In the background of Charlie Hankin’s oil field are four machines extracting crude oil from the ground. Next to several large holes in the ground are treasure chests, presumably filled with gold. Kneeling beside one of these treasure chests is a roughneck who’s saying something to his fellow roughneck.
I suspect that Hankin drew this cartoon in response to President Trump’s recent assertion that America’s “tremendous wealth…is under its feet.” Trump was referring to oil, and justifying his short-sighted decision to continue relying on this resource despite pressing concerns about climate change, so my first several captions address his comment:
- “My God, the wealth really is under our feet.”
- “Is this the ‘tremendous wealth’ the President was referring to?”
I next alluded to the fact that digging for gold is better for the environment than drilling for oil: “And we can extract this wealth without harming the environment.”
My next two captions allude to the fact that oil is known as black gold:
- “Who cares about black gold?”
- “I prefer gold gold.”
Economists measure gold’s value in terms of oil (i.e., an ounce of gold is worth however many barrels of oil), and my next caption addresses that calculation: “Come on. One ounce of this is worth fifteen barrels of that.”
My final caption acknowledges that both gold and oil are valuable commodities: “We’re here to extract a valuable resource form the ground. It doesn’t have to be oil.”
Now let’s see how you did.
There were many references to black gold, and the best included:
- “I haven’t found any black gold.”
- “None of this gold is black.”
- “Who needs black gold when you’ve got gold gold?”
Some of you connected the treasure chests to pirates:
- “Exxon marks the spot.”
- “It’s from the Pirates of Pennzoil.”
I can’t decide whether I love or hate #2.
While I assumed the treasure chests contained gold, one of you posited that they contained something else: “They’re full of solar panels.”
I noted above that Trump recently said America’s wealth is under its feet, but I neglected to mention that he also promised not to squander this wealth on “windmills, which frankly aren’t working too well.” One of you alluded to that promise: “I’d like to see a windmill do this.”
As I did, a couple of you noted that digging for gold is an environmentally-friendly pursuit:
- “The environmental impact is tiny.”
- “At least it’s carbon neutral.”
A couple more of you submitted captions highlighting the obliviousness of the roughneck struggling to open the chest:
- “Dang, the lock is rusted. Do we have anything that could loosen it up?”
- “The latch won’t work. You got any oil?”
I like the idea behind those two captions better than the execution. The first is too long, while the second loses something by explicitly identifying (instead of just implying) that oil is the lubricant the roughneck needs to loosen the latch. Taking the best of both captions and putting them together could lead to a stronger caption like, “The latch won’t work. Got any lubricant?”
Here are two captions that cleverly play on the term “rich soil:”
- “This soil is richer than we thought.”
- “Who knew this soil was so rich?”
And, as always, there were several good captions that didn’t fit neatly into any category:
- “Finally, we can pay for another oil well.”
- ”We struck gold.”
- “Shareholders voted to put money back into the oil fields.”
- “We’re diversifying.”
- “I don’t know, Bob. Boss said not to come back until we strike oil.”
- “Maybe we should switch to gold mining.”
This week’s best entry is, “They’re full of solar panels.” It’s funny, but it also manages to comment—in just five short words—on Big Oil’s efforts to downplay or even bury evidence of the value of alternative energy sources. That’s quite an achievement for a cartoon caption.