatiating at random, an unstructured and untutored analysis, but bear with me, maybe I can get close to the truth.
Whether we are talking about America's Republicans or Alberta's United Conservatives, it seems to have become an unquestioned article of faith that a Conservative political party is going to be pro-oil. But, surely, it didn't have to be that way.
Often these parties talk about protecting all the valuable high-paying jobs in the oil and gas sector. But if employment is the be-all-and-end-all of their concern, surely they should be just as happy about new jobs in the wind, solar and electric car battery businesses (no-one who is concerned with a "just transition" to a more environmentally sustainable economy is looking to lay off oil and gas workers and to destroy their livelihoods, merely to retrain them in work that is less damaging). But that does not seem to be the case: conservatives are specifically pro-oil, not pro-employment.
The transition from oil and gas to renewable is already underway; even the oil companies admit that that is where the future lies. The jury is still out on whether renewables will generate as many, or as well-paid, jobs, but more and more oil workers are certainly migrating to the renewables sector (where many of their skills are in big demand). There is some evidence that investing in clean energy can create more jobs than spending on fossil fuel. The bottom line seems to be that oil jobs are big risk and big pay, while renewables offer stability and passion.
Maybe it is as simple as opposition to change. Conservatism, after all, as its name suggests, looks to conserve the past, particularly those traditional values and occupations that worked so well for their forefathers (an argument that has been made by many others before me). But such a philosophy can be pursued to a fault - should we go back to slave-owning days; back to the days where a woman's place was in the kitchen and bedroom, not the boardroom; back to the days where immigrants were not welcome, and a white population was a valid goal to be vigorously pursued?
I'm sure some conservatives would readily agree with such policies (if asked in a secret ballot, that is: such views are not socially acceptable in most circles these days). But is that where their devotion to oil and gas comes from? A hankering for a more macho time where oil was power, and power was to be strived for any way possible?
The oil industry is indeed still powerful, even if not as powerful as it once was, and one way it exercises that power is by supporting politicians and parties that support it back, in a dogged act of self-preservation against all the odds of long-term predictions. The industry, quite rightly, sees that support on the right of the political divide, and so that is where it puts its money: political donations from the oil and gas industry to the Republicans, for example, had always been disproportionately higher than to the Democrats, and increasingly so in recent years.
Is that it, then? Is the right's love of oil and gas just a reflection of the donations it receives towards its own re-election prospects? Just a case of knowing on which side its bread is buttered? A kind of bargain with the devil, from which it feels powerless to extricate itself? That seems cynical, but it may well be as simple as that.
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