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Has World War 3 begun already?

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There is a famous quote from Albert Einstein about war. He said “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
I am considerably less qualified than Einstein to predict the weapons to be used in WWIII, but I am pretty sure of what it will be about, and who we will be fighting against. In fact, the war has already begun. So is it safe to predict war 3 will be about oil, and America’s dance partner would be China?
Wars over oil are nothing new, of course. Oil played a significant part in both World Wars – indeed, Iraq is an artificial state created by a young Winston Churchill in the aftermath of World War I exactly because of the growing importance of oil to the ebbing British Empire. The Allies occupied it during WWII for the same reason. Oil is a strategic asset, as military types would say. What makes a resource strategic is the likelihood that demand will exceed supply – that is, that it may become scarce.
And make no mistake, oil is about to be come very scarce indeed. As many others have noted, the endless “up” escalator of increasing oil reserves and production is about to become a slow but painful trip down. An increasing number of experts are voicing the heretical notion that world oil reserves are on the downside of the bell curve. Some experts think the peak is as much as a decade off; others think we are there right about now. If world demand for oil could be throttled back, the impact of this trend could be relatively mild. But there are a number of reasons why that is simply not in the cards. One is of course our nation’s profligate consumption: Americans consume nearly three times as much energy per capita as Europeans do, and nearly six times the world average. But even if Americans were to suddenly abandon their dreadnought SUVs en masse, world consumption would likely continue to increase. And one of the primary reasons is China.
We all know that China's economy is growing like bamboo, and it is increasingly willing to flex its muscles in politics and international finance. Less well-known is the fact that China is already the 2nd largest consumer of energy in the world.
We tend to think of China as a backward country unused to casting a global shadow. But as The Economist has pointed out China was the largest economy for much of recorded history. Until the 15th century, China had the highest income per head and was the technological leader. While American businesses worry about next quarter, China is making decisions that will bear fruit a generation from now. And so it invests in education and manufacturing while we file dutifully into Walmart to buy their $30 DVD players. As China has become the world’s factory, it has also become the leading consumer of many industrial commodities including steel, coal and cement.
How will China fuel its increasingly affluent economy? It will have to secure access to a truly staggering amount of oil – oil that would otherwise be targeted for our Hummers and Suburbans. And China may well get it without firing a shot.
America's economy, foreign policy, internal future, and wet dreams of another century of hegemony are all tied to cheap oil. And the way we have kept oil cheap is by being the 800-pound gorilla (also guerilla) of the world energy market. OPEC controls some of the supply, but make no mistake that Big Oil – American Big Oil – calls the shots for the world energy market. Put together the contraction in supply and the growing ability of China to control some of that supply, and you get a taste of the cataclysm that will follow when China's growing productivity and affluence really go toe-to-toe with America’s oil addiction.
China, which may be less than a true free market at home, has no problem bitch-slapping us with Adam Smith's invisible hand at the most macro level. So it seems rather obvious that China will flex its growing muscles and buy its own secure supply by bidding on bigger and bigger helpings of Big Oil.
Bullies tend to become crybabies when their reign ends due to the arrival of a bigger bully. Time will tell how our oil bullies will react, but I predict they will squeal like stuck pigs when China assumes its inevitable role as the bigger bully.
Whether the war this crisis triggers will be fought with guns and bombs or money and lawyers, I do not know. But war it will be. Do you see it happening any other way?

  • Alternative Fuel Sources
    I hate to change this to a Green topic--and believe me, I'm not the greenest. I recycle in my own home almost all the time, and I do my best to walk or use public transportation to places I go. Aside from that I leave my AC on pretty much all Summer and then some, my computer on (sleep mode at least), and if I'm on the street I throw my bottles and paper in the first trash can in site.

    But alterntative fuels are the needed answer. Forget war over oil. Off shore drilling? Domestic drilling? Have at it. Drill everything, possibly cause some environmental damage and we'll feel bad about the polar bears and whatever other furry mammals we may lose. I'm not even really kidding. Go for it.

    But what next? I've read (sorry, my sources are not at hand, I could do some digging around if you wish) that even with most untapped sources, the world's oil production could PEAK anywhere from 4-35 years from now because of the ever increasing demand. Peak. When it peaks there's actually a good chance we'll have more oil circulating than before, thus making for cheaper oil. For maybe 10 years or so. Then it will dwindle and dwindle into nothingness. A couple of meager reserves left, and everything else would be 25 dollars a gallon before even that is high and dry. Nothing. No fossil fuel vehicles, no heat, nothing. 14-60 years of the lives we know.

    Forget war. There's not enough oil in the world to be fighting over. We need to invest in alternative sources of energy immediately!
    Voted for by Weydon.
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