Mine, All Mind!

Since I have criticized Fareed Zakaria in his blog many times, some may think I dislike the man. This is far from the truth. I find Zakaria one of the few intelligent and thoughtful voices in the U.S. news media. What I find objectionable sometimes is the underlining desire of his thinking: how others can do things to our benefit. Take his article “The Real Story of Pricey Oil” for example. His analysis makes very good sense and his points are crucial to the discussion but rarely made. The problem I found is when he blames the major oil producing countries for not investing in the exploration and expansion of production. It is certainly true that the countries mentioned are not interested in exploration and expansion but that is done to their interests. If an under-supplied oil market keeps the price high and these countries influential, why should they want to change it? They do not work for the desire and the betterment of the U.S. but themselves. As Zakaria continues to point out in his article, the majority of the problem lies in the U.S. appetite for oil. The present ‘oil-crisis’ is by large the U.S.’s doing. Canada should take some blames too, but, in the scale of things, less that the U.S. I heard someone recently said on U.S. television that Canadian oil sand would supply the U.S. market for a hundred years. The one who said it made it sound like the oil sands belongs to the U.S. Maybe this is the problem: deep down, the U.S. thinks that they own all the world’s oil. Without shaking their heads clear of this thought, war will continue to be the only means of negotiation in the oil market. And that is more dangerous than the world running out of oil.