George Will Smacks Down Bill Maher
Bill Maher tossed off this claim during an appearance on ABC'S This Week on Sunday: “I could criticize America in general for not attacking this problem [dependency on fossil fuels] in the Seventies. I mean, Brazil got off oil in the last thirty years we certainly could’ve.”
An attentive George Will turned on Maher: “Bill, can you just explain to me in what sense Brazil ‘got off oil’?”
It was an uncomfortable moment of reality TV. Maher, whose Real Time studio is routinely stacked with like-minded panelists and an obsequious studio audience, seemed unused to being challenged and stammered: “Uh…I believe they did. I believe they, in the Seventies they had a program to use sugar cane ethanol and I believe that is what fuels their country.” Will corrected the comedian: “They still burn a lot of oil and have a lot of it off-shore.”
The facts are on Will’s side here.
Brazil produces 2.4 million barrels of oil per day and consumes roughly 2.52mm bpd—ranking it #8 on the list of oil consuming nations. It is true that they may soon be a net oil exporter…but this is because their production capacity has steadily increased as new fields are tapped while consumption has remained steady, not because they are “off oil.” In fact, the largest oil discoveries in recent years have come from Brazil’s off-shore, pre-salt basins in which Brazil’s state oil company Petrobras is investing $220 billion to explore. Off-shore exploration rights have also been sold this year to BP for $7 billion. Maher’s ideology notwithstanding, Brazil remains very much an economy tied to oil.
I’ll wager that Mr. Will’s beloved Chicago Cubs will win the World Series long before George Will is ever invited to appear on Real Time.