To wonder how much of the West's intervention in the middle East is because of oil?

[malificent7]

I mean there are terrible leaders everywhere.
Take Mugabe in Zimbabwe. And yet i see no intervention from the West.
In the oil rich middle East the UK and US have been VERY involved.
Aibu to think that oil is a factor here?

We need desperately to move to renewables. We are destroying the Earth which supports us, and empowering these people who seek to harm us.

Sadly the Tories choose the wrong way. Their job - their first job, which legitimises government - is public safety. They have purposefully failed.

All of it is, of course. There are horrific wars going on in some African countries that the West has no interest in because they don't have any oil.

YABU to have only just worked this out.

Can you explain how Afghanistan related to oil please?

GunnyHighway
Afghanistan is hardy in the Middle East (if it is, then so is Pakistan).

The Afghan war was George Bush's response to 9/11.

Pretty much all of it. We need to get a move on start using much more renewable energy.

Gunny Afghanistan is full of oil!!

All of it. Oil and control. If we cared about people, we wouldn't be chummy with Saudi Arabia and similar regimes.

lots of conspiracy theories about oil pipelines and afghanistan, im surprised you never heard them?

I have suspected for years... i call them oil wars!

Wars are generally fought by governments to protect strategic resources or their own sovereignty or perception of what freedom is - be that democratic or religious; It's an unpleasant truth. Another poster has said that there are wars being fought in Africa that the west is not intervening in and its for these very reasons - diamonds are not so important to our daily existence and we may have other sources for the minerals there or buy them at a point further down the supply chain - I.e. There is no reason to protect the supply at source.

To blame the situation in the Middle East etc solely on oil is partially correct but there is much more at play. Afghanistan incidentally is unlikely to have any oil at all but could present a viable pipeline route.

If these wars had not being fought our lives in Europe might be very different - but that does not necessarily mean a positive outcome.

Unfortunately we have to get our energy from somewhere while viable alternative technologies develop further - I believe this will take another generation or more before this can be effective and integrated to a significant portion of the global population. Until then, really it's carbon and nuclear that have to prop everything up while renewables continue to close the gap.

There are however tough and unpalatable decisions to be made - do we wish to remain reliant on dubious regimes in the meantime or become more independent through extracting shale gas from the UK? (please - I don't want to derail the thread..) it's just an example of one of the potential "rocks" & "hard places" that we find ourselves between.

unfortunately wars are no longer just fought by governments, but also by private companies (usa and blackwater). do private companies care about govt interests or profits?

The pipelines for the oil also needs to travel through middle eastern countries including Afghanistan.

That's why Russia gets involved, because they don't want Europe to have control over the countries that the pipeline is in. It's also why Europe created the country of Syria.

while viable alternative technologies develop further

The Tories have all but ignored renewables.

There is no rock and a hard place. The answer is in renewable investment/development.

There is a fantastic book called 'Prisoners of Geography' which explains really well why hostilities/tension around the world between various countries exists, and why it is likely to always exist. It is well worth a read, and it covers a lot of stuff about resources and who needs what resources and who doesn't want who else to control their resources.

So, yes, basically, it's resources. Zimbabwe,for example, doesn't have much to offer the west, so we're not too interested in it.

Can you explain how Afghanistan related to oil please?

Halliburton wanted to build an oil pipeline and the taliban refused them permission. Similar to Qatar and Syria.

Makeourfuture you're misinterpreting what I've said. There are tough decisions in the meantime until these technologies become globally viable - including installation of the appropriate infrastructure and replacement of carbon dependent technology (plus realistic strategies that aren't wholly reliant on subsidies).

I agree with you that to some extent this is being hindered by politicians that have vested interests in doing so, but even if they were removed it's not going to happen overnight, is it?

This has been widely known for years.....

plus realistic strategies that aren't wholly reliant on subsidies

"A 2016 study estimated that global fossil fuel subsidies were $5.3 trillion in 2015, which represents 6.5% of global GDP."

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X16304867

It has always been about the oil.

Ok, I can see I'm not going to get very far as this is already getting hijacked - I wasn't suggesting that hydrocarbons and further exploration are not subsidised, unfortunately they are not going away tomorrow and if they did there would be untold misery on a global scale (cue: "but they already do that...")

I'll paraphrase: Renewables are of course they way forward once they have the appropriate supporting infrastructure and they can be effectively used to support the majority of the global infrastructure but this has to be built/ put in place first. Until then our governments are likely to be needing to keep some unpleasant agreements in place unless we can agree on what is the lesser of two evils in many cases. I am not necessarily happy about this, just realistic!

Clearly the sharper minded posters above are sniffing blood (or benzene) due to my carefully crafted nom de plume. I am no oil industry apologist, far from
It (and I'm very much on the inside) but the consumer is sometimes very ignorant about how much it impacts every moment of their lives in every way and yet profess to want it to be crushed in an instant.

This map might help