Let's blame addictive oil

The blame game is getting grimmer as the global warming warnings get more strident. Now comes a book pointing to petroleum as "the devil's excrement." Damn, wish I thought of that epithet. This book is Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil. Says Knopf's marketing text, "Every unhappy oil-producing nation is unhappy in its own way, but all are touched by the 'resource curse'—the power of oil to exacerbate existing problems and create new ones." Venezuela? Nigeria? Iraq? Saudi? Kuwait? Iran? Kazahkstan? Russia? Mexico? What's not to like. One reviewer sums it up thusly, "Seventy years after the discovery of its first great [oil] reservoir, Saudi Arabia remains a medieval principality with a bare patina of modernity." This "crude" book says Norway and some of the small oil emirates may be the only nations on earth to make oil resources into a positive thing. But aren't those Norwegians just Euro-socialists? Eek! [poll id="181"] PEAK OIL? In writing CRUDE WORLD the author was assured there's plenty of oil still in the ground. That estimate is based on science...and faith. The Saudis tell us to believe. If the oil industry's estimates are correct we have enough crude oil left for 300 years at the current rate of consumption. Of course, consumption has been increasing for decades when the world's major economies are booming. Recessions lead to reduced oil consumption. Here's an interesting look at the range of fossil fuel reserves and the political hokus-pocus that surrounds them. This author even falls back on Rev. Malthus and fears about population growth, a concern not popular among proponents of endless economic growth and resource consumption. Those Left Coasters are fretting over Peak Oil already. One theory on Iran going nuclear? Why, they know they've already passed peak oil in their country. [poll id="128"]