The History of Oil, through Comedy

This has to be one of the most brilliant presentations of history I have seen yet. Funny, interesting, provocative, and entertaining.

Please set aside 45 minutes this week and watch this. It sounds like a big commitment, but believe me, I'm saving you time. You'd have to read a lot to get this condensed an understanding of the history of oil, the reasons for the war in Iraq, and the way to save your food costs from skyrocketing.

My hat is WAY off to the remarkable comic historian who penned and performs this, Robert Newman.

This should be embedded but it's not working - go here to see it.

And hey, Newman's quite the thinker/writer as well. Here's a snippet from his blog:

There is no planet B, so we need an economic plan B. We need to develop new economic systems because there is only one eco-system and it cannot survive the present free market economy.

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Something else of great value which climate campaigners can do are soldiarity actions with frontline communities. Those living in the Niger Delta, for example. Friday 10th November will be the 10th anniversary of the death of Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was killed by the Nigerian state for campaigning against what Shell were doing in Nigeria. Now, ten years later, Shell’s gas flaring in the Niger Delta is the single largest source of carbon emissions on the planet. 2.5 billion cubic feet per day. The single largest source of carbon emissions on the planet. Shell is a UK-registered company, based right here in Britain (and contributing to that GDP of which the Stern report wants us to divert 1% to offsetting the effects of climate change). It is our right and our duty to take Shell back into public ownership, dismantle it, break it up, and send its management into rehabilition training in the hope that they can one day be re-introduced into society as useful members of the community.

We have a unique historic opportunity to make of the post-fossil fuel world a much more equal and better place than we knew in the Petroleum Era. So many of the global inequalities and injustices and oppressions are deeply stratified into the World Oil Economy, hard-wired into a carbon-fuelled profit frenzy. As we disentangle ourselves from the fossil-fuel economy, we might experiment with new ways of working with the Global South rather than theft and control punctuated, like a wife-beater, by contrition. They might even involve listening to and then doing what they say.

Hat tip to my correspondent in SLO who turned me on to this guy. Many thanks, friend!