Jihad vs. McWorld - Benjamin R. Barber [34]
Why pump expensive domestic petroleum when foreign oil was so cheap? In the century’s first three quarters, oil use in America had grown by about 3 percent a year, while real Gross National Product (GNP) was growing at an average 4 percent a year.20 Domestic production, peaking in 1970, managed to keep up to need, with 88 percent of consumption still being met from domestic American sources in 1970.21 But as a result of the 1973 Mideast War and oil embargo, the one-tenth or less of our fuel needs that depended on foreign imports in the sixties nearly tripled by 1974, creating for the first time a vivid sense of national jeopardy. Imports in 1974 had grown to 28 percent of consumption while oil prices had spiraled up from $1.73 a barrel in 1970 to $10.89 at the end of 1974.22 By 1980, imports had risen to 38 percent of domestic consumption and by 1990 to 42 percent.23 Today, despite a lingering business turndown and roller-coaster consumption patterns that have kept world oil production under the peak production levels reached in the seventies, American import dependency has remained well above 40 percent and in 1994 went, for the first time, above 50 percent.
These long-term rising figures for imports reflect both a very gradual decline in domestic production and an appetite for energy that, though it moderated in the late seventies as prices rose, has continued to grow. While domestic energy consumption fell from an alltime high of 11.30 million barrels per day in 1970 (for crude oil and natural gas), to around 9 million barrels per day in 1990, consumption rose from less than 15 million barrels per day to an all-time high of nearly 18 million barrels in the late seventies (although since then consumption has fallen, risen, and fallen again, leaving it only slightly higher today than it was fifteen years ago). If prices stay low, experts at the Energy Information Administration predict that domestic production may fall to about 6 million barrels per day by 2010, while consumption could rise to nearly 24 million barrels per day, a deficit of 17 or 18 million barrels that could add up to a dependency on imports of nearly 75 percent of consumption by 2010.
The American story is every developed nation’s energy nightmare. If we exclude those OPEC nations like Qatar and Bahrain with minuscule populations and gargantuan production surpluses,24 almost all of the industrial nations are import-dependent, in many cases almost completely so. With roughly one-half of the world’s GDP between them (27 percent for the United States, 16 percent for Japan, and 7 percent for Germany), America, Japan, and Germany import far more than half of their energy—under 50 percent for the United States but more than 90 percent for Japan and somewhere in between for Germany.25 Because it has gone nuclear, France produces most of its own energy, but when we look at consumption rather than production, it too remains import-dependent.26 Among OECD nations, only Canada and Australia, and with their North Sea oil, Norway and the United Kingdom, turn out to be net energy producers—which has allowed Norway to stay out of Europe. On the other hand, the world’s five largest economies are the world’s largest energy importers. The stronger the nation, the more fragile its independence.
There also lurks in this welter of statistics a powerful element of injustice that illuminates a darker side of McWorld. Even as nations are superseded by transnational markets, their populations remain the producers and consumers of the global market. The unequal distribution of world resources skews and unbalances affairs, and turns McWorld—its virtues and its vices—into a playground for some and a cemetery for others. If we look at energy consumption