"Romdinstler Jones" <romdinstlerjones@usa.com> wrote in message
news:14c78ee.0312021304.649ce91d@posting.google.com...

"Every generation has its taboo, and ours is this: that the resource
upon which our lives have been built is running out. We don't talk
about it because we cannot imagine it. This is a civilisation in
denial."

<snip>

Excerpt follows:

http://www.mazeministry.com/resources/books/heartstext/chap07.htm


THE MUSTARD SEED CONSPIRACY

When Tom Sine's book, The Mustard Seed Conspiracy, was published in 1981, it
was hailed by U.S. Senator Mark Hatfield of Washington as a book which "lays
out what the world can expect for the eighties." Tom Sine calls himself a
"futurist." But for Sine, the future is bleak. He shares Sider's conviction
that Americans are consuming the Third World to death. In 1981 he wrote:

We have abruptly awakened to a new image of our planet as not only a finite
but a shrinking pie. Unquestionably the major contributing cause to the
shrinking of our pie has been the dramatic economic growth of countries in
the Northern Hemisphere.

Given the North' insatiable appetite for resources, it should surprise no
one that we are running out. Of course the most prominent dwindling resource
is oil. It is predicted that the supply will fail to meet demands between
1985 and 1995.

But how accurate was Sine's prediction? Sine certainly had a receptive
audience. The United States had just experienced the "oil crisis" of the
early 1970s. Americans had waited in long lines to fill their cars up with
gasoline. However, Sine's prediction about oil was dismally incorrect. The
June 7, 1992 Los Angeles Times reported the following:

In the 1970's, accepted wisdom held that the world would soon be running out
of oil, and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries would soon
have a stranglehold on the developed nations as it pushed oil prices ever
higher. Instead two decades later, oil and gasoline prices, adjusted for
inflation, are at record lows, and oil reserves are far larger than ever
anticipated.

A year later the same paper, commenting on the predictions of the 1970s,
reported the that the doomsayers had said:

Crude oil prices would be sky-high by the 1990s-$60, $80, $100 a barrel-as
rich foreign oil producers tightened their grip on a fast-dwindling
resource. Gasoline lines would be the common symbol of a nation starved for
energy. Crash programs to build more nuclear and alternative power plants,
and to drill for more domestic oil, would struggle to catch up with booming
demand.

But 1993 doesn't look at all like that.

In fact, for the past seven years, crude oil has puttered along at a fraction of those prophesied prices.

And with more estimated reserves today than when the embargo began,

the world's oil tiger has become tame-almost a dependable commodity.
If anything, oil has reared back to bite those it was expected to best serve.

---end

TC