| Two-thirds of the world's proven oil reserves lie under the sands of the Middle East. No wonder that the US is intervening there. But the US is not the only country that needs energy... |
Oil, imperialism, environmentalism — and the new politics of energy
WORKERS, APR 2005 ISSUE
Resources, not differences in civilisations or identities, are behind most conflicts. Most important is oil, which drives economies, international politics and the deployment of armed forces.
The US government made its position clear as far back as 1941 in an official document which urged a "more and more aggressive foreign policy aimed at assuring access to petroleum overseas".
Sixty years later, in August 2001, the US Department of Energy could be seen reporting where it reckoned action was needed: "Afghanistan's significance from an energy standpoint stems from its geographical position as a potential transit route for oil and natural gas exports from central Asia to the Arabian Sea."
Vice-President Dick Cheney says, "You've got to go where the oil is," summing up much of world history since 1900.
The US state treats oil as a matter of national security. Petroleum provides 41% of its energy, two-thirds of it for transport (petrol fuels 97% of its transport). Since 1998, it has depended on foreign sources for over half its oil. The US state wants all the oil-producing countries that it dominates to increase their exports to the USA. But Europe, Russia, Japan and China also depend on foreign supplies, sharpening imperial rivalries.
Oil drives dictatorships in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Nigeria, Colombia and Central Asia. It drives coup attempts in Venezuela. It drives wars and occupations such as Yugoslavia (with the permanent US base Camp Bondsteel astride the pipeline route from the Caspian), Afghanistan (a handy pipeline route), Iraq, which the US state intends to occupy permanently, and Iran next.
Proven global oil reserves were 68 billion barrels in 1947, 600 billion in 1980 and 1,064 billion in 2000, 43 years' worth at 1998 consumption rates. The Middle East has two-thirds: 25% in Saudi Arabia, 12.6% in Iran, 10.7% in Iraq, 9.3% in UAE, 9.3% in Kuwait and 1.5% in Qatar. Oil companies and governments struggle to control these resources and pipeline routes, leading to more wars, US occupation of the Middle East — and rising terrorism.
No wonder the group Project for a New American Century said, "The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security." All these countries' governments are now pro-US, except Iran.
The cloak for aggression used to be anti-communism. Now it is anti-terrorism. The current wars have nothing to do with terrorism or democracy or rebuilding. The promise of $4.6 billion to rebuild Afghanistan, for example, has not been kept — only $112 million of that has been delivered.
Dungeness nuclear power station: a target for the European Union as it aims to make Britain dependent on external energy sources
Greens
Oil money directly intervenes in politics, funding among other things the Green and anti-nuclear movements. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund financed the 1970s Club of Rome report Limits to Growth, which predicted that the world was heading for disaster because of unfettered population growth and industrial expansion, exhaus-tion of stocks of natural resources, envir-onmental destruction and food shortages.
The Club of Rome report proposed a post-industrial policy, meaning we should destroy industry and stop development. The oil-funded International Institute for the Environment and Development (with Roy Jenkins as board member) produced the book Only One Earth, which also promoted post-industrialism. The German Green Petra Kelly worked for the National Resources Defense Council, funded by the Ford Foundation.
Oil companies funded the Aspen Institute (with the war criminal Robert McNamara as board member), whose operatives ran the 1972 UN Environment Conference. The Atlantic Richfield Oil Company funded Friends of the Earth, and bought the Observer to spread the anti-industry message.
During their period in office, Thatcher and Reagan carried out the anti-industry programme, destroying industries and causing record debts and deficits, yet still paying Wall Street bond dealers and their clients record sums in interest income.
Now Blair tells us the two top priorities for us all are reducing global warming and ending African poverty. But these are code for destroying industry and rebuilding empire, just as weapons of mass destruction was code for attacking Iraq.
Whether there is significant global warming is debatable. The earth is indeed warmer than between 1300 and 1850, but only by an estimated one degree. Average temperatures are two degrees lower than they were during the medieval warm period of 900 to 1300. The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says, "There is no evidence that extreme weather events, or climate variability, has increased, in a global sense, through the 20th century." (Climate Change, 1995).
Under the Kyoto Pact the USA would have to cut its energy use by 25% by 2012, costing it an estimated $325 billion. Hardly surprising that the US government did not want to sign! To put it in context, this is far more than the cost of providing the whole world with clean drinking water ($165 billion) and with sanitation for all ($30 billion).
Life, death, and the Greens...
Greens apply concepts from zoology and biology to human societies. But human societies are resource creators, not resource destroyers, so we cannot be reduced to zoology. Last century, the world's population grew from 1.5 billion to six billion, but contrary to the Greens' ideas, more does not mean worse: world life expectancy rose from 30 years to 60. Infant mortality fell from 167 per 1,000 in the 1950s to 60 per 1,000 in 2000.
Our industries have created many processes and products that benefit us all — water chlorination, for instance. The Greens oppose this: under their pressure, the Peruvian government decided not to chlorinate the water supply, causing a cholera outbreak that infected 300,000 people and killed thousands. Yet Greenpeace still aims to stop all use of chlorine-based compounds.
In the 1950s, India cut malaria cases from 75 million to 50,000 by using DDT, the best tool for controlling the spread of malaria-carrying mosquitoes. But because of the Greens' successful campaign against DDT, worldwide malaria now infects 400 million people a year, and kills two million. South Africa, Zambia and Uganda all recently reduced malaria by about 80% by using DDT. No peer-reviewed study has ever linked DDT exposure to a single case of harm to humans.
Cancer incidence and cancer death rates are both down, contrary to Rachel Carson's predictions in Silent Spring. Similarly, despite all the Green hysteria about GM foods, there are no documented cases of harm from them.
Nuclear power
Britain has signed the Kyoto Pact, but the government has failed to do what would be required to cut greenhouse gas emissions. To do that we need to build further nuclear power stations — well-constructed nuclear power plants produce almost no greenhouse gas.
About 16% of the electricity produced globally is generated using nuclear energy. If it had all been produced from fossil fuel power stations, about two billion tonnes more carbon dioxide would have been produced, an extra 8% in global greenhouse gas emissions.
Our 16 nuclear power stations produce about a quarter of Britain's electricity. But European Union directives reducing the lifetime of our power stations start to take effect this year, seriously reducing our ability to produce our own dependable energy supply.
Under current plans, by 2023 only 4% of Britain's electricity will come from nuclear power. No nuclear power station has been built in Britain since Sizewell B in Suffolk came into operation in 1994.
The idea is that other sources will replace nuclear power production and relieve Britain's reliance on fossil fuels. But we could not meet our energy needs with renewables alone. They currently produce only about 2% of the world's energy. The planned wind farm in Wales would produce at best 6 megawatts; a typical nuclear power station produces 1000 megawatts.
We must face the fact that nuclear power will provide a significant part of our energy needs for the foreseeable future, and resist interference by the EU aimed at making us energy-dependent upon other countries.
