Oil is the curse of the modern world; it is “the devil’s excrement,” in the
words of the former Venezuelan oil minister Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo, who is
considered to be the father of OPEC
and should know. Our insatiable need for oil has brought us global warming,
Islamic fundamentalism and environmental depredation. It has turned the United
States and China, the world’s biggest consumers of petroleum, into greedy,
irresponsible addicts that can’t see beyond their next fix. With a few
exceptions, like Norway and the United Arab Emirates, oil doesn’t even benefit
the nations from which it is extracted. On the contrary: Most oil-rich states
have been doomed to a seemingly permanent condition of kleptocracy by a few,
poverty for the rest, chronic backwardness and, worst of all, the loss of a
national soul.
We can’t be rid of the stuff soon enough.
Such is the message of Peter Maass’s slender but powerfully written new
book, “Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil.” Unquestionably, by fueling
better and faster transportation and powering cities and factories, oil has been
critical to modern economies. But oil has also made possible the most
destructive wars in history, and it has left human society in a historical
cul-de-sac. Despite much hue and cry today, Maass argues, we seem unable to move
beyond an oil-based global economy, and we are going to hit a wall soon.
This is basically what James Howard Kunstler has been saying for years now.
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