I shall ignore the comments above.
There are 2 reasons why I think we ought: one is environmental; the other geopolitical.
ENVIRONMENTAL
The use of oil is causing 'global warming'; but only in its use as a combustible fuel. There is no realistic future in which the 6 / 7 billion people in the world are going to deny themselves the acquisition of a consumeristic lifestyle like our own (with 1 or 2 cars per household, the huge increase in road freight, etc). As long as oil is sufficiently plentiful the fuels of choice shall remain oil-derived: due to its high-energy-content per kilogram as well as its advantage over 'alternates' due to already existing distribution networks etc(incumbency).
Ideas of 'cutting down' in our personal use of petrol/diesel are pointless: people who previously lacked cars are getting them and they will burn whatever you don't.
However: there are lots of other uses for oil other than burning it and the more of the total global deposit that we convert into these things (plastics, asphalt?, detergents?...well: look it up yourself), the less that will end up as carbon dioxide in our air.
Clearly: if we can turn, say, 2/3 of the cheaply available oil into plastic then we shall be doing ourselves a rather large favour as regards 'live-ability' of the planet.
Once the easily recovered oil is used up: the price vis-a-vis alternatives will become much less competitive and large scale conversion to less damaging fuels can take place: for proper economic reasons; rather than as a fad.
GEOPOLITICAL
The USA dominates the world largely through control of the oil energy resource. The tankers we see leaving the Gulf with US Navy protection aren't generally going to America: they're going everywhere else.
The 'diplomatic' clout that the USA derives from its ability to strangle the oil dependent economies of the industrial nations can scarcely be overstated.
It is wholly unrealistic to suppose that any US Administration will voluntarily divest itself of this advantage: if it were us we certainly wouldn't.
The point is that if the US did 'get out of the middle-east', then they would be leaving this vast resource of fuel and economic/diplomatic/military power to be picked up and exploited by who-knows-who.(China? Russia? Iran? The Taleban? France?)
So it's not going to happen.
That the current situation of meddling in the internal affairs of the mid-eastern nations is producing enormous hazards to us all ought to be starkly clear: the present soon-to-be-nuclear Iranian govt. is a direct result of the destruction of Iranian democracy by an Anglo-American coup-d'etat; and the subsequent years of destroying,(by supporting a tyranny and its murderous secret police), the 'threat' of civil society there: leaving only fanatics as a meaningful oposition to foreign dominance.
All in order to control the oil resource.
(As an aside: people often say islamic nations are 'backward' in their thinking etc, but the fact the opportunity to develop democratically and socially has been largely squashed by our own goverments is generally ignored.)
The situation cannot be resolved nor walked away from. It must be changed by reducing the deposits of oil until the recovery cost makes it much less competitive and we can all go and fight over whatever the replacement is.
As above: if we convert the oil into fuel and burn it we shall choke. Therefore we should turn it into its other derived forms as quick as we can.
That's my thoughts on the matter. Quite possibly I'm wrong.
What do you think?
no.
