Big Oil Has Found a Clever New Way to Hurt the Climate
The industry and its Republican allies are clinging to outdated concepts about energy security that discourage much-needed investment in alternatives.
Just drilling for more oil and gas won’t make the world more secure.
Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg
Fifty years ago, the term “energy security” meant “we need oil and we need it now.” In the modern world, where energy comes in many forms, security doesn’t have to be so fuel-specific. The important thing is that people can get to work or know the kitchen lights will turn on when they flip the switch.
It will probably not shatter your perception of reality to learn the oil industry doesn’t see it that way. But its effort to maintain a half-century-old definition of energy security is undermining the world’s chances of holding climate change to merely disastrous levels.