The Role of OPEC in the Future of Energy
Throughout history, the lifestyles within every culture was molded by the ability of its people to perform work or labor on the earth. Furthermore, cultural lifestyles were also shaped by the availability of resources and the types of resources available. The lifestyle that exists within Western civilization today was made possible by the extraction and usefulness of one particular resource: oil. Along with the rapid emergence of the fossil fuel industry in the United States, so came the drastic changes in lifestyle that its citizens became accustomed to. Petroleum products constitutes the vast majority of services and goods provided in Western culture; transportation and infrastructure, massive
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Not only were trees being felled to be used for heating and homes and tools, trees were cut down to make room for crops to feed the increasing populations of both people and livestock. The need for new, more efficient (energy dense) resources was increasing. With each new resource discovered, it provided the ability to do more work, feed more mouths, and shelter more people. But it wasn’t until the discovery of fossil fuels that the way of life changed to drastically and the world entered a new level of human growth and development.
With the coming of the industrial revolution, so came massive changes in culture, lifestyle and population. The utilization of fossil fuels built a society that runs entirely on petroleum products. People are being born into a society that saw little regard for the environment and whose main goal was to continue a trend of rapid growth and therefore, further utilization of fossil fuels. This bred habits in Western culture that still exist today. The attitude cultivated by the increasing use of petroleum products also helped develop a crippling dependency on the resource, which, sooner or later, would come back to haunt the Western world.
Once fossil fuels had solidified its status not only as a valuable commodity but also the substance that lubricates the gears of capitalism, several key petroleum exporting countries (Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait) unified to
Why are we as a global society so hooked on fossil fuels? Put simply, we can’t live without it. Few people-- outside of aspiring reality TV stars and the Amish-- would be willing to give up their precious electronics and
A captivating tale of a relationship between two troubling brothers in Harlem, "Sonny's Blues" is told from the perception of Sonny's brother, whose name is never mentioned. Baldwin's choice of Sonny's brother as a narrator is what makes "Sonny's Blues" significant in terms of illustrating the relationship and emotional complications of Sonny and his brother. The significance of "Sonny's Blues" lies in the way Sonny's brother describes their relationship based on what he observes, hears, and feels, and how he struggles trying to understand Sonny through the course of the story. This is a story of how two African Americans brothers take their own path through life as they struggle to find meaning in their
Why did Americans need the immigration reform build in the first place? Mexican immigrants have been coming to the United States throughout this country through history, but it was a guest worker program that started after World War II that set a stage for patterns for legal immigration we still see today. From 1942 to 1964, the “Bracero Program”, a guest worker program that brought 400,000 agricultural employers per year to the United States. This program had issues such as worker abuse and low wage, so it ended in 1964. But the worker kept coming. In the early of 1970s, there were more than 1 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. Still, most Americans did not have strong opinions about immigration policy the way we do today. There were lots of groups had interests to see the system change. President Ronald Reagan supported changing the laws, too, and he was a republican. He said “I believe the idea of amnesty”. After a year in fall, the bill finally gained the legitimate moment in 1986 which was Immigration Reform and Control Act(IRCA). It talked two of biggest issues at the time. The first one, it offered legal status for undocumented immigrants who had been living the United States since before January 1, 1982, and the second one, it penalized the employer who knowingly hired undocumented workers. The bill finally cleared in the house senator, and signed by President Ronald Reagan on November 6, 1986. The Immigration Reform and Control Act(IRCA) was the
Since its discovery back in the year 1858 crude oil has been become one of the most sought after resources on the face of the planet. It is due to this fact that the oil industry has fallen into a rather odd category in the case of globalization and seeking out new markets, new labor and new customers. The reason being that the need for crude oil and fuel is always present therefore the product of oil in its basic sense sells itself and the companies do not have to go out and publicly advertise it in the sense that clothing lines and other commodities do. Oil companies must focus more on the matter of why an individual should buy their oil and along with other alternative fuels over their competitors even though in the end the companies
The book, Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil is a warning to the world about the great harms that have been imposed on people and the earth by our need and dependence on petroleum products. The story is much darker than most people know and Maass is hoping to change that.
