There are a lot of documentaries out there about oil. I say another one at the Earthnotes Documentary festival at the Labia this last weekend called Crude Impact. It covered a lot of the same ground as the other documentaries about oil I have seen, but you always learn something new from every documentary you see.
I didn’t know that half of the main oil producing countries in the world have already hit peak oil (the point at which oil production declines due to diminished resources). They also revealed that because of OPEC policies regarding oil production, most OPEC nations have overestimated oil reserved so that they are not forced to scale back production. All of this means that global peak oil is a lot closer than one might imagine, think 2010. I wrote about Peak Oil in my review of ‘The power of community’, so I won’t repeat myself here. Suffices to say, it is a serious thing.
Crude Impact also spent some time showing the effects of oil production in Nigeria and Ecuador. The oil companies don’t give a rats arse about the environment, they only do something about it when they are forced to. So in 3rd world countries such as Nigeria and Ecuador, there is no one checking up on them which means they are free to pump their pollution into the rivers etc. It was sickening to see the pollution of the pristine rain forest in Ecuador. Toxic sludge everywhere, animals dying, people getting cancer from the potent carcinogens. Then when the locals complain, the government sends in the military to shut them up and kill the ringleaders. Lovely stuff.
It’s a sick world we live in and I resent the fact that as a consumer, I am complicit in this stuff. These activities are all shrouded in secrecy, but I’m sure if we knew what was going on we would not support these global corporations in their horrendous abuse of human rights all round the world.