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Have oil prices gone up of late? It's a story that has created something of a frenzy amongst commentators and now with hauliers in France and the UK. Newsnight presed the panic button last night, linking oil prices with the collapse of the green agenda in a pretty-poorly constructed lead item to add fuel to the fire. A more intelligent and better argument may be that while we may have not reached peak oil the oil industry has reached a turning point, as author Daniel Yergin does in this morning's Financial Times.
Yergin's analysis is that oil has reached a "break point" namely it "is in the process of losing its almost total domination in ground transport". Simon Jenkins expanded the point in the Times last week in a piece linking house and oil prices with a market/global/resources crisis: "The boom/bust in oil and house prices is, quite simply, good news, whatever the tangential pain. It shows that the good ship Gaia, planet Earth, is traumatising its passengers into husbanding its scarce resources. Above all they must ration living space, for which the West has been appallingly greedy, and carbon fuel, of which the same is true."
It reminded me a post that has been bouncing around my head for some months on the film There will be Blood, for my mind the film of the year and also one that very powerfully portrays the frenzy that seems to encircle oil. The main protagonist, Daniel Plainview, is driven mad by his insatiable desire for it, so much so he destroys any relationships he has to grow his oil empire. The story is obviously based in the cycle of the discovery of oil rather than where we are now but for me the film is a strong allegory for man's irresponsibility and greed when it comes to "husbanding its scarce resources".
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