The Oil Factor

Excerpts (audio and transcript) from a new documentary called The Oil Factor available at Democracy Now.

Narrated by Ed Asner in a most serious and grave voice, the documentary covers lots of ground on the Iraq situation in addition to the obvious connection to oil interests. A couple of things caught my attention: the fact that any lifting of sanctions against Iraq would have played havoc on the war seems kind of obvious in retrospect. The theory that Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski advances predicates that a heavy influx on foreign interest after the sanction lifting would preclude a US bombing or other incursion. No way that the US would risk alienating the rest of the world. Instead, the US bombed away on a captive country, free of foreign influence due to the sanctioning-induced isolation.

The other factoid interesting in a Ripley-esque way-

ED ASNER: In June 2004, just one day's worth of oil consumption would represent a line of barrels long enough to encircle the earth. With almost half used for fuel and the other half used for plastics and chemicals, oil is indispensable in every single aspect of our modern, everyday lives. The world population has been able to increase in the course of one century from about 1.5 billion to 6.5 billion, only because oil has allowed for more food to be grown and distributed than ever before.

And the other :

The bottom line is this we eat ten calories of hydrocarbon energy for every calorie of food consumed on the planet.