Michael Klare, Fighting for Oil

Jul 8, 2014 | TomDispatch
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Call it a double whammy for the planet or simply irony with a capital "I." As the invaluable Michael Klare, TomDispatch regular and author of The Race for What's Left, points out today, if you scan the planet for conflict, what you'll find from Syria and Iraq to the South China Sea are a series of energy wars -- fossil-fuel conflicts to be exact. At present, despite some hopeful signs, this crazed planet of ours is still a ravenous beast that only fossil fuels can sate. No question that conflicts and wars are terrible things. Just consider the million new refugees just generated by the disintegration of Iraq in a blaze of warfare and sectarian killings. But oil wars add a grim twist to the mix, because when they're settled, however miserably or bloodily, the winners take to the oil rigs and the refineries and pump out yet more of the stuff that puts carbon dioxide and methane, both greenhouse gases, into the atmosphere and, as in the Middle East today, creates the basis for yet more conflict.