Timothy Wilken
Capitalism and the Great Market are features of Neutrality. Neutrality requires unlimited resources. Humanity has had unlimited resources in our endless supply of fossil fuels.
Our present economic crash, which is now being compared to the Great Depression, is the result of approaching end of fossil fuels. As of August 2001, 23 out of 44 nations [representing 99% of world oil production in 2000] have passed their production peaks.
Most of humanity is unaware of this approaching crisis, but the governments of the world are aware and are now acting to control the last of the fossil fuel on the planet. This of course is the real purpose of America’s coming war with Iraq. Our leaders are trying to secure control of the Iraqi oil.
Saddam Hussein has threatened to set the Iraqi oil fields on fire if pressed too hard in the coming war. During the Persian Gulf War from the fall of late 1990 to early 1991, Iraq embarked on a systematic destruction of Kuwait’s oil industry, and Iraqi forces set fire to 789 individual Kuwaiti oil wells. It took Red Adair, hundreds of millions of dollars, and over 11 months to put out the fires. How many million barrels of oil were burned is unknown. The attendant results of the fires were catastrophic both from an economic and ecological standpoint.
Recently the workers of Venezuelan oil industry have gone on strike. Prior to the strike Venezuela was exporting 3 million barrels of oil a day to the United States. Now they are exporting none. They have even started to import gasoline because the autos and trucks of their nation are running dry.
This past friday oil closed at $32.72 a barrel. If things don’t go well in the new Gulf war, and Hussein does successfully torch the oil fields, the price of oil could triple.
This would mean gasoline at the pump could rise to over $5 a gallon and the cost of energy four powering our homes and businesses could triple.What would the effect of such a tripling have on the economy and our personal lives?
As I said at the top of this essay. Neutrality is obsolete. We humans need to move on the next stage of our evolution. We need to reorganize synergically. We all need air, water, food, shelter, security, love and meaning. We humans are all the same. We are the same species.
We need to make peace. If we humans won’t work together to solve our mutual problems, then we will perish separately fighting like animals.