METAPHOR, that is.
Houston, Texas, is the capital of the oil and gas industry in the known universe. The global left, of which the Houston Chronicle editorial board holds the local franchise, is almost uniformly antagonistic toward the oil and gas industry and would shut it down and return the world economy to about 1837.
How, then, does the Chronicle reconcile the imperatives of the eco-religion at whose altar it worships with the sinful goings-on by energy executives in all the tall buildings that shade the newspaper's ever-less-hurried presses?
Simple, by having it both ways.
The editors answer the resulting cognitive dissonance with a common substitute for serious thought, a poetic figure, a metaphor.
Here are four examples, beginning with today's yesterday's timid response to the president's recent waste of perfectly good air time. Be sure not to stop reading before the last example, a delicious morsel about BP its own self.
We were especially troubled that the vital role of the nation's abundant natural gas reserves was not mentioned as part of our bridge to a more secure, sustainable energy future.
(Editorial, "With Gulf Coast ears: In southeast Texas, we hear the president's words about the BP spill in a special way," Houston Chronicle, June 17, 2010)
Not "troubled." "Especially troubled." Wow. Onward.
Expanded development of the nation's offshore oil and gas reserves is necessary to help this country build a bridge to a more secure energy future.
(Editorial, "Spillover effects: The Port Arthur spill was handled with professionalism. Now the confusing part," Houston Chronicle, January 30, 2010)
That proposition, were it still operative, would have justified a loud denunciation of the Obama drilling moratorium. But I digress.
[To] get [to a clean energy future], we need a reliable bridge. Domestically produced natural gas, whether from Gulf waters or Texas shale . . . can help make that bridge a sturdy and clean one.
(Editorial, "Give it the gas: On the road to a cleaner energy future, natural gas offers an alternative route," Houston Chronicle, January 22, 2010)
What happens when a figure of speech collides with a comically inconsistent physical reality: You get a bridge made of methane. And a "sturdy" one at that.
Meanwhile, most serious policymakers acknowledge the need for a carbon-based bridge to get the world's industrial economies to a new and greener day.
Offshore drilling should be used to help construct that bridge.
. . . .
[BP's recent find] is the resource that will construct the country's bridge to a more secure energy future.
(Editorial, "Gulf giant BP's find in the Gulf of Mexico reminds us of the need for an oil bridge to greener future," Houston Chronicle, September 5, 2009)
* * *
While the Chronicle dithers on the bridge, like Ophelia wobbling toward muddy death, the Wall Street Journal -- feet firmly on the good soil of reality -- says plainly what the newspaper in Houston, Texas, should be saying.
The [drilling] ban requires oil companies to abandon uncompleted wells. The process of discontinuing a well, and then later re-entering it, introduces unnecessary risk. [BP] was in the process of abandoning its well when the blowout happened.
The ban is going to push drilling rigs to take jobs in other countries. "The one that go first will be the newest, biggest, safest rigs, because they are most in demand. The ones that go last and come back first are the ones that aren't as modern," says [Ken Arnold, an engineer and consultant].
The indeterminate nature of this ban will encourage experienced crew members to seek other lines of work -- perhaps permanently. Restarting after a ban will bring with it a "greater mix of new people who will need to be trained." The BP event is already pointing, in part, to human error, and the risk of that will increase with a less experienced crew base. Finally, a ban will result in more oil being imported on tankers, which are "more likely" to spill oil than local production.
All this is even before raising [the] ban's economic consequences, which already threaten tens of thousands of jobs. This is why Louisiana politicians are now pleading with the Administration to back off a ban that is sending the Gulf's biggest industry to its grave.
"Mr. President, you were looking for someone's butt to kick," said Lafourche Parish President Charlotte Randolph recently. "You're kicking ours." The sooner the Administration climbs down from this pointless exercise, the better for a Gulf that needs real help.
(Editorial, "Crude Politics," Wall Street Journal, June 17, 2010)
* * *
Oh, well. At least the Chronicle is not alone on the bridge to Neverland. Standing proudly alongside is none other than BP itself, the company formerly known as British Petroleum, the company that demeaned its core business by rebranding itself itself as "beyond petroleum."
BP's record of death and destruction speaks eloquently about the need to pay close attention to the here and now, not to be distracted by an imagined tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow at the end of a vaporous bridge constructed of methane.
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