Up until 1950, the United States was the world’s leading oil producer, the Saudi Arabia of its day.
I didn't know that, but after reading this article, everything the GOP has been doing, especially since the Bush years started to make sense to me. Yeah, scary, I know. With all the weird distractions of war, religion, attacks on the 99%, trying to force the world Back In Time, this is why:
How the Big Energy Companies Plan to Turn the United States into a Third-World Petro-State
The formula for making Canada and the U.S. the “Saudi Arabia” of the twenty-first century is grim but relatively simple: environmental protections will have to be eviscerated and those who stand in the way of intensified drilling, from landowners to local environmental protection groups, bulldozed out of the way. Put another way, North America will have to be Third-Worldified.
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Welcome to the Third World of Energy
Up until 1950, the United States was the world’s leading oil producer, the Saudi Arabia of its day. In that year, the U.S. produced approximately 270 million metric tons of oil, or about 55% of the world’s entire output. But with a postwar recovery then in full swing, the world needed a lot more energy while America’s most accessible oil fields -- though still capable of growth -- were approaching their maximum sustainable production levels. Net U.S. crude oil output reached a peak of about 9.2 million barrels per day in 1970 and then went into decline (until very recently).
This prompted the giant oil firms, which had already developed significant footholds in Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela, to scour the global South in search of new reserves to exploit -- a saga told with great gusto in Daniel Yergin’s epic history of the oil industry, The Prize. Particular attention was devoted to the Persian Gulf region, where in 1948 a consortium of American companies -- Chevron, Exxon, Mobil, and Texaco -- discovered the world’s largest oil field, Ghawar, in Saudi Arabia. By 1975, Third World countries were producing 58% of the world’s oil supply, while the U.S. share had dropped to 18%.
My personal eye-opener was after reading The Shock Doctrine which burst my belief in The American Dream. That book woke me up and I've been fuming at the Corporate Controlled US Government and those in Power ever since.
The creation of OWS gave me some glimmer of hope, but then The GOP POTUS religious talking points distracted me-and that is all that Religion is-a distraction. Then the war on women was a Not Again! moment as is the Racial time-bomb that the murder of one of many "Trayvon" issue also becoming front and center of a new Civil Rights battle.
History repeating itself.
The 1 % of the 1 % from Oil Riches have a lot at stake. They apparently think they OWN the very planet we live on.
Instinctively, I know no one truly owns anything. No one gets to take their stuff with them once they die. We all know that. But I'm getting off track..
I'm realizing for myself that I can't fight the Oil Barons, Not Really. I feel stuck. I've always felt one of my purposes and duties as a human being was to expose and fight against injustice, but these days everything feels like an injustice and not fair. So many Us vs Them scenarios and I'm getting old and so tired.
I think I'm going to start focusing what little time and energy I have left on those who are trying to get more wind and solar and green energy for the future humans. I want to keep moving forward, not going to let them force me back in time-been there done that.
The Oil Barons will disappear when the oil runs dry and not a minute sooner unfortunately.
So until then, Forward March OWS! Occupy the Future!