My favorite movie of all time is Jaws. Even though I have seen it to the point I can recite the dialogue along with Brody, Hooper, and especially Quint, I still tense up during the scene in which the two fishermen are trying to capture the shark with a roast on a hook. To this day, I am still not sure if good old Charlie is going to make it back to the dock before he becomes fish food.
The fact that I can still feel uneasy over that scene, even though I know how it ends, is a testimony to Steven Spielberg’s ability to make great movies. Of course, Spielberg made Jaws while he was still a young visionary. Now he’s old, rich, and a member of the Hollywood elite. In joining their ranks, he went from being a maverick who wanted to challenge the rules to someone who wants to make the rules. He has claimed to be “terrified” of global warming and is angry with people who do not care about their carbon footprint. His own footprint is an entirely different matter.
Fox News notes that as of June 23, Spielberg’s private plane used up around $116,159 in jet fuel during 16 trips to various and sundry places. For those of you who bought a scorecard at the front gate, that comes out to about 179 tons of carbon dioxide. And I am sure that someone in his social strata has very good reasons for making all of those trips while wanting you to wait on a bus, cram yourself into a train, buy a bike, or go into debt for an electric car.
Even the tax credit comes with some caveats. NPR admits that there are some, shall we say, ‘terms and conditions” that come with said credit, and Breitbart recently uncovered the fact that under the Inflation Reduction Act, there are subsidies for cars made in “North America.” In this case, Canada and Mexico. So, U.S. automakers who want to save a little money can outsource American jobs. Great news, unless you need an American job.
All of this is well and good if you have a Spielberg-sized income. Chances are, you don’t. And if you don’t like the prices at the pump now, wait until Biden is done tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Oddly enough, while our betters here at home are doing everything possible to forcefully wean us off of oil, global demand is still high, and OPEC sees no reason to believe it will not remain that way for the rest of 2022.
Reuters quoted OPEC Secretary General Haitham al-Ghais: “There is a lot of fear… There is a lot of speculation and anxiety, and that’s what’s predominantly driving the drop in prices. Whereas in the physical market we see things much differently. Demand is still robust. We still feel very bullish on demand and very optimistic on demand for the rest of this year.” To further drive the point home, Reuters said that OPEC+ plans to boost output to 100,000 barrels per day by September.
It isn’t as if we don’t have the resources. I’ve been to places where the tar sands were so thick that they were literally seeping out of the ground. I know that because I almost stepped in them. So the potential energy is there. And last week, a federal judge in Louisiana ruled that the Department of the Interior violated the law by canceling oil and gas leases on federal land in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia. But having lived in oil and gas country and covered the industry from a local perspective, I know that between the protests, lawsuits, environment impact assessments and statements, public comment periods, reviews, and everything else that makes up the energy circus, you should not get your hopes up that producers in the U.S. will be making any inroads soon.
But while you get to find more ways to slice and dice a dollar, Steven Spielberg can still fuel a private jet. Why should he conserve when it is so much easier to let the little people do it? Take a good look at the holiday roast in the clip above. That may be as close as you get to one for a while.
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