-----Mensagem original----- De: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]Em nome de uvj at vsnl.com Enviada em: sábado, 24 de janeiro de 2004 20:37 Para: lbo Assunto: [lbo-talk] Oil: The illusion of plenty
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
January/February 2004, Volume 60, No. 1, pp. 20-22, 70
Oil: The illusion of plenty
By Alfred Cavallo
One hundred and twelve billion of anything sounds like a limitless quantity. But in terms of barrels of oil, it's just a drop in the gas tank. The world uses about 27 billion barrels of oil per year, meaning that 112 billion barrels--the proven oil reserves of Iraq, the second largest proven oil reserves in the world--would last a little more than four years at today's usage rates.
http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/2004/jf04/jf04cavallo.html
-Excellent article. But I have a question to you. Don´t you think that the current trend towards the increase of automobile production (and use, of course), in China and India, will have negative impact, in the sense it will increase oil comsumption and pollution not to mention the strain over the already strained urban infrastructure of these both countries? I personally think the humanity must eventually resign to private transportation, because damaged caused by a system where all people have their own car would be HUGE. But the trouble seems to be even worse in China and India, due to big population and high demographic density. How do you see this question? One of our most respected economists, Celso Furtado, said in an interview that China would collapse under the automobile civilization if they attempted to emulate western patterns of comsumption.
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