Oil-Rich Nations Use More Energy, Cutting Exports
The New York Times reports that “[t]he economies of many big oil-exporting countries are growing so fast that their need for energy within their borders is crimping how much they can sell abroad, adding new strains to the global oil market.” Citizens of countries like Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates already use more oil than Americans use.
According to experts the growth “means several of the world’s most important suppliers may need to start importing oil within a decade to power all the new cars, houses and businesses they are buying and creating with their oil wealth.”
One of the countries that has already made this “flip” is Indonesia. Mexico will probably do the same thing within a couple of years time. And that’s a real problem for the US: Mexico is America’s no. 2 source of foreign oil. And after Mexico Iran will most likely follow suit.
Iran is the world’s fourth largest oil exporter.
The reason: more and more people in those countries drive cars, etc. They’re beginning to live like we do. This means that they use increasingly more oil (and other energy sources).
The result? No oil shortages, thankfully, but “big market shifts, with the number of exporting countries shrinking and unconventional sources like Canadian tar sands becoming more important, especially for the United States. And there is likely to be more pressure to open areas now closed to oil production.”
Energy independence – something many candidates talk about – is simply not doable. But Western countries can become less dependent on other countries. This means that the West has to start a massive program aimed at developing alternative energy (resources). The possibilities are there, we have simply been too lazy and too greedy to take advantage of them.
It also means that Western countries have to exploit their own resources more actively. Many environmentalists oppose that, but it’s absolutely necessary for us to exploit our own natural resources. If we don’t, we have a problem.
"It also means that Western countries have to exploit their own resources more actively. Many environmentalists oppose that, but it’s absolutely necessary for us to exploit our own natural resources."
I’m glad Sweden doesn’t have the equivalent of an Alaska that can be exploited in the name of not having to curtail waste. Because that’s the thing – so much of raw oil usage is pure waste. I’m not telling families to abandon the car and lose 15 minutes if they are sure they can’t afford it. But if many/most can incorporate a walk, if they can actually oversee their average day and make a change then they won’t have to – who am I kidding, here?
Xel,
Have you been to the US? There is waste, to be sure- but the core problem is that our cities/towns were not designed for walking. I live less than a mile from my kids elementary school and would have them walk there- but there’s a major traffic interesection with no crossing guard, so there’s no way (even as an adult I’d have a hard time crossing- the traffic light sequence doesn’t allow time to walk across.)
There’s also the fact of suburban sprawl- and housing closer in to the city is unaffordable. My husband is a cyclist and would ride to work if he could, but it’s not feasible and even though we’re financially pretty comfortable we couldn’t take the hit on housing close to the city.
Basically, our entire infrastructure has been built for cars, so it’s very hard to make changes now.
I’ve noticed the same thing in non-Dutch cities, such as Istanbul. It’s quite safe to walk in Izmir (Turkey) but Istanbul is a different case altogether. I walked there, of course, but you run to the subway or your car. That’s the kind of walking you do. The only place where it’s truly good to walk is at the coast and in the center where all the shops are located. No cars, or virtually no cars, go there.
But normally: oef. I wouldn’t send my kid on the street.
"Basically, our entire infrastructure has been built for cars, so it’s very hard to make changes now."
More bussing? I’m loathe to fall into the pit of anti-American "oh they are all so negligent and comfy and uncultivated and gross and offensive to my refined European esthetics", but I just want to see some debate on what can be done before a bunch of flexistraws is driven into Alaska.
Some cities/towns are doing more bussing and light rail, but even in that regard we’re not well constructed for it. It’s a bit hard to describe, but for example here in the suburbs of metro Atlanta you have a lot of mini cities all hubbed around the one main downtown area. Some people are travelling from one of the suburbs to another, others are going from a suburb to midtown area, etc. And, with quite a few jobs there’s a need for employees to also travel around to the various city sectors during the day, sometimes having to take clients around, etc- so it isn’t always just about the commute to and from work. When you have random traffic patterns like that, it’s hard to build the critical mass of demand for public transit along any given route.
In our case, we’d love it if the rail system would extend up our way to allow my husband to commute that way. He’d ride his bike to the station- and would keep his car down at the office for the daytime travel needs, then ride train/bike back home. But there simply aren’t enough people in our area who would do that to make it economically feasible to expand the train line. I’d try to push for it if I felt there was any way it would happen, but I know it’s way too far from realm of possibility.
Like I said, there are definitely people who have grown lazy and prefer to get in their own car and drive everywhere- but don’t overgeneralize to think that all of us are just making bad choices when some of us can’t use better options.
Christine: I wonder about something. Our rail network is much better than the American one while the American railroad, well, it’s at the very foundation of America. Without the railroads America couldn’t have become an economical superpower in the 19th century (and early 20th).
Why did you guys stop investing in it?
We decided to invest in the interstate highway system instead, I think. From what I understand, that was a very deliberate choice made during the Eisenhower administration. How much the decision was related to pressure from Detroit and the oil industry is your speculation (I’d guess those were considerable factors.)
"How much the decision was related to pressure from Detroit and the oil industry is your speculation (I’d guess those were considerable factors.)"
I’ve always disliked Sunday evenings and you just had "Make that Xel fellow real dispirited" marked in your planner, didn’t you
?
They weren’t particularly considerable factors. The main factor behind the Interstate Highway system was that Eisenhower wanted a way to get troops across the United States quickly. That’s why Interstate Highways are built to handle vehicles the weight of main battle tanks and troop carriers.
As far as cities go, they really were built to accommodate cars. Cars were seen as a sign of affluence and independence (mobility, to get to where the jobs were is still a big deal here). People wanted to live where they could take advantage of those things as well as take longer trips for vacations and such.
Add to that the general disrepair into which most major US cities fell in the 70s due to violence and some rather milquetoast social engineering that cause a lot of folks to move to the suburbs where it was safer and they could own a little land, too, and you get a city with "ring" suburbs. In time, those suburbs grew and were absorbed into the cities. So people moved farther out, into what are now called the exurbs.
Yeah, I almost mentioned the defense angle (the highways were also built to specs to allow military planes to use stretches of them as runways) but figured that instead of helping Xel feel better that would probably put him over the edge.