"This is different"

Double standards are among the more abhorrent creations of civilisation. The “Rules for thee but no or different rules for me” mentality is perhaps one of the most destructive forces in the world today. And it’s gathering momentum because those making the selective rules are running out of time to enforce them. Because, you know, we’re not nearly as stupid as the rule-makers believe us to be.

You might expect that I’d be dedicating today’s rant to our esteemed head of the United Nations who had another outburst this week and you’d be right. But he’s the best so I’m saving him for last. First, we’ll pop into the U.S. House of Representatives, which this week issued a challenge to Guterres for his top spot in the alarmist ranking.

The challenge took the form of a letter, addressed to the Department of Justice by a group of ten legislators who feel strongly about the oil and gas industry. The legislators were led by Jerrold Nadler and their strong feelings had to do with fuel prices and energy companies’ profits.

“Gas prices today average $3.60 per gallon, up from last year. As Americans contend with the rising cost of living, prices at the pump play a major role. In a single month last year, rising gas prices made up more than half of the overall increase in the rate of inflation,” the group wrote.

The authors of the letter certainly demonstrated acute powers of observation with the above statement, which does them credit. But then they went and ruined the good impression by not only blaming all this on oil companies but also resenting the fact that these companies kept their profits for themselves, instead of subsidising lower fuel prices.

“By any measure, these are good times for oil companies in the United States,” the outraged legislators wrote. “Last year, the two largest U.S. oil companies, Exxon Mobil Corp. (“Exxon”) and Chevron Corp. (“Chevron”), both earned their biggest annual profits in a decade,” they went on to point out.

Then came the punchline: “But apparently, instead of passing those profits through to consumers in the form of cheaper products, the oil giants have been lining their own pockets while conspiring to keep prices high.” 

Horrible. Unthinkable. Utterly audacious. When we all know that Big Tech, for example, not to mention Big Pharma, work tirelessly to make their products as affordable as possible for everyone by using their own not insignificant profits to lower the retail prices of said products.

I hear the latest iPhone now sells for $15 because Apple’s been so good at passing its profits on to consumers. Pfizer regularly donates 50% of its profits to reduce the end-prices of all its drugs. And Amazon’s employees are all millionaires because the company’s been so generous in sharing its profits with its workforce. Right? Just like they all got to pay windfall profit taxes when they were raking it in during the lockdowns. Or not. Because “this is different” and it’s only fair to make oil and gas, and no other industry, pay for being profitable.

But it’s not fairness, of course, that drove those House Reps to write their letter to the Department of Justice. It was anger and resentment at the fact that oil and gas companies dare continue doing what they do best, which is supply energy and a thousand different products to the biggest formerly free market in the world. Oh, and they also “conspired” with OPEC to keep prices high.

Because someone said so and that someone was the Federal Trade Commission, which pointed the finger at Scott Sheffield, the former Pioneer CEO, for talking to OPEC about the oil market back in 2020 when prices slumped so badly companies went out of business. Those that survived, cut production in self-preservation. Collusion, no doubt. When the Good Guys do self-preservation, it’s rational and positive but when the Bad Oil Guys do self-preservation, it’s collusion and conspiracy. “It’s different”.

Entertaining as that letter was, its authors’ challenge to the secretary-general of the UN inevitably flopped. No one can top Antonio Guterres, not even Fatih Birol and that’s saying something.

Consider this gem of a quote: “Climate change is the mother of all stealth taxes paid by everyday people and vulnerable countries and communities,” Guterres said at some event celebrating or possibly mourning World Environment Day. “Meanwhile, the godfathers of climate chaos — the fossil fuel industry — rake in record profits and feast off trillions in taxpayer-funded subsidies."

“The godfathers of climate chaos” — that’s true poetry right there, that is. Sounds like a line out of “Tamburlaine The Great”. And he didn’t stop there, no. He went on to explain that “We need an exit ramp off the highway to climate hell,” and that “The truth is, we have control of the wheel.” Like hell you do, I was tempted to say when I first read it and I succumbed to the temptation quite happily.

Guterres still didn’t stop there, oh, no. He kept wandering around Metaphorland happily, informing his audience that “In the case of climate, we are not the dinosaurs. We are the meteor. We are not only in danger. We are the danger.” Meaning we’re both the dinosaurs and the meteor but who cares about logic when it sounds beautiful.

You’d think so much figurative language would exhaust a 75-year-old man but it didn’t, because once he was done with the general oil-bashing, he switched targets and urged the advertising industry to stop doing business with oil and gas companies.

“I call on advertising & PR companies to stop acting as enablers to planetary destruction by working for the fossil fuel industry. Stop taking on new fossil fuel clients & set out plans to drop your existing ones. They are poisoning our planet & they are toxic for your brand,” Guterres said, also suggesting that governments ban oil and gas advertising — like they banned tobacco advertising — because clearly, you can’t trust the Mad Men. That quote was tweeted and the comments are a treasure.

Mostly, they boil down to suggestions that Guterres and his pals get off their planes and stop using any oil products to demonstrate their dedication to the transition mission. And this brings me to my point with this rant. The point is that no one takes kindly to double standards and the “You don’t understand, it’s different” mentality if they are on the receiving end.

That sort of thinking is only appealing to those who enforce it on others. But if those enforcers are stupid enough to believe they could keep enforcing the double standards on everyone but themselves forever, what follows is a massive backlash, proportional to the degree of arrogance demonstrated by the enforcers. I believe Guterres scores top marks in arrogance, too, as well as poetry. Jerry Nadler has a lot of training to do yet to even make the top ten.

Arrogance and hubris is a great combination. It is an excellent recipe for a civilisational laxative. Add a spoonful of inflation and the purging will begin before the pathogens that caused it realise what hit them. Society, if you think about it, works very much like the human body — it’s got a brilliant immune system and unless that system is irreversibly compromised by Yersinia alarmis, it will fight.

Ironically, outbursts like the above only help strengthen the immune system of society instead of weakening it as intended. Keep at it, I say, and make it good and loud, and even more absurd than it already is. We, as Guterres admitted, are at the wheel. It’s not the we he meant but it’s the right we.