Foul Funding Fixes
What a tangled web we've woven for ourselves in our haste to achieve ever greater excesses of wealth. In the process burning through no less than 80 million barrels of oil each and every day. Mostly in the developed world economies, although the rest are striving mightily to bring up the rear. Alas, although the developed world utilizes the greater proportion of that economy enhancing fuel, it produces scant little of it. So they bargain with the devil.And so far the devil has taken full advantage of those delightful opportunities to excel in bringing sweatbands of anxiety to the brows of powerful world leaders and even more powerful corporate heads. What to do? Seek alternate energy sources? We're trying, although we haven't devoted all the resources at our disposal to doing so, falling back on the expedient of nuclear power, and falling for the stupidity of utilizing food grains as an energy source.
The thing of it is, we're wedded to oil and gas, those fossil fuels and mineral resources so amply enriching the geography of some countries and so inadequately endowed toward others. The irony of it being, needless to say, that those very countries indebted to the use of fossil fuels are also those whose economies have increased by bounding leaps over the owners of fuel sources. Resting on their proverbial laurels, raking in the cash, and eschewing any alternative avenues of economic dependence.
The kind of fuels emanating from sources upon whose good will the fuel-wastrel countries can rely upon are limited; among them Canada, Mexico, United Kingdom, Norway, Brazil, United States and by a stretch, Indonesia and Kazakhstan; responsible actors on the world stage, we like to believe. Yet collectively they are capable of supplying a relatively inadequate amount of prized fuel. To themselves, needless to say.
On the other side of the fuel-producing ledger is Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela, Nigeria, the Gulf States; marginally some sites in Asia and Africa - and this avenue represents roughly two-thirds of the world's known reserves and resources. Making this group extremely wealthy, some wealthy beyond their wildest dreams, wealthier than they can feverishly spend on military and luxury goods, to keep up with income continually pouring into state coffers.
And that was at $50 a barrel, an amount that might have been considered astronomically impossible a mere few years earlier. Now the returns are in the stratosphere at double that price, and the advanced economies of the world are wincing in pain at the perceived stranglehold and truncation effect this new reality will have on their ever-widening, never quite satisfied aspirations.
As for natural gas, it would appear that fully half of the world's supply is located under Russia and Iran - oh yes, pull in Algeria and Qatar, and that's three-quarters. Sources so reliable, so without political pain and economy-induced queasiness as to give great confidence for the future. Increased costs will impact heavily from the most mundane areas of life to the very most seriously-required for basic human needs.
The situation will hasten resolve to become more consuming-aware, to become more conservation-minded, but even so the pain that will be felt will be palpable and very real. And perhaps we'll surmount all of that, find alternate energy sources, become more mindful of wastage, and improve the quality of our lives in the process. Certainly the environment will benefit to some degree...?
For the truth is, we have learned to ameliorate the degradation our lifestyles have visited upon our atmosphere, even in the face of acknowledging that in many respects environmental degradation is ongoing and time-irreversible to a certain degree. Having, perhaps, more to do with natural geographic-environmental cycles than anthropomorphic intrusions in nature's plan.
We've tackled issues like acid rain and have been moderately successful in the outcome. We've managed to clean up lake and river systems that we have so badly neglected in the past, bringing them back to their original states where fish can thrive and so can we. We've developed cleaner coal-burning technologies, and see fewer smog incidents as legislators tighten up emission laws.
We can do better than that, too, given human ingenuity when pushed to the wall.
Labels: Environment, Nature, Political Realities
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, January 06, 2008
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