Crude Speculation

The Deep Water Horizon crisis, in the Gulf of Mexico, should provoke discussion beyond the immediate problem of preventing crude oil damaging the livelihood of fishermen and others in the States affected. The wildlife also needs protection. People can been protected, to some extent, from the economic ravages of the spillage but protecting the environment is a different matter.



No doubt, the organisational skills of the American people will temporarily alleviate the economic and environmental damage. We must all, however, consider the long term consequences of our actions and our attitude to nature and to our ultimate survival.



Industrialisation commingled with our ever increasing population growth is straining the environment, which supports all of us, to breaking point. It is feeding the demand for oil which needs to be sourced from more problematic locations. When there is an oil leakage or spillage, effecting repairs will become increasingly difficult. This trend is set to continue.



When there is an oil spillage, next to heavily populated areas, the crude oil does not just create a new environmental problem but adds to an existing one. The environment will already have been degraded and weakened by industrialisation; the recovery then becomes that much more difficult.



The risks to our survival result not just from what we actually do, but also from the dimensions of our activity. It is the scale of the oil spillage that causes the problem. The risks of environmental and economic damage lie solely in the numbers: it is a triumph of quantity over substance. The environment can easily cope with a small natural spillage of crude oil; but industrial scale quantities present a severe problem. The same principle applies to all human activity.

How long can we continue to live in an increasingly industrialised society where the need for fossil fuels is encouraged by population growth? The risks to our well being are now starting to be recognised by politicians, and the governor of California is now questioning whether prospecting for oil should continue offshore from his state.

The USA, or the rest of the world that matter, cannot stop prospecting for oil as we need it to drive our flourishing economies. But, overuse of the very fuel that secures our livelihood will eventually choke us.

The business and financial world has taught us to recognise that benefits should be weighed against costs. It has also demonstrated that risks and rewards are closely correlated and that the higher the reward the the higher the risk. When these two principles are ignored, business and economic systems run out of control and grow until there is a collapse.

Human activity is not immune from these principles . We run the risk of social collapse if industrialisation and population run out of control. I cannot understand why humanity cannot appreciate the risk to our survival of continued population expansion. There is a trade off between the benefits of growth against the costs of environmental degradation. Does anyone seriously believe that the planet is able to support multiple billions of people in industrialised comfort?

History provides many examples of social and economic collapse; the Roman Empire and the Soviet Union are but two. We are trying to create a Globalised society, and of course there are many benefits such as cheap consumer goods and free and easy travel. But what are the costs of increased industrialisation and rapid population growth? What is the risk? Will it, eventually, lead to social, economic and environmental collapse? These are the questions we should all be asking. The evidence suggests that we are heading for danger.

Every person alive deserves to benefit from the apt use of technology and industrialisation. But we cannot achieve this unless we manage our population; we need to stop its growth and eventually reverse it until the numbers operate in our favour. The result will mean that spillages of of oil etc. will be less dangerous. We will not have to search for resources in remote and wild areas. We will, also, be able to recycle most of the material needed for an industrial society.

We cannot expect Nature to help us if we overextend ourselves. It will not, altruistically, generate a favourable wind to direct the the crude oil away from our shores. Equally, it is not motivated to cruelly blow the oil to our beaches and marshlands. We are the masters of our own destiny. If we chose to operate in harmony with a natural world that does not care whether we live or die, then we as a species will survive to follow our evolutionary path. If we chose to act in disharmony, our species will probably perish.