Ending the Petroleum Age

By Michael T. Klare (CBS News) 
Let’s try to take the measure of what exactly is at risk in the current tumult.
As a start, there is almost no way to give full justice to the critical role played by Middle Eastern oil in the world’s energy equation.  Although cheap coal fueled the original Industrial Revolution, powering railroads, steamships, and factories, cheap oil has made possible the automobile, the aviation industry, suburbia, mechanized agriculture, and an explosion of economic globalization.  And while a handful of major oil-producing areas launched the Petroleum Age -- the United States, Mexico, Venezuela, Romania, the area around Baku (in what was then the Czarist Russian empire), and the Dutch East Indies -- it’s been the Middle East that has quenched the world’s thirst for oil since World War II.
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Ending the Petroleum Age