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Between oil and blood

Have you noticed anything behind the prices at the gas pumps? Fluctuations come and go, but over time we always pay more. Some analysts foresee the day when the price at the pump in the U.S. will hit highs that make $2.50 per gallon seem mild. Today, 40 percent of the world's energy and 96 percent of its transportation needs are fueled by oil. The rapid growth of India and China, along with increases in oil consumption in the industrialized nations is expected to lead to a doubling of global gasoline consumption by 2025, according to the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security. But who cares, since there is still a projected 1 trillion gallons of proved and "probable" oil reserves remaining. So let the good times roll. After all, the countries and the companies that own the oil are our friends. They love us, and they will make sure we have enough oil to meet our energy needs, forever. Yeah.

All this leads me to wonder about something else. Economic terrorism. Much of the world's available oil reserves, 66 percent in fact, just happen to be controlled by Middle eastern regimes that sponsor or acquiesce to Islamic-based terrorists that prefer to see the U.S. and those governments that are not Islamic theocracies dead and buried. Russia holds 6 percent of the remaining reserves, Africa holds 7 percent, Central and South America hold 9 percent, Southeast Asia has 4 percent while North America contains a whopping 6 percent.

But beyond this there exists an unsettling and often-denied fact. We are a world addicted to oil. And as with all addictions, we are in denial. If you doubt this, trying doing without it! Remember seeing or reading about the fights and homicides, in America, at gas lines in the early 1970s?

It would be nice to believe that one political party or the other could make us less dependent on oil. But for all their big talk, they haven't. And corporate interests are hardly willing to give up one of the biggest cash cows in the history of this planet. Think what the world might be like if, say even 20 years ago, Congress had mandated and subsidized serious research into alternative fuels and energy sources or if the oil and car companies had invested a realistic fraction of their R&D money for the same reason. But this was not to be. Profit rules, Congress acquiesces. So today, we are strung out, like any junkie, awaiting our next fix.

Oil is the world's primary source for economic terrorism, and its glory days are yet to come. Oil is business. Oil is money. Oil is power. Oil is profit. The physical need for oil is stronger than the most potent heroin ever produced and it directly affects the personal economies of billions of people. And even though OPEC always gets the blame for hiking the price per barrel, American oil companies continue making record profits.

Wars and economic chaos over oil will probably continue until the wells run dry. The violence we saw at the pumps in the 1970s may look tame if the growing instability in the House of Saud, to name one, continues to worsen. And global stock markets that already freak out over the least rumor of uncertainty are perhaps the most vulnerable of all. Remember the history of the 20th century. Blood and business are seldom strangers.

Most of Earth’s 6.4 billion people are incapable of altering their use of this addictive substance. Those who control and profit from it are unwilling to free the world economy from this addiction. Governments are unwilling to insist on or enforce a change. Unless a dramatic twist emerges in this century-long saga, the best efforts of a few enterprising individuals and companies will not be enough to free the world from this terror-prone addiction, this economic slavery that cares little for the increasing amount of personal disposable income that must be doled out at the gas pump and elsewhere. And why should those that control the flow of oil care about any of us? Whether oil producing countries or multi-national corporations, they are, in effect, nations unto themselves. And at this late date in world history, it should be clear that, despite what they say, they make no distinction between oil and blood.