Bikes, Oil, Iraq, War
Back in the 1970s, experts warned finite resources such as minerals, oil, etc were due to run out, sometime in the new millennium. It seemed a long way off then! Resources wouldn't suddenly run out, of course. But with increasing scarcity prices would rise inexorably. Two things would then start happening, Extraction From Increasingly Difficult Sources and eventually Wars Over Diminishing Resources. The "Bath-Tub" graph of price against time looked something like this.
However these experts became branded "prophets of doom". They were ignored and the Western World continued with a policy of Business-As-Usual plunging deeper into consumption and consumerism. It seemed as if oil etc would last for ever.
Since the 1970s we've seen the phenomenal growth of the motorcar.
In 1961 only three in every ten households owned a car. But by 1998 this had risen to seven in ten. And a quarter of all households had two or more cars! By 2000 there were 24 million cars in the UK. The total road traffic has increased from 53 billion vehicle kilometres in 1951 to 455 billion in 1988. A tenfold increase and still rising.
Just look at the street parking in Bristol, or listen to the monotonous traffic reports on the local news! And UK traffic is predicted to continue growing, a further 17% by the year 2010 (Transport White Paper 1998). Hence the recent Government hints about a return to road-building - widening the M25, other major motorways, etc
In Bristol alone, a million car trips per week are less than 2 miles - many of which could be done by bike or on foot. However nationally cycling has fallen from 29 billion passenger kilometres in 1962 to a mere 4 billion in the 1970s. Despite a modest recovery to 6 billion in the 1970s-80s it had sunk back to 4 billion by 1998.
Elsewhere in Europe, Denmark and Holland make 20-30% of their trips by bike. At the recent CTC conference it was quoted that in the 1940s Britain used to have more cyclists, pro-rata, than Holland! Whereas Holland has invested in and encouraged its cyclists, Britain has discouraged, ridiculed, and marginalized us. For example Bristol's 1.5 mile Spine Road at £55m cost more than the grant to Sustrans to fund the entire NCN! Keith's article in the last issue drew attention to how cycling in Bristol has been marginalized over the past 25 years. Yes we've been robbed.
And it's right to say so!
Globally, there are around 500 million cars. And the number is increasing twice as fast as the world's population, estimated to reach 2 billion by 2030. (www.greenpeace.org). For example, VW have just doubled their car factory building program in China. The country's car market has exploded - overall sales grew 50% in 2002. (Article on BBC News website). But isn't this merely a celebration of growing global prosperity? Just glance at the champagne-glass graph of global inequality below.
The poorest fifth consume not much more than 1% of the resources whereas the richest fifth consume well over 80%. Grotesque isn't it?. It's not over-population in poor countries that's the problem, it's over consumption by the rich. America, for instance, with just 5% of the world's population consumes 25% of the world's oil.
What happens as the edge of the Bath-Tub graph begins to rise? Extraction From Increasingly Difficult Sources? When Bush came into power, to reward his oil-backers he opened up more remote regions of Alaska for oil fields. (www.stopesso.org)
What's Europe doing?
BP plans to use billions of UK tax-payers' money to help fund a highly controversial and environmentally damaging 1750 km oil pipeline from Azerbaijan through Georgia to a port in Turkey. (www.baku.org.uk)
While the Americans were bombing rubble into smaller rubble in Afghanistan George Monbiot (Guardian 23/10/2001) and others speculated energy supplies may have been the real motive. But this was ridiculed by right-wingers such as Jim Fitzsimmons.
(www.tengai.co.uk/jim/caspian/) Yet last year, with the improved "security situation" in central Asia, the agreement has been signed for the 1500 kilometre gas pipeline from Turkmenistan thro Afghanistan to Pakistan. Rejoice! It was a closely guarded secret that Taliban leaders were taken on a secret visit to the States in the late 1990s to plan this pipeline. But in the end they weren't too keen. So was this why they were removed? (http://www.tenntimes.org/sources.htm)
Wars Over Diminishing Resources
The rich nations, and those who control their economies, have no intention of giving up their wealth. Quite the opposite in fact. US military spending, already almost two trillion dollars a year is being increased by 15%.
In the UK about a third of total oil consumed is for transport. In the US it's nearer two-thirds. (www.press.dtlr.gov.uk). So the fact that Iraq just happens to sit on top of one of the worlds largest oil fields seems to explain everything. There's nothing new about plans for military action to secure oil supplies as Government papers declassified under the 30 year rule show. When the US backed Israel in the 1973 Six-Day War, OPEC retaliated with the oil embargo. The US response was a plan to launch airborne troops to seize the oil fields in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, & Abu Dhabi. Apparently dear old Edward Heath was miffed he wasn't even consulted first. (www.commondreams.org)
But wasn't the Iraq War to rid the world of tyrants? When Saddam Hussein stands trial I hope he holds up his pay cheque from the CIA for assassinating the previous prime minister. And I hope he produces all the receipts from western countries for the weapons, poison gas, etc, etc. And I hope he points out he wasn't the first to gas the Kurds - Winston Churchill got the RAF to do it back in the 1920's!
He may complain the allies have been giving him bad press for the hooks in the ceilings of his torture chambers. In Uzbekistan thousands are in prison and hundreds more join them every year in politically motivated arrests. The British Embassy admits prisoners are tortured and sometimes boiled to death. But Uzbekistan, in the midst of central Asia's massive gas and oil fields is seen by the west as a key asset and already has a massive US military base for bombing raids over Afghanistan. Last year Uzbekistan got $500m in aid, with a sixth going to the Police & Intelligence Services, whose department website says they use "torture as a routine investigation technique". (Nick Walsh Guardian 26/5/2003). As John Pilger has said - there is "no war on terrorism. If there was, the Royal Marines and the SAS would be storming the beaches of Florida, where more CIA-funded terrorists, ex-Latin America dictators and torturers, are given refuge than anywhere else on earth".
Oil is running out - it's official
The US Dept of Energy reckons production will peak eventually, but not until 2037. But hey - they could be lying so as not to panic the stock market. Independent geologists say all the really big oil-finds were years ago and the peak could be within the next five to ten years. Supply will start to decline but global demand is rocketing. Forget the myths of technical fixes. Forget solar powered cars, bio-diesel, or hydrogen economies - no other power source gives the same return as oil. (George Monbiot Guardian 2/12/2003)
Within our lifetimes the present wasteful, polluting, consumerist so-called civilisation will come down with a mighty crash. And in the process the world's oil-hungry nations are tussling to grab as much as they can for themselves. Almost everywhere the US is winning, positioning itself as the gatekeeper to the world's remaining oil & gas. If it succeeds it will secure its own supplies and massively enhance its hegemonic power. Able to use its massive military power to intervene anywhere in the world its commercial interests are challenged. (George Monbiot Guardian 5/11/2002)
Is it ridiculous to imagine that if everyone rode bicycles no one would have even heard of the Middle East? Be proud the Bristol Cycling Campaign isn't just another recreational cycling group. It is the general belief in a more sustainable lifestyle, understanding the need to live more lightly on the planet, the importance of green politics, recycling, organics, anti-consumerism, and links with local social-justice and environmental campaigns that makes us different and rooted in the real world. And as world events perhaps follow an ever increasingly disastrous destructive and unjust path we can play our small but hopefully significant part in trying to point the way to a more sustainable future
Rowland
