Wooden Derick - Kern West Oil Museum

Wooden Derick - Kern West Oil Museum by tkksummers

Saudi Arabia is not exporting the amount of oil they had hoped. Many analysts are saying that the Middle East may be running out of oil. It humors me that “Peak Oil” is considered a lefty view and that it is even called “Peak Oil”, when it really just says that the earth is going to get to a point where it can no longer produce the same amount of oil, and then will eventually run out. But while we still have oil, it continues to be a nice pollutant.

A pipe owned by Exxon Mobil burst, spewing 1000 barrels of oil into the Yellowstone river. Little has been learned from the BP disaster of last year, or even Exxon-Valdez, and calls for more domestic drilling continue to rise from corporate flacks and media outlets. The United States government continues to subsidize oil companies, despite the companies making record profits.

At the same time, we are told that we have no money for social programs.

Child poverty in America is now at 25 percent. Is this because America is low on resources, and that there is not enough money or food to go around? Of course not, we are constantly reminded that America is the richest country on earth, and that’s true. However, the wealth is distributed so unequally that a select few make multiple million dollars a year, while a quarter of the nation’s children are encouraged by multi-millionaire radio hosts to dumpster dive. Let this sink in for a moment, we live in a country that simultaneously houses billionaires and starving children.

The inequality in America can also be extrapolated out to the rest of the world. It is estimated that by 2030 half of the world will be suffering from water scarcity. Studies show that most of this is caused by global warming altering weather patterns and (of course!) unequal distribution of resources. It is predicted that this may cause world conflict, which is like predicting that clouds bring rain. The UN is always here to help though, as they helping with privatization (read: corporate takeover) of drinking water. So get a precious resource that is needed to survive and already unequally divided, and put it in the power of a handful of wealthy greedy individuals to sell to the rest of the population. 4 companies make over half of the meat products in the country.

Like all oligopolies, this leads to mistreatment of workers (and in this case, extreme mistreatment of animals) and high prices for consumers. The current civil rights battle is for the LGBT community (and rightly so), but the next one needs to be for animal rights (along with constant battling for the poor and unfortunate).

Its not that we are necessarily running out of precious resources, they are just all held by a very small part of the world population.