The Inherent Evil of Fossil Fuels
In a recent article about the looming April oil crisis, a reader left a comment that really got me thinking. They pushed back on my point about the global oil supply chain requiring constant warfare, arguing that the commodity itself isn’t the issue.
“Nothing about oil and LNG supply chains that requires warfare to function,” the reader wrote. “The warfare is just due to a unipolar power that spends a trillion dollars a year on ‘war’ so it can require every country in the world to be a vassal state.”
They make a fair point about global hegemony and the military-industrial complex, and that there’s no law of physics requiring imperialism to get oil pumped and refined. But, that misses a much deeper and uglier truth about the resource itself and all of the toxicity that it seems to attract and nurture.
Superpowers act like bullies specifically because fossil fuels are centralized, easily monopolized resources. You can put a fence around an oil well. You can blockade a shipping lane. You can’t put a fence around the sun. Running a company that extracts a non-renewable, non-recyclable resource requires a different mindset than renewables.
In this article, I want to explore that mindset and why it brings in whole tankers worth of toxicity and evil.
Mr. Deeds and the Prosperity Gospel
To understand the core problem with oil executives and the politicians they buy, you really just have to watch a specific scene from the Adam Sandler movie Mr. Deeds.
Sandler’s character inherits a massive pile of wealth from an uncle he didn’t know, but ends up giving it up after he sees how toxic the whole culture is. Later, he finds out that the executives are plotting to break up the company and put 50,000 people out of work just to make a quick buck. Deeds buys one share to get into the meeting, and then gets a chance to speak. He asks the executives a simple question: “What did you want to be when you were a kid?”
The answers are exactly what you’d expect. One guy wanted to be a magician. Another wanted to be a veterinarian. A third wanted to be a fireman.
Nobody in that room grew up dreaming of being a corporate raider, and nobody grows up dreaming of being an oil executive. When we’re young, we are taught basic, universal morality. If you grew up in church, you were taught about a Jesus who cared for the poor, healed the sick, and warned against the love of money. Children naturally want to build things, help people, or discover something new, no matter the religious background. That’s human instinct at play.
But, we can’t all be magicians and firefighters. So, many of us have to make compromises and abandon our astronaut dreams. As Twenty One Pilots said, “Wake up, you need to make money!”
Some of us compromise a little, and have a crappy job that still helps people. Some of us help people a little, but mostly focus on making a buck. Some of us take on jobs that actively fleece people. It’s a spectrum of compromise, and we all find a place along it.
The fossil fuel economy sits all the way at the dark end, and it demands the exact opposite of those childhood dreams. It’s an extraction business, not an innovation business. The industry doesn’t invent the energy. It just digs up ancient sunlight that was already buried underground and sets up a toll booth in front of it. That “something for nothing” dynamic acts like a massive magnet for rent-seekers.
The people most willing to compromise end up there.
To survive in that kind of ruthless, unimaginative industry without feeling like the bad guy, you have to invent a moral loophole. That’s exactly why the prosperity gospel has become so deeply intertwined with conservative fossil fuel politics. It is the ultimate moral compromise. It takes the childhood lessons of caring for the vulnerable and completely flips them, tying a person’s spiritual worthiness directly to their material wealth.
It gives people divine permission to abandon what they knew was right as kids. Once you convince yourself that your god wants you to be wealthy, you never have to feel guilty about hoarding resources or protecting an extractive monopoly ever again.
The Mechanics of Violence
The violence we see globally is baked right into the physical reality of the resource. Oil and gas are geographically dense and highly localized. Because they are concentrated in specific pools underground, you can put a fence around them, build a pipeline, and point a military at anyone who tries to take them. Or, if it ain’t yours, you can point your military at it to snatch it up or extract value.
It creates a winner-takes-all scenario where whoever holds the territory holds the power. This naturally breeds conflict and rewards the most ruthless behavior possible.
You can’t put a fence around the sun or blockade the wind. Distributed resources like solar panels and wind turbines inherently decentralize power. They remove the main physical incentive for violent conflict because nobody can embargo the sky. The sun shines on everyone and it’s going to shine again later. There’s another chance coming.
But oil and natural gas? Once it’s gone, it’s gone. There are no second chances.
Selling Fish vs. Fishing Poles
We all know the inspirational proverb about teaching a man to fish so you feed him for a lifetime. But the legacy energy sector does the exact opposite.
The entire fossil fuel business model relies on forced, perpetual dependency. They sell a consumable product that you are forced to buy every single week just to keep your life running. It is a mandatory subscription model for your basic survival. Give the oil man a buck, and you get to stay warm or keep moving today. They have their hands in your pocket for a lifetime.
This brings up a massive irony in modern conservative politics. Traditional conservatism preaches self-reliance, independence, and freedom from government or corporate control. Yet, so many conservatives violently defend a system that keeps them completely dependent on massive multinational corporations and foreign cartels. They cheer for the monopolies that force them to keep buying the fish.
Cleantech is exactly what they claim to want. Buying a solar array or an EV is buying the actual fishing pole. It’s a capital investment that lets you harvest your own energy locally. It provides actual independence, which is exactly why the legacy incumbents hate it so much.
They claim to want everyone to have food for a lifetime, but they’re hoping you’ll be happy with being fleeced every day.
Breaking The Cycle
Transitioning to clean energy isn’t just about cutting carbon emissions or saving the environment. It’s about starving a deeply unethical system that rewards the absolute worst human impulses. We can talk about numbers all day. There’s a possible 33.7 kWh per gallon of gasoline, but how many Iranian schoolchildren is a barrel of oil worth? How much is global security worth? If the worst case scenario happens and this thing goes nuclear, will we feel like it was a good price to pay for some oil companies to have a record quarter?
There are some things in life that you really can’t put a number on.
Some of us understand that there are priceless things at play here. Our safety. Our morality. Our very souls. No amount of money can bring those things back once we trade them in. So, some of us pursue things in life that mean something priceless instead of trading in the priceless for things that can be bought and sold.
But much of the fossil fuel industry doesn’t get that. Everything’s for sale. Even our very souls are supposed to be sold for a mess of pottage. Morality? Maybe next quarter. Safety? Well, you gotta crack some eggs to make an omelette.
I’m sick of pretending that this mindset that trades priceless things for cheap things is normal. You shouldn’t either.
