“Big Oil” has begun to function as its own public relations enemy, using much of its advertising to parrot the agenda of anti-oil movements, in an odd attempt to curry favor with the people who hate it.

The industry is like a domestic abuse victim that seeks to lessen the severity of its next beating by apologizing for provoking the last. It’s the worst case of corporate “Stockholm syndrome” I’ve ever seen.

Take, for example, British Petroleum’s inexplicable “Beyond Petroleum” campaign, in which an actress pretends to be a spontaneously stuttering imbecile asking, “What are the oil companies doing to reduce our dependence on oil? That’s a question.”

Well, yes, but it’s a rather dumb question. “What’s the postal service doing to discourage people from mailing things?” That’s also a question – only less silly. Phase Two of the campaign encourages people to become worried about their “carbon footprint.”

The only footprint the commercial makes me contemplate is the one that BP should put on the butt of whatever genius thought up that commercial. The other oil companies also lapse into such self-flagellating nonsense occasionally.

Big, beat-down oil needs to let the environmental patients pay for their own propaganda, and begin selling people on the value of – oh, I dunno – OIL! Just once, I would like to tune into commercial-free PBS and hear: “The following program is sponsored in part by MEGA TRANSNATIONAL GLOBAL PETROLEUM INDUSTRIES. Kiss our assets, Greenies! We make the world work and you make people’s heads hurt, you self-hating anti-modern parasites.”

OK, maybe that’s a little harsh. But how about this commercial: A gravitas-laden announcer is seen walking toward the camera along a city street bustling with traffic, then through a field of golden wheat being harvested by a huge tractor. He looks up as a jetliner flies low overhead. The montage continues as he walks past M1 tanks and Apache helicopters refueling in the desert, powering into battle. Finally, he comes to a huge expanse of oil wells by walking along a massive pipeline, upon which he places an outreached hand, then speaks:

“Oil. It has its problems, but I don’t see you whiners using less of it. Yeah, you heard me. Every day you make a hundred decisions that involve energy. You live in comfort in temperature-controlled homes, and earn incomes that are at historic highs – thanks to abundant energy supplies. You light up the night just for kicks, and take your children to far-off places to aid their educations. You endlessly power computers to consume on-demand information and pornography. And you travel to stores where trucks, ships, and planes amass a diversity of affordable goods that would have been beyond the wildest dreams of Roman Emperors.

“Yes, every day you decide such things are good enough for you. And then you whine like a lovesick monkey over how much energy ‘we’ use. Well I got news for you, punk. That energy isn’t going into a hole in Poughkeepsie. It’s going to billions of other people just like you – but less annoying. Energy feeds the improvements in their lives. Because of it, they can seek a better-paying job in a new industry a few miles farther away. They can air-condition Grandma’s house, so she doesn’t drop dead of heat stroke, like old people used to. They can light up the night to watch their kids play, just for the heck of it. And they can shop for affordable fruits and vegetables in December – instead of getting pellagra and having their skin fall off. Which must be what you want, whiner. If these things are good for you, then they must be good for other folks too. So be thankful we’re here pumping this goop out of the ground for you, ‘cause windmills and pixie dust ain’t gonna cut it, and life without abundant energy is nasty, brutish, and short.”

OK, again, probably too harsh, but you get the idea. Energy creates wealth. Producing the energy that has, quite literally, fueled the highest living standards in world history is not something to apologize for. Oil companies should be proud of what they do, and have the sense to say so in their own ads. Nobody else is going to blow their horn for them.