Questão 3169675

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The end of the Oil Age

Ways to break the tyranny of oil are coming into view. Governments need to promote them

"The Stone Age did not end for lack of stone, and the Oil Age will end long before the world runs out of oil." This intriguing prediction is often heard in energy circles these days. If greens were the only people to be expressing such thoughts, the notion might be dismissed as utopian. However, the quotation is from Sheikh Zaki Yamani, a Saudi Arabian who served as his country's oil minister forty years ago. His words are rich in irony. Sheikh Yamani first came to the world's attention during the Arab oil embargo of the United States, which began four decades ago and whose effects altered the course of modern economic and political history. Coming from such a source, the prediction, one assumes, can hardly be a case of wishful thinking.

Yet a generation after the embargo began, the facts seem plain: the world remains addicted to Middle Eastern oil. So why is Sheikh Yamani predicting the end of the Oil Age? Because he believes that something fundamental has shifted since that first oil shock – and, sadly for countries like Saudi Arabia, he is quite right. Finally, advances in technology are offering a way for economies to diversify their supplies of energy and reduce their demand for petroleum, thus loosening the grip of oil and the countries that produce it.

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