Rattling The Oil Cage

[David Guyatt]

Whether or not Peak Oil is happening now, or a century from now, makes no difference: We will eventually have to learn to live without burning oil. It might as well be dealt with before it becomes a paralyzing crisis. US past and present dependence on a resource from outside its borders would inevitably lead to lopsided foreign policies in favor of obtaining the resource.

Quite agree. Based on various details over the decades I think the technology is already developed to deal with it now. It was likely developed 100 hundred years ago by Nikola Tesla, but was suppressed and later subject to classification I believe.

However, I think it does make a difference in respect to the manipulation of facts and scare tactics to suit the agenda of those in the oil lobby.

Nowadays the US needs not rely on overseas sources of oil anyway, as it has the ability to produce more than enough domestically. Historically, the Carter Doctrine that stated that the Gulf and it's vast oil reserves were a US "vital interest" was as much to do with controlling the flow of oil to other nations as a geopolitical tool to ensure their vassal status - as well as a means of surreptitiously taxing the world and forcing them to adopt the petrodollar as the global reserve currency, than it was a vital interest of energy supplies itself.

Whether or not global warming is caused by human activity, makes no difference: We will eventually have to learn to ameliorate the effects of global warming. It might as well be dealt with now before it becomes a paralyzing crisis. US past and present indifference to environmental effects outside its borders would inevitably lead to humanitarian and economic crises which would ultimately be far more costly than the steps we must take to prevent them.


It just so happens that we're getting a "two-fer" here. Turning away from hydrocarbon fuels is a necessary step in solving both of these crises.

I disagree. It absolutely makes a difference if bad science has been manipulated and used as a scare tactic to suit a cynical agenda. In the case of the manipulation of global warming, Meyssan says in the linked article that the global warming agenda has been used to support "Anglo-Saxon capitalism" - which I take to mean neoliberal economics of "trickling up" wealth from the many to the few.

So I think on both counts the difference matters a great deal. In the last analysis the manipulation of events, facts, science and geopolitics all form part of the same nasty tapestry of global control that the US brings to bear across the planet to support its hegemony.