Oil Chaos

I was supposed to write a follow up blog on Democracy. I am writing that on that subject but increase in oil prices needed prompt attention right now. The oil prices touched $66/barrel and from Wal-mart to consumers, everybody is feeling the pinch. There was an article, very informative, about oil prices in New York Times. But I felt like the article failed to touch the core issue. Other reason cited for recent spurt in oil prices is, increase in oil demand in India and China. Somehow Iraq war is never considered as a remote possibility for oil price rise. But that is a political issue and I do not intend to discuss it here.

Most of the columns about oil revolve around the oil consumption by automobiles and for house heating and cooling. In fact, 2/3 of oil consumption can be attributed these two factors. But apart from these obvious reasons, if we look around then almost our (American) lifestyle depends on oil. And, I am not sure how much of our lifestyle we are ready to forgo in order to reduce consumption. Scary part is all the countries are trying to follow American lifestyle and our mother earth does not have that many resources to quench our thirst. If all the people on the earth lead American lifestyle then we will need forty earths. Coming back to oil, right from what we eat to what we wear, oil is integral part of production. Plastic, essential part of current lifestyle needs lot of oil. Even beef production needs considerable oil. Houses we build, clothes we wear, everything depends on oil. With globalization spawning its tentacles, trading among the nations solely depends on the oil. In short, we need oil more than the air we breathe. Makes sense, right! That is why we continue to pollute our air.

Even if we take out automobile out of our life, oil remains integral part of our lifestyle. And, scarcity of oil in future will hit our civilization (western civilization) like a bullet and consequences will be chaos.

According to USGS (US Geology dept.) within next 20 years more than 50% of oil supply will flow from Middle-East. That means clout of evil Saudis and their brethren will increase exponentially. And, at that time we will realize that what we had today was adolescent age of Islamic terrorism. Do we need any more explanation for Iraq war?