President Obama recently asked a group of young students to make a calculation. About the global oil reserves and America’s oil consumption he said that a simple calculation would make clear that America has to decrease its oil consumption.
He said that America uses 20% of total oil production and that it has only 2% of the world reserves. He said: Make the calculation!
Well, let’s do that.
Assume that America’s world reserves are only 2% of the global reserves. In reality, the American reserves are much, much bigger, but we will not dispute that number.
Imagine that those 2% are 2% of global reserves of 100,000. That would be a volume of 2000.
Imagine that the yearly global production is 100. America’s consumption is 20%, so a volume of 20.
In this example, America could go on consuming a volume of 20 since it owns itself a volume of 2000. It could go on consuming 20% of the world oil reserves for another hundred years.
In other words: it doesn’t mean a thing to create a link between 20% of consumption and 2% of the global reserves. It all depends upon the size of the world reserves.
Only ten years ago, The Independent (UK) warned that the world would run out of oil ‘between 2010 and 2020’ since the world reserves were only 80% of what had been previously thought. The newspaper was very wrong.
Recently, estimates calculated the US fossil fuel reserves to be, at minimum, sufficient to cover American consumption for another 90 years.
The President, I am sorry to say, is talking BS about oil and fossil fuels. There is plenty under our feet.
Does he know he is talking BS? Absolutely. Why is he not ashamed of talking BS? Because he dreams of a green economy.
A green economy will serve environmental values and the idea of social justice. In order to save the world from capitalistic exploitation and pollution, a leftist global leadership aims to reshape the production of goods and services in order ‘to spread the wealth around’ and limit the individual ‘pursuit of happiness’. Only what is green, will be socially acceptable. This new leadership will define what happiness can reasonably entail within the parameters of a clean environment and collective social justice.
These are the defining ideas in the world in which President Obama spent his learning and academic years. The people who developed and expressed those ideas were his intimate friends and colleagues.
Why does he lie about oil and does he is obstruct oil production and oil exploration? There are higher goals to serve.
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