Kelly McParland: Big Oil, petro dictators and the Democratic Party

Democrats hate the oil industry. They really hate it. Speaker after speaker at the Democratic National Convention in Denver demonized the industry as “Big Oil” -- skulking around Washington with lucre dripping from its pockets, buying up Republicans left and right, dictating its own policies and turning a callous eye to the hard-working Americans who have to choose between food and a full gas tank.

Brian Schweitzer, the lively Montana governor who made a big splash on Tuesday, denounced the industry as “petro-dictators.”

“Right now, the United States imports about 70% of its oil from overseas. At the same time, billions of dollars that we spend on all that foreign oil seems to end up in the bank accounts of those around the world who are openly hostile to American values and our way of life. This costly reliance on fossil fuels threatens America and the world in other ways, too. CO2 emissions are increasing global temperatures, sea levels are rising and storms are getting worse.”

Hillary Clinton dismissed the Bush administration’s record, accusing it of “borrowing money from China to buy oil from Saudi Arabia.” I thought that was a pretty good line until I realized everyone was using it. Mark Warner, the former Virginia governor who’s running for the Senate, turned it into “borrow[ing] money from China to buy oil from countries that don’t like us.” And Al Gore, who tore through his speech Thursday in lightning time, claimed ownership of the line:

“As I have said for many years throughout this land, we’re borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the future of human civilization.”

Gore also had this line, which does seem original: “The carbon fuels industry -- big oil and coal -- have a 50-year lease on the Republican Party and they are drilling it for everything it’s worth.”

Barack Obama pledged to finally break the country of its dependence on foreign oil, noting: “Washington’s been talking about our oil addiction for the last 30 years, and John McCain has been there for twenty-six of them. In that time, he’s said no to higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars, no to investments in renewable energy, no to renewable fuels.  And today, we import triple the amount of oil as the day that Senator McCain took office.”

All rousing enough, but isn’t it a little bit more complicated than just taking  a few oil executives out to the back and giving them a whupping? Gasoline prices shot up Friday because another storm is heading for oil operations along the Gulf coast. Unless the oil companies have been taking secret weather-control lessons from the Chinese Olympic committee, the storm isn’t their fault. Nor was Katrina, which left New Orleans in ruins and set off a similar spike three years ago. U.S. demand for gas is the result of Americans persisting in buying huge stinking trucks and SUVs no matter how much fuel they suck, and building monster homes big enough for three families. Demand drives prices; to curb it, the next president will have to radically alter the habits of American consumers. Oil companies will make money no matter what.

All the speakers talked about alternative fuels, but no one outside the most obsessive Al Gore fan thinks the U.S. can do enough in that area to have much effect in the short term. Only cutting consumption will work. High prices are the most effective tool in doing that, but that hurts the very people the Democrats are trying to help.

So what’s the plan? Don’t ask me. The convention only last four days -- they didn’t get around to solutions.