OIL and GAS – It has been very difficult watching the human tragedy unfold in Ukraine to one of the world’s richest countries of natural resources, including having some of the richest soils in the world. The media focused obsession with Putin’s motive generally does not include the Ukraine’s vast natural resources but his desire to recreate some semblance of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. This event may lead to a nuclear confrontation between the Russia and the West.
This reality is because the world’s leaders all the way back to post World War II have not listened to the scientific community. Sounds familiar! Since 1949, the United Nations Scientific Conference on the conservation and utilization of resources addressed the depletion of the world’s natural resources. In 1968, the United Nations Economic and Social Council was the first to not only address natural resource depletion but the significance environmental issues facing the world. This was a warning to the world’s governments to be mindful of the issues of climate change.
More than 50 years later and the world’s leading nations still have not listened to the continuing warnings regarding climate change and the complex issues of natural resource depletion. Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” released in 2006, showed the dramatic effects of climate change to millions of viewers due to the use of fossil fuels. The book and subsequent movies and conferences have been a call for action.
The United States today produced more energy last year than any previous year except 2019. Last year’s per person energy use in the U.S. was 5% higher than 2020. Fossil fuels account for 94% of energy used in the U.S. transportation sector and 80% of energy in the industrial sector. The global market share of the hybrid and electric vehicles is only 2.5%. In the U.S. its 3.4% at the present.
Basically, Russia received a go free card to invade Ukraine from the world leadership who ignored the continued warning for Climate Change Action and to manage the depletion of our natural resources. It been gut-wrenching to witness during my lifetime the ineptitude of most of our world’s leaders. Ukraine, a fledgling democratic country has the second biggest known natural gas reserves in Europe. It also has approximately 5% of the Earth’s natural resources and produces over 10 million barrels of oil a day!
I remember (barely) as a little boy hiding under my desk in elementary school during a practice drill against a nuclear attack! That was crazy then and seeing tens of thousands of Ukrainians hiding in the subway stations during this invasion is equally as insane. The governments of the world have to make aggressive changes to our energy policies and manage our natural resources, not only to save our species but to eliminate the Putins of the future.
Don Simms lives in Northfield.