The Complete Idiot’s Guide to The Politics of Oil Pt 1

“OUR INABILITY TO CONSERVE 1% PROVES SOMETHING"

We’re not all complete idiots in North America but many of us are.

There are times when I am a complete idiot and times I’m not, and I’d say the same about 99 per cent of the people I know or meet or who have a North American address that forces them to get into their SUV and drive somewhere to buy even a loaf of bread, pound of bacon and bag of cheese.

I don’t have a degree in math but I know 99 per cent is pretty darn high. If my marks had been in that range during my stay at university I’d be performing brain surgery before lunch at a world-class hospital and eating lunch in Paris before the dirty towels had hit the hamper. Unless, of course, my brain informed me that to fly all the way to France for frogs’ legs was not a good use of limited natural resources - and I actually cared enough about the environment and my grandchildren to just walk home and heat up some leftover soup (i.e., something I’m doing right now, as a matter of fact).


["I could live on my wife's soup": photo GAH]

That many of us are often complete idiots came to mind while reading the following passage from the book entitled The Complete Idiot’s Guide to The Politics of Oil:


[Link to photo source]

The U.S. Geological Survey concluded that the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve in Alaska (the exploration of which - for oil - became a keystone in George W. Bush’s energy plan) likely holds about 3.2 billion barrels of economically recoverable oil - less than what the nation uses in six months.

Production would be spread over 50 years of the field’s lifetime and would likely peak at 150 million barrels per year in 2027 - amounting to only 1.5 per cent of projected U.S. consumption that year.

Given that current U.S. demand for oil - which is more than 7.1 billion barrels per year - is increasing about 2 per cent annually, the coastal plain would contribute less than 1 per cent of the oil we are projected to consume over the next 50 years.

-- from the Natural Resources Defense Council’s “Energy Policy for the Twenty-first Century”


[Link to photo source]

After reading the passage I thought, Can we not conserve our spending or driving or overall energy use by a measly 1 per cent?

Is there not one government leader in high places who would move public education in that direction in order to preserve one of the most pristine, natural, beautiful areas in the entire universe?

What does the use and abuse of Alaska (one of surely hundreds of similar misadventures) say about North Americans?

Oh, I believe I’ve answered that last question.

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Stay tuned for The Complete Idiot’s Guide to The Politics of Oil Pt 2.

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