Wed, Jan 02 2008

Oil, not humanity, should be the commodity

So oil prices rose to one hundred dollars a barrel, eh? I had predicted that this would happen before the end of 2007. So I've missed it by a few days. I think it would have been better, in a psychological sense, if it had come last month. It's a bit discouraging to see it happen the very first week of a new year. And it's sad to think that at least one major cause is violence in Nigeria. I guess we could live higher prices if we thought that it meant a better quality of life for people in Nigeria, but I think we're fairly certain that Nigeria is so full of unrest that the general population is doing well to survive from day to day. No wonder all those Nigerian scams have filled our Email boxes. People are financially poor, their ecological surroundings are on a downhill slide and the infighting among various ethnic groups is turning the region into a constant war zone. Corruption within the country's own government threatens to drive citizens to the breaking point. And now many of the poor know they are being lied to and taken advantage of while others become wealthy from the oil. All this, while we complain at the gas pumps and then drive away to keep going on with our daily life of relatively little hardship. After reading that one little article from National Geographic, I'm realizing that we don't even know the half of it, or we'd be whining a whole different tune.

posted at: 11:48 | category: /Politics | link to this entry