If you want to do a little reading about the oil crisis before you fire up your car and hit the gas, I recommend heading over to TomDispatch to read Dilip Hiro’s piece called The Current Oil Shock : No Relief in Sight. In it Hiro, author of Blood of the Earth: The Battle for the World’s Vanishing Oil Resources, looks at how the “the present oil shock can’t be compared to the three shocks that preceded it and then explores just where the planet is likely to look in the medium term for energy (and global warming) relief.”

He also explores why it is so important for the West to take charge:

When it comes to energy conservation, there is a far greater opportunity for saving in the affluent societies of the West than anywhere else in the world. An average American uses twice as much oil as a Briton, a Briton twice as much as a Russian, and a Russian eight times as much as an Indian. It was therefore perverse of U.S. energy secretary Sam Bodman to focus on the way the Chinese and Indian governments subsidize oil products to provide relief to their citizens — and to urge their energy ministers to cut those subsidies to ‘reduce demand.’

It is true that China and India, which together account for two-fifths of the human race, are now major contributors to the growth in global oil demand. But it’s an indisputable fact that only by increasing per capita energy consumption from current abysmally low levels can the Chinese and Indian governments hope to lift hundreds of millions of people out of grinding poverty.

In a country like India, for instance, half of all households lack electricity, so hurricane lanterns, fueled by kerosene, are a basic necessity. Subsidized kerosene, also used for cooking stoves, helps hundreds of millions of poor Indians. To cut or eliminate the subsidy on kerosene would only intensify poverty. [TomDispatch]

I really recommended taking the time to read the entire piece. And when you’re done, if you want to change things up and watch something, takepart and watch Who Killed the Electric Car??

And when you’re done watching that film, read on about new car possibilities:

• Electric car zaps need for gas
• BMW’s Electric Car
• Did electric car die of natural causes?

Photo by A guy with A camera