The Oil Drum | Some thoughts on <i>Syriana</i>

17 comments on Some thoughts on Syriana

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tstreet on December 11, 2005 - 11:50am

According to the Director, an important take away should be that we need to cut our dependence on foreign oil for security reasons. From the reviews, perhaps he did not make that point well enough.

But doesn't the movie give us a strong glimpse of the consequences of dependency? Oil corrupts our politics at all levels and is causing a massive misallocation of resources that could be better used to combat problems like global poverty and global warming. And who is really in charge of our foreign policy? To a great extent, it seems to be the power lawyers on K street and the oil companies they serve.

Can one imagine a world of so much intrigue and corruption if our main energy sources were wind, solar, and biomass?

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step back on December 11, 2005 - 1:24pm

Can one imagine a world of so much intrigue and corruption if our main energy sources were wind, solar, and biomass?

Good point. Both the benefit and bane of wind and solar are that they are distibuted energy sources rather than concentrated ones. To harness these energy sources we need many farms distributed everywhere.

Concentration of power, one might say, corrupts proportionally to energy density.

Aside from the H-bomb, oil is pretty much the most concentrated form of power we have at our disposal in these past 150 years (1850-2000).

Biomass is not a long term answer because it releases CO2 and consumes scarce farmland away from growth of food for our exponentially exploding populations.

Distributed solar will do to the energy business what the Internet did to concentrated network media.

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17 comments on Some thoughts on Syriana

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