Obama, Natural Resources and the Conquest of Africa

The function of Obama is now clear: the conquest of Africa.

On 14 October, writes John Pilger, President Barack Obama announced he was sending United States special forces troops to Uganda to join the civil war there. In the next few months, US combat troops will be sent to South Sudan, Congo and Central African Republic. They will only “engage” for “self-defence”, says Obama, satirically. With Libya secured, an American invasion of the African continent is under way.

The tragedy of The War Against Terror, is that the energy monopoly sought by the US will not be worth the candle. With the quadrupling in oil price since 2000, new investments in exploration and advances in technology have revealed huge supplies of hydrocarbons in virtually every part of the world. They’re fracking for gas in Cheshire, England, there’s a glut of natural gas in North America, and China’s looking to develop its own shale resource.

But the biggest technological advances will be in energy efficiency. It takes one and a half to two kwh of electricity to make a litre of petrol. But it requires less than one and a half to two kwh of electricity to drive a light electric car as far as a Chevy travels on a litre of gas. And the Chinese have already built several hundred million electric bikes that can go just about all the way round the world on a kwh, and they are investing hugely in electric cars.

Then there’s solar power which will be competitive with oil sooner than later.

So when the war’s over, trillions will have been wasted, millions or perhaps billions of lives will have been disrupted or destroyed, free society will have ceased to exist even as an idea, and the fascist West will control a lot of useless oil fields and unnecessary pipelines.

The same will be true of virtually every other resource: rising prices will lead to improved techniques of discovery, higher use efficiency, and more cost efficient and complete recycling.

The recycling industry will be revolutionized by bar coding or chipping everything sold. Robots will identify the manufacturer, the ownership, the composition, and the recycling destination of every piece of trash. No more blue boxes and different colored wheely bins. If it's a manufactured item, just chuck it down the chute and a high-tech recycling industry will handle it. Maybe they'll even pay you if your rubbish contains enough reusable polyethylene, fermentable carbohydrate or neodymium.

See also
Beneath the UK lie trillions of cubic feet of shale gas, Daily Mail