Degeneration of politics into paralyzing calumny reflects unfortunate habits of thought dominating official approaches to energy. For the oil and gas industry, implications are subtle but important.
Both major US political parties exhibit the phenomenon. In his bid for the Democratic presidential candidacy, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) champions supposedly oppressed masses against predation by the ultrawealthy few in concert with evil corporations. Former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton counters by marshalling ethnic groups for defense against grievance and elicits from a celebrity supporter moral condemnation of females daring to vote against her.
Promising walls
Real estate tycoon Donald Trump, meanwhile, commandeers the Republican contest with promises of walls, mass deportation, religious exclusion, and insults of anyone who disagrees with him, backed by threats of litigation. Not one to be bullied and in any case desperate, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida proves he's not above character assassination, some of it coarse even by the base standards of 2016.
Discourtesy is hardly new to politics. What's new is the nasty grip of a polemic evident from both parties this year. It's polarizing categorization: a compulsion to reduce intellectual problems to opposing extremes, one virtuous and the other wicked. Because nearly all questions have more than two sides, and because the identification and consideration of all facets of any question chart the only genuine course to truth, polarizing categorization leads inevitably to error born of ignorance. But it's convenient.
Urbanization and social complexity help explain why politics defaults so readily to such futile simplification. When people congregate in numbers that preclude acquaintance with everyone, categorization becomes imperative. How else can sense be made of the crowd? Meanwhile, information about groups becomes available in overwhelming volume from a proliferation of sources, making categorization not just expedient but necessary. The overwhelmed human mind apportions its assessments among manageable groups: male and female, pale and pigmented, young and old. It can't perform otherwise.
At that point, category eclipses person, people relate to one another as types rather than individuals, and group identity governs behavior. Republicans act one way, Democrats another way. Deviation can't be tolerated. Hence the internal Republican war between establishment candidates and insurgents. Hence Democratic clashes over who's genuinely progressive.
The presidential campaigns of 2016 reflect these dynamics. Specific issues are mainly tests of adherence to tribal orthodoxy.
As political identities raucously collide, energy receives attention best described as frivolous if it gets noticed at all. In a triumphant speech after her "Super Tuesday" victories Mar. 1, Clinton promises to supply every US household with electrical power generated with renewable energy, heedless of the physical and economic impediments such a program would face. Republican candidates rarely address energy at all other than to dispute the Democratic assertion that climate change represents America's most serious threat. When they do discuss energy, their understanding of the subject seems less than impressive.
The presidential campaign thus extends the framework in place for energy policy-making: a false dilemma, functioning as a belief system, between climate precaution and denial. Policy deliberation becomes a contest between energy forms that contribute to climate change and those that supposedly do not, the familiar choice, between the wicked (hydrocarbons) and the virtuous (renewables). It seems so easy.
Polarizing energy
Except that energy choices never can be easy. Energy forms that emit greenhouse gases when put to use are not wholly wicked. They happen also to be cheaper and more abundant than alternatives, advantages to energy users that shouldn't be ignored. And experience often proves virtues of renewable energy forms to have been overstated in early stages of promotion. Fuel ethanol is a contemporary example. Responsible policy-making would take account of important departures such as these from blithe assumptions derived from polarizing categorization.
The oil and gas industry's decision-makers should study the surprising churn of this political season. Patterns of thought crushing conventional assumptions about presidential politics work just as vigorously-and disruptively-in the politics of energy.
