How One Can Reduce American “Oil Addiction”?

How One Can Reduce American “Oil Addiction”?

More then twenty years have passed since the Western countries have lived through one of the most serious economic crisis- oil crisis of the 70s. In spite of the fact that some technological innovations have been implemented and economy of the Western countries consumes less oil than in the seventies the economies of major developed nations still use large amount of energy sources. Moreover, few people can argue that due to the development of today’s world economy, the demand on the oil or energy resources can be abated in the nearest future. With outstanding economic growth of China and spectacular development of India, there are more then enough reasonable grounds to believe that it will increase at least in the next several years.

The largest economy of the world- the company of the USA depends on oil. In spite of the fact that the USA is one of the largest producers of oil in the world it still imports large amount of oil and other energy resources, from various nations around the globe. Current situation in the Middle East, where large deposits of oil are concentrated is quite unstable and despite the fact that Saudi Arabia is still regarded by many specialists as one of the steadfast allies of the Western countries, there are few reasons to believe that situation will remain the same for a long period of time as discontent of the policy of the USA in the Middle East is growing and few Arab governments (even if the systems of the governments are not democratic) can ignore public opinions in their countries. Insurgents and other terrorist groups try, not unsuccessfully to damage oil facilities in Iraq in order to hamper the activities of American and Iraq governments to rebuild and strengthen democracy in this country; on the other hand instability in Iraq does not allow optimists to predict that the prices on oil will decrease in foreseeable future. That is why so many specialists greeted recent state of the union address of the president of USA, in which he stated that the USA should decrease its consumption of oil. So how it can be done? What lessons were learned from the previous oil crisis? With such incredible advance in technology and mass communication would it not be possible to devise some plan to reduce the dependency of the USA on oil?

The answer lies in the fact that USA has sufficient financial resources and enough technological capacities to tackle this problem; however the will is what lacking. Recently even much poor countries such as Brazil have introduced energy saving technologies (for instance it tries to substitute ethanol for oil), many states have also made some notable progress in the development of solar energy technologies which allow them to reduce their consumptions of traditional energy sources such as oil and energy. However, unfortunately not many states have so far implemented save energy technologies with the result that on the whole our economy still depends on oil. Like contend of every web site depends on the professionalism of web site copywriter and online copywriting facilities of the company, so the future of our economy depends of efficient measures that should be taken to tackle looming crisis. President has recently proposed to increase the financing of research projects which might alleviate the looming crisis that the country might face in the nearest future; however one can argue that these research programs will not produce substantial results in the nearest future. So the only solution might be effective implementation of existing energy saving technologies that are already available in the USA and around the globe.