Future Revolutions Will Be Because Of High Fuel Prices

Why Global Fuel Prices Will Spark the Next Revolutions -- Vivienne Walt, Time

While the demonstrators that have mobbed the streets of Amman for two weeks now are demanding the overthrown of King Abdullah — a criminal offense in Jordan — it’s not the demand for democracy that sparked their protests. Instead, thousands of Jordanians have been spurred to act by a more basic issue: the rising price of gas after the government withdrew its subsidies.

Jordanians are hardly alone in their anger. Governments across the world are attempting to wean their citizens off subsidized fossil fuels —a critical issue which environmentalists say is a big contributor to the output of carbon gases that contribute to global warming, and which have even more immediately burdened public finances the world over by an estimated total of $523 billion last year — a 30% increase over the previous year.

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My Comment: Food is the major factor behind revolutions .... at least according to these researchers.

Will Shale Gas Fracking Reshape America's Role In The World?

How Cheap Energy From Shale Will Reshape America's Role In The World -- Julian Borger and Larry Elliott, The Guardian

US self-sufficiency in energy is likely to end American reliance on despotic Gulf regimes but biggest loser of all may be Russia.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the rise of China and the Arab spring, American energy independence looks likely to trigger the next great geopolitical shift in the modern world.

US reliance on the Gulf for its oil – and its consequent need to maintain a dominant presence in the Middle East to keep the oil flowing – has been one of the constants of the post-1945 status quo. That could be turned on its head.

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Update: Shale gas fracking – the facts and figures -- The Guardian

My Comment: Just not sending out hundreds of billions of dollars for energy to the likes of OPEC and Russia will make a big difference. But energy fracking is still new, and I am sure that there will be more obstacles to overcome before it becomes an acceptable standard in the industry.