 It’s in your
toothbrush...and the tube holding your paste. Buckets, vaseline, paints, pacemakers,
syringes, telephone cables, artificial limbs, inks, adhesives, computers...and it of
course helps propel our cars and aeroplanes. The list of petroleum based products in our
lives is endless.
Today, oil provides the energy for 95 per cent of the world’s transportation
needs. The whole industrialised world survives on petroleum. We cannot imagine living
without it. There’s billions of barrels of it under the earth for us to use.
So
what’s the problem?
PROBLEM NO.1
Oil is not distributed democratically!
Map of proven oil reserves in the World at end 2001 Thousand million barrels
 |
| Source: BP Annual Energy Review, 2001 |
Nature was partial in providing oil
deposits.
Some nations have much more than they can consume.
Other nations need more than they have. 75 per cent of the world’s proven oil
reserves are in the Middle East around the Persian Gulf...and there has been a mad free
for all scramble to get it — hook or by crook. Nations are willing to fight, bomb,
maim and kill.
Consumption shows a very different picture. USA who produces only about 3 per cent of
the oil, consumes 30 per cent. In 2000, the Canadian consumption of oil was 20.71 barrels
per person, some 28 times higher than the Indian consumption of 0.75.
It’s a crude world. Nations are quick to stake claim on or control oil rich lands.
Yet, when it comes to the social and environmental devastation acquiring and consuming oil
creates, no one is willing to take responsibility. Are we stuck with the dirty and viscous
politics of petroleum? Or can we create other sources of energy?
|
