5 The other face of oil

A lot of people have bee going on about how oil affects the environment, and how oil ought to be replaced by renewable resources such as solar-powered and electric cars etc.

While environmental impacts are happening fast, what we need to fear just as much are the social impacts of oil and oil prices, particularly in the Middle East.

As prices drop, their economies drop, and people pile onto the streets and eventually go to war. Elsewhere, rising prices can affect economies and societies differently but just as reliably. From small scale, immediate war in poorer Algeria to possibly larger scale war much later in richer Saudi Arabia, the world will be affected by it all. The Arabs have a buffer cash, said to be in Trillions, which will easily keep them going – until the war around then reaches the heart of their own lands.

We’re all living on the same planet, and we’re all going to be affected by what happens in the Middle East, albeit to varying degrees. That said, it appears in drilling oil four thousand years ago (Encyclopædiea Britannica, 11th ed., 1911) we have opened a Pandora’s box and it’s turning out to be pretty hard to seal back shut.