It's fairly common knowledge that the area of greatest concern to the entire world is the Middle East. There are tons of things going on there nowadays, and those combined events could very well determine the fate of our entire planet.
The first situation (the focus of this entry) seems very complicated, but is actually very easily averted: crude oil. Several Middle Eastern countries (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait, etc.) are the top leading oil producers in the world. They just got lucky, I suppose. In fact, they are so lucky that they have enough oil to hold the world in a vice grip. If the OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) nations decided to withhold all their oil, not only would their economies collapse, due to their dependence on the export of oil, the economies of most world nations would also collapse, due to their dependence on the consumption of oil.
And guess which superpower consumes the lion's share of the oil? Nope, it's not China; they still bike a lot. The United States, the largest (single nation) economic power in the world [1], is also the hugest gas guzzler [2]. In fact, we consume more oil than the rest of the top five nations combined. SPOILER ALERT: if there was suddenly no petroleum available, Americans would start dropping dead from hunger, since the food industry is literally driven by petroleum. Pollan cites statistics like 10 calories of petroleum energy to produce 1 calorie of food energy [3].
Obviously, US government has figured this out as well; it would be sad if a 17-year-old could see it after 15 minutes on the internet, but highly trained officials with decades of training and experience couldn't. Is it any wonder that the majority of US foreign aid goes to Middle Eastern nations? [4] (Although the benefactors of this aid are the military and economic powers of the region, not the oil tankards... Just in case?)
Now then, what to do about this? There are so many options, I don't even know from which angle to deride the world governments. I think I'll go with alternative energy. I mean, come ON! We have figured out so many ways to produce power without burning petroleum that it's almost funny how bad cars smell.
We have electric and hybrid cars, and lots of people use them because they use less fuel. If you're one of those people, good for you! Nice effort! Except for one thing: you may be killing us faster. Although we generally don't use petroleum for power plants, they still produce harmful emissions, and electric cars usually charge using power from those plants. So if we all switch to electric, our cities would smell much better, since the local emission of pollution would go down, but the world as a whole would have more pollution. But even that would reduce the world's dependence on fossil fuels.
Here's one of my favorites: solar, hydro, and wind power. We have so much free energy literally floating around us, it's a little disappointing that we don't harvest more of it. Hydroelectricity is probably the hardest to get, unless you happen to have a large waterfall lying around in your backyard. Still, there are plenty of bodies of moving water that don't have generators attached to them, and although there are few that are powerful enough to be efficient uses of our efforts, some is more then none. We could stick TONS of solar panels and windmills all over the place, especially those sunny deserts and windswept plains, both of which are empty for miles. Solar and wind are generally inversely proportional--that is, the efficiency of solar goes down when the wind picks up, due to moving clouds, etc. But still, yet again, we are far from maximum efficiency as far as either goes.
With electric cars combined with optimized free energy, we can almost completely free ourselves from Middle Eastern (and South American) oil hoarders. But even that won't diffuse global interest in the center of the world.
What you can do- For starters, if you haven't already done so, switch to electric or hybrid cars. This is the first step. Yes, it may be a little more expensive, but it's well worth it in the long-run, and even in the medium-term. If the market experiences a vast upswing in the quantity of electric cars demanded, it becomes more efficient for producers to sell at lower prices, so even more people will buy them. Every car counts.
You can even take it to the next level and talk to your representative about intensifying measures to harness free energy. Democracy is a pleasure to work with. We can each exert a tiny amount of influence on our governments, so let's take advantage of that. If you live anywhere but in the US, I don't know what to tell you, but I urge you to look it up for yourselves. For Americans, you can use this helpful website right over here to contact your representative. No matter where you are, it shouldn't take more than five minutes to shoot them an email. (Calling may take longer, but I try to avoid telephone conversations like the plague, so I wouldn't know.)
It really helps to talk to them. Most politicians already know what they should do to fix the world, but they are afraid that people are so abhorrent to change that any attempts to put forth their ideas will be met with a quick end to their political career. We need to show them that they have our support if they want to save us all from the grip of oil.
The last thing you should do is spread the revolution. You don't need to mention this blog at all (I'd appreciate it if you did) but at least bring the issue to the attention of your peers. Remember, everyone makes a difference, but a dozen people make 12x the difference of one.
Next week-- Middle Eastern Democracy.
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