New and improved methods for extracting oil were being developed. Billions of dollars would be poured into the discovery of new wells and the hunt wasn’t slowing down. Governments were willing to do anything to secure a steady supply of oil, even if that meant fighting for it. Some of the most destructive world conflicts all started from the desire of that sticky liquid that comes from the ground. But on the positive side, oil has been at the base of some of the most important developments in modern history. Due to the speedy development of oil, a byproduct of the drilling process kick started the agricultural revolution, resulting in the rapid growth of the earth’s population. Millions of people can now eat due to the advancements of fertilizers, which main ingredient ammonia is produced from oil drilling. Oil became a huge part of society’s advancement in technology, and is still a driving force in the world of science and
The Industrial Revolution propelled the use of fossil fuel bring progress to exceptional levels; however, this came at a price to the environment and untimely changed the cultural values as well as expectations of technology today. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (www.epa.gov), “climate changes prior to the Industrial Revolution in the 1700s can be explained by natural causes”. During and after The Industrial Revolution’s prevalent use of fossil fuel in factories and auto-motives climate changes could no longer be solely contributed to natural causes (www.epa.gov). In 1979 the second (2nd) oil energy crisis occurred which encouraged the Environmental Movement and the usage of renewable energy instead of technology that operated off of burning fossil fuels (Encyclopedia of Global Warming). As a result of the second (2nd) oil energy crisis the World Climate Research Program was launched in order to research international climate changes (Encyclopedia of
Though the industrial revolution brought many gifts, it came with grave consequences. The first is that fossil fuels, the primary source of fuel for most machinery, produce large amounts of Co2, which is pumped into the atmosphere. Co2 is harmful both to the human body and the ecosystem; Co2 depletes the ozone layer, which contributes to global/ocean warming and glacial melting. A lot of people do not fully understand the immanent threat this poses to the earth, this is because it is commonly misunderstood or the information is out of date.
Coal was still efficient, but the massive space needed to burn it was only available in factories and large-scale transportation like trains. Oil was the miracle fuel people found to remove the complication that stood before them. Oil and coal are both the compressed remains of long deceased beasts unimaginable but unlike coal, oil has a higher energy density thus it burns more efficiently. Under this circumstance, oil became much more widely used. In the end, oil ended up with much better transportation infrastructure and became required in certain manufacturing process’ (Green World Investor (GWI) ). I use oil products every day, accompanying every other person on earth. Cars, trains, water bottles, cleaning products, computers, packaging, and even some furniture all use oil and oil products as a fuel source, or in the production of said object. All this oil usage equates to massive greenhouse gas emissions. Carbon dioxide is released from the refining process in addition to “hydrocarbons with traces of sulfur and other compounds” (GWI). These chemicals mix in the atmosphere to form acid rain, pollute rivers and kill thousands of fish, and devastate the environment through accidental spills and leaks. Equally important to this is the fact that the majority of oil is imported from some of the most tyrannical and oppressive dictatorships in the world (GWI). These countries are
In the United States oil consumption is an everyday occurrence, for every citizen. Our country without oil would not be able to function properly within all aspects of life. Our political, transportation and economics systems would all encounter drastic affects if there were no oil to transform into petroleum. Due to our huge dependency on petroleum products, oil companies like British Petroleum (BP), Exxon Mobil, and Saudi Aramco hold extreme power over many countries and make billions off our need to live our daily lives. The extraction of oil from these companies are causing life altering effects for future generations, by causing major environmental complications. Each of the three main oil companies have experienced oil spills that were damaging to the environments around them and gain the global attention, because of the size of the oils spills and the lack of effort to accurately clean the spills.
While fossil fuels continue to drive human development, it causes great damage to our environment. For example, the polar ice caps are slowly melting away due to global warming. This is because everything has waste. We fuel our bodies with food, as a result, we get waste. We fuel engines with fossil fuels, as a result, we get waste, just in a different
Even though the country was continuing to flourish, minorities and women were treated as unfit to be citizens. Times were oppressive for those individuals who just wanted to be equal. Several movements spawn from this prejudice era. One of the main movements commonly talked about would be the feminist movement. As society progressed a foundation was put in place that often left out the rights of women. Feelings of unfairness fueled the fire, pushing women activist to fight for their rights such as voting, fair wages, sexuality, and equality. Women felt that men were the cause of their suffrage. Placing a negative connotation on the masculine role as a whole.
The advent of industrialized civilization has brought to us many remarkable feats that enhance our everyday lives. Such things as automobiles, airplanes, tractors, mainframe computers, and even relatively simple machines like lawnmowers have intertwined themselves into the everyday culture of modern day industrialized countries.. These products have provided us enormous benefits compared to the types of lives our ancestors used to live. In the eyes of some, the consequences of industrial activities that have evolved around the world will not pose any problems in the future, however as most have realized, this is not true. Contemporary production processes use fossil fuels such as
Fossil fuels are essential to life on earth as we know it today. Our world would certainly be much different if it weren’t for such seemingly simple things such as coal, oil, and natural gas. These basic elements of life on earth may not seem like a major concern to some people until we put into perspective how they have shaped our world today. Civilizations have been built, economies have risen and crumbled, and even wars have been fought over these precious fossil fuels. However, these fossil fuels serve us in ways we may never truly appreciate, as long as we use them as recklessly as we do now. The major entity about fossil fuels is concerning their longevity and permanence in our world, and we all know, they will be around forever.
The OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) created in 1960 is a permanent intergovernmental Organization. Was formed at the conference held in Baghdad. The five founders Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. Later down the road they were joined by nine other countries. Qatar, Indonesia, Libya, United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Nigeria, Ecuador, Angola, and Gabon.