Energy Ironies
The United States has clasped hard-line Islamist states like Saudi Arabia to its bosom as a friend. The Saudis have been enabled to temporarily lift their distaste of foreigners to the extent that oil provides a lofty lifestyle, an assured source of income, through their American friends. Religion does have its imperatives, but money rather trumps those. Despite which, nothing, absolutely nothing, puts a crimp in the Saudi mission to export Wahhabism around the world.Saudi Arabian funding of extremist Islamist interpretations of Koranic scripture ensures a steady stream of young new fundamentalist jihadists coming on line. The American cash cow handily plays a part in the enablement of the process. Through which impressionable young Muslim children have been indoctrinated into hatred of Jews and Christians as corrupt, unclean, ungodly peoples ripe for conquest through jihad. Coming to a mosque or madras near you.
Here's former U.S. vice-president and Nobel Prize winner, Al Gore, environmentalist du jure, pumping his fist in determination to impress upon Americans the dire necessity to wean themselves off carbon-fuel-based energy sources. Much of which is derived from that very source of scorching hatred against the West; Americans and Jews in particular. He exhorts Americans to buy into "renewable energy and truly clean, carbon-free sources".
"This goal is achievable, affordable and transformative. It represents a challenge to all Americans, in every walk of life - to our political leaders, entrepreneurs, innovators, engineers, and to every citizen." In chimes Barak Obama, the inheritor of Mr. Gore's energetic rhetoric: "It's a strategy that will create millions of new jobs that pay well and cannot be outsourced, and one that will leave our children a world that is cleaner and safer".
The United States, it's agreed generally, is dangerously vulnerable because of its reliance on foreign oil. Unfriendly sources that include the Arab Gulf States, Venezuela. With the explosion of the price of fossil fuels, the international community is feeling the pinch, some countries in a highly painful manner. Not our fault, chimes OPEC, blame the speculators, they're driving the price up, artificially, for gain. And overall resulting pain, as the price of manufactured goods and foods skyrocket.
Hitting poor countries who can ill afford the steadily increasing rises in basic food prices. And guess who else? Go ahead, take a stab at it, give it a try, guess. Well - Persian Gulf states, that's who. And other Arab countries without the crutch of an oil income. They've been hit with atmosphere-high inflation, as higher energy costs and a reluctant global economy are impacting their own economies. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates are feeling the pain.
Their steady economic growth, their prime status as the movers and shakers of the oil economy is being steadily eroded. Is nothing sacred? The steadily increasing price of oil that impacts so deleteriously on every facet of living in this modern world is also exacerbating the economies of the Middle East. From boom has come bust. Resulting in inflationary problems, in an overheated economy come to a stumbling hiccough. Public assistance to the destitute is creating an additional burden, with a needed increase in subsidies on food, fuel and housing.
Little wonder there is a complex interaction between the Arab and the African world, with Abu Dhabi leasing 30,000 hectares of cultivable land in Sudan for the growth and importation to Abu Dhabi of badly-needed food crops. Just so much you can do with a desert landscape. Egypt too, the colossus between both worlds, is ready to sign farmland leases. As though Egypt doesn't have its own problems with scarcity and an increasing need to subsidize basic necessities.
This is a universal and growing pain, felt everywhere, but most obviously in less developed countries. Deleteriously affecting migrant workers whose families, remaining in their home countries, are finding the funds sent back to them now insufficient to meet their elementary needs. Western resentment of the fabled riches of the oil sheikdoms has its place in history. The new reality is that everyone suffers.
We are coming to the growing realization that we need to harness the power invested in our environment; the life-giving sun, the ever present winds, the waters surrounding us. It's a small world after all, isn't it?
Labels: Environment, Middle East, Science
posted by Pieface @ Friday, July 18, 2008
<< Home