Political-spending hypocrisy masks big policy questions

June 2, 2014
In high-level fights over political spending, more is at stake for the oil and gas industry than tiresome hypocrisy.

In high-level fights over political spending, more is at stake for the oil and gas industry than tiresome hypocrisy.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has become obsessed with libertarian billionaires Charles and David Koch, calling their financial support of Republicans un-American and immoral.

But what about hedge-fund tycoon Tom Steyer, who promises to spend $50 million of his own and a like amount from others to support Democrats in this year's elections?

"We need people like Tom Steyer," Reid cooed to E&E Daily after speaking at a May 20 screening of a film bashing the Koch brothers.

In Reid's view, apparently, spending by rich people is evil when dedicated to Republicans but praiseworthy when it helps Democrats.

Hypocrisy is to Washington, DC, of course, what humidity is to Houston: an ineluctable part of the landscape.

For the oil and gas industry, though, important policy questions lie beneath what otherwise might be ignored as routine vacuity.

Steyer wants to unseat Republicans unwilling to sacrifice the economy to fear about global warming.

The web-site home page of his political-action committee, NextGen Climate, displays the image of a forest fire overprinted with, "Climate change is a real and present danger."

Below that is a motto: "Climate change belongs at the forefront of American politics. We're working to put it there."

Work, indeed. Most Americans shrug off climate change. They know cost. They know hype. They reject priority goals of climate activism, such as carbon taxation and cap-and-trade wealth transfer.

But if Steyer and his political kin can't have dinner they'll settle for snacks: obstruction of the Keystone XL pipeline, zealous regulation of everything related to hydrocarbon energy, lavish subsidization of nonfossil alternatives.

The political program underwritten by Steyer can cost producers and consumers of commercial energy big money a little at a time.

For Americans—individually or corporately—to resist having their pockets picked by the likes of Steyer is not un-American. Alas, righteous resistance to official larceny takes money.