Oily Problems

No, I’m not writing about the greasy facial oil masking your skin. It’s all about sweet crude oil, the Black Gold, the OPEC-issue, today’s fuel, and tomorrow’s scarcity. We’re seeing macroeconmics here, when most of today’s economies solely depending on oil, take it away and you paralyze the global economy. Who cares, you ask? You might have felt it a little with the rising of the standard minimum fare but its long term effects are disastrous.

It has already been noted that global market growth is slowing down. The US Economy is fluctuating, the OPEC is fighting for a $100 a barrel mark-up, Russia is going war freak again with oil as its hostage. The slower the growth of a market, the slower the development, and the slower can we uplift our standards of living. Yes, it’s nobody’s fault but everyone’s. We’ve been too dependent on oil. We knew its long-term effects yet everybody’s addicted to it. Think about opium and shabu addicts in rehabs. The world is so much like it right now, enslaved and in-denial.

I’ve written how indolent we are when we could have harnessed other sources of energy by developing hybrid technologies. We’ve been too slow on these developments. Our policy was: let’s use oil for now and see what happens next. Good heavens, we not only see but also feel global warming, pollution, and now economic slowdown. Think about it, if oil runs dry today, what would happen to the millions of jeepneys and tricycles running up and down the Philippine road?

Will we really run out of oil? No, we won’t. Oil will become so scarce that it will become so expensive, no one wants to buy it or invests in finding it. Isn’t this a classic human condition? We trust so fully in things that are passing, things that are temporary. We easily find solace in the easiest conditions that we have. What little psychological problem we innately have adds up to become the global problem. Everything after all rests on individual choice and everything else is a reflection of the inner struggle. We can’t always blame the higher institutions, it’s too immature for today’s consciousness.

As human persons, we are called to more social awareness and active participation. Whatever we do, no matter how small, affects everything in reality. Think about the Butterfly Effect.

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