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Pastimes : No Mideast Oil Products - A petition -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sam Raven who wrote (125)	10/16/2001 1:20:45 PM
From: BigBull	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 280

I believe you are incorrect. OPEC greatly fears the following: 1. Conservation. 2. Development of alternate energy sources. 3. Increased oil production from non-opec sources. This fear is generated by the painful lessons OPEC learned the last time they used "oil as a weapon" in the seventies. OPEC has attempted to keep prices below the level at which all three elements are initiated. That is what the "price bands" are mainly about. OPEC learned: 1. Don't kill your best customers. 2. Don't economically strangle your best customers. Due to the principle of "the law of unintended consequences" oil has indirectly and tangentially been, once again, "used as a weapon." The funding of terrorist operations and the resultant terror attacks on the chief consumer of oil has induced a severe recession that has become global in scope. So OPEC has already "screwed the pooch" and will be forced to cut production to support prices while ohter producers will produce flat out. It appears OPEC will have to relearn the lessons of the seventies. While market forces will serve to chastise OPEC severely in the upcoming months, imo that is not sufficient pressure. Active steps taken by the whole world (lead by the US) to ensure that OPEC really gets the message. This will require entering the political realm. If the chief consumer of oil products leads the way in reducing consumption and if it correctly frames the debate; only a very small amount of world wide consumption reduction will cause Arab producers to seriuosly re-consider funding of terrorist operations. Right now, this issue is not even on the political radar. The US press and politicians are now obsessed with Anthrax, coalition building, and radical Muslim demonstrations. Time for all consumers of oil use our "assymetric weapon", our wallets. Ultimately, the industrialized economies of the world will have find another energy source to power their economies. I cannot think of a better time to start that process than now. If not now, when? I therefore, laud the attempts of this board to put this issue back on the radar screen. If the change is inspired at the grass roots level, so much the better. It will give citizens of the US and the rest of the industialized world something constructive to do.

To: Sam Raven who wrote (125)	10/16/2001 1:36:50 PM
From: Alastair McIntosh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 280

Im not so sure about this statement: Lastly, while this country is the largest consumer of energy, we are the healthiest,... Under the World Health Organization's "Healthy Life Expectancy Ratings" the U.S. is 24th in the world. The United States rated 24th under this system, or an average of 70.0 years of healthy life for babies born in 1999. The WHO also breaks down life expectancy by sex for each country. Under this system, U.S. female babies could expect 72.6 years of healthy life, versus just 67.5 years for male babies. "The position of the United States is one of the major surprises of the new rating system," says Christopher Murray, M.D., Ph.D., Director of WHO's Global Programme on Evidence for Health Policy. "Basically, you die earlier and spend more time disabled if you’re an American rather than a member of most other advanced countries." who.int

To: Sam Raven who wrote (125)	10/16/2001 5:37:09 PM
From: schrodingers_cat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 280

You make some excellent points: >We don't live in a vacuum, oil we don't use will go somewhere else in the world and we will compete with those folks. This is exactly what I meant when I referred to the "world oil market", and it's a pity that many "energy independence" folks don't understand the consequences of that. In order to be truly energy independent, we would have to cut ourselves off from the world oil market. Even if we did that, what would happen to our allies in Europe and Japan? If their economies were hurt by trouble in the Mid-East, then that would hurt us too. If Japan or China built-up their militaries so they could take our place in the Mid-East, then that might be bad for us too. US disengagement from the region would cause many troubles. I do think though, that some substantial efforts to reduce our use of Mid-East oil send a valuable political message to the region:" Allah may have put the oil under your feet, but it is the consuming countries that make it valuable .How would you like it if we found a way to make it less valuable?"