did for the world, or computers, mobile telephones, flight, space travel. They were technological events that have transformed future history.”
“So what were the most important changes in my life time?” she said smiling
“It’s what I call the losers tragedy. It has happened many times throughout history. The demand for a certain natural resource grows to the point where those who monopolise its production become greedy or try to use their position as a lever to control those who buy it. Then the product is synthesised or replaced.”
“You mean oil?”
“Yes, but as I said it’s not the first time in history such a thing has happened.”
“Oh, when?”
“Well take potassium nitrates for example.”
“What?”
“Let me explain. At the end of the nineteenth century nitrates were extracted from deposits of saltpetre that were mined in Chile.”
“What was the use of that?”
“Well one was fertilisers, but the most important for Germany was explosives.”
“Explosives!”
“Yes, and the Great Powers of that time were unconsciously preparing for war. The fact that the deposits were far away across the oceans in Chile posed a major problem for the Germans, since the British Empire ruled the waves and could cut, in a single stroke, the supply of nitrates to Germany’s arms factories.”
“So what happened?”
“Somebody synthesised the production of nitrates, a German.”
“I see.”
“It’s a thing that has happened again and again throughout history, the discover of South America and gold transformed the history of Spain, which ruled the world for two hundred years with its newfound wealth.”
“So it was the same thing for oil?”
“Absolutely.”
“Explain to me what happened to oil then.”
“Well it was fairly slow, as usual when the price was low there was no problem. Then when the owners of the oil deposits put up the prices they provoked a worldwide crisis in the early 1970’s. But the worse was to come, as more and more nations became industrialised the competition grew, in addition the oil deposits were in regions of the world that had become politically volatile.”
“Become?”
“Yes, we should remember that those regions, such as Arabia had lived in relative calm for centuries. They fought over oasis and water between themselves; they were warlike out of necessity. But since the time of the crusades they had lived in isolation and relative peace.”
“Then oil was discovered.”
“No first, the British and the French built the Suez Canal to reach their colonies in India and Indo-China, they needed to control the passage through to the India Ocean with ports and fuelling stations.”
“That was the first step.”
“Yes.”
“Then oil was discovered.”
“Yes, in Iran, Iraq and then in the new Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Gulf Region contained almost sixty percent of the world’s known reserves.”
“And so they became rich.”
“Not only that but like all the rich they attracted a lot of false friends and poor relatives.”
“Then the fight started.”
“Yes and it continued, as I said the greatest reserves in the world were in the countries that surrounded the Persian Gulf.”
“What about Central Asia?”
“That came later. The first event came almost at the end of WWII when the American President Franklin Roosevelt pledged to King Abdel-Aziz ibn Saud the protection of America in return for access to their oil resources. That continued for eight decades until the House of Saud was overthrown, due in part to the decline of American interest in oil that was a consequence of the last economic crisis.”
“Because of new technologies?”
“Well partly, what was more important was the conjunction of two major events. The first there was Iraq, then the changes that were on the march in Iran and Saudi Arabia, changes that no amount of American military power and technology would have been able to stop. Remember America’s greatest defeat was inflicted by a peasant army in Vietnam.
Then there was the fact that the overall oil reserves relative to world demand had declined. OPEC under the impulsion of the Saudis thought they could push up the prices and the result was a global economic crisis.”
“Which would have stimulated the alternative energy sources?”
“Well in reality there were no alternative energy sources like oil, gas or coal, it was technology that took over. President Bush had launched a huge programme at the beginning of the century to accelerate the development of the fuel cell to reduce dependence on imported fossil fuels. By 2020 it was already in use, for vehicles and small power generating plant. It did not replace aviation fuel but that only represented a relatively small percentage of oil needs.
Fusion had already made considerable progress though it was expensive. The crisis tilted the balance in favour of its introduction and over the last two decades it has finally got over its initial problems.”
“So America is not interest in oil?”
“Yes and no, yes because oil still has a role to play as a raw material for the chemical industry, but very much less important, and no because today American’s interest is focalised on other resources, minerals in Africa, essential for the manufacture of fuel cells and catalysts from rare metals.
“But oil is still important.”
“Of course it’s important but it is not vital, the economy will not grind to a halt, the producer countries consume a lot of it in their home based chemical industries around the Gulf and to export their added value chemical products they keep the prices reasonable for their own industries.”
“What about the future?”
“The new technologies like hydrogen fuel cells and cold fusion processes will continue to replace fossil fuels, because firstly they don’t depend of imports from problem countries, secondly they are cleaner and finally inexhaustible. Remember America still controls the production of those technologies.”
“That means that America is independent, for the first time in a century, it controls its own energy needs, it also controls space, and can project its military power where it likes, instantaneously.”
“What does that mean for the rest of the world?”
“It means everybody for themselves. The ex-petrodollar countries are the newly poor struggling to survive. China is looking after itself, and India is mired in the aftermath of nuclear war.”
“What about Europe?”
“Well you can see for yourself, they are doing what they have always liked to do, it’s as if the good old days are back, re-colonisation, the rebirth of the nation state in a slightly new format.”
They looked out of the porthole and could see the dark outline of the African coast on the eastern horizon.
“The Federation is united in the interest of self-protection. Europe main problem is that the hungry of the world is at its gate, with every economic swing the pressure increases.”
Transformation
When I was a teenager I was interested in how the world worked, my father told always reminded me that short term political decisions were made based on the everyday events that surround us, current economics, government spending, employment, crisis, disasters, foreign affairs and so on.
Whilst those everyday events took place there were forces working in the background, little understood by the politicians not to speak of the general public, forces that are continuously forming the future.
Those forces are generated by planetary events largely beyond the control of governments, the struggle for resources, demographic growth and the movement of populations, the environment, and the development of science and discovery. They all influence the formation of political ideology and thought, and the geopolitical attitudes of nations.
At university where I studied political science and economics I was taught how the
future is predictable based on certain known facts: our courses explained for example that when Airbus or Boeing decides to build a new broad bodied aircraft to carry eight hundred passengers, they know it will take six or seven years from drawing board to production and that the production will have a life of thirty years, whilst the aircraft will have a life of approximately twenty years, so that in fifty years from the initial decision the last of those aircraft would still be flying.
From the time a new oil reserve starts production thirty years or more would pass before it was exhausted. Therefore the decline of vital mineral reserves was predicted with a certain degree of accuracy.
I learnt that a high speed train line from the political decision to build it would take eight years to build and would be operated for at least fifty years. A new office building in the City of London or Shanghai would have a life of fifty years. A new chemical production unit would have a life of twenty years, extendable ten or more years. An automobile is planned five years in advance and is produced during a five-year period with a vehicle life of seven years, which is a total from conception to the end of the life cycle of seventeen years. Fuel cells will reign for fifty years or more, just think the internal combustion engine powered motor vehicles for well over one hundred years. The life of a military aircraft or tank is thirty or more years. So it is evident that in thirty to fifty years from now many of the things we see around us will still exist.
A politician has a life of forty years and a president or prime minister between five to fifteen years. For example historical figures such as Winston