Oil and Terrorism

In our discussions of the oil industry and its legitimacy, we occasionally run across people who deny that oil and terrorism have any real link, e.g., this comment to my recent piece on electric transportation:

…. nor has “terrorism” got anything to do with the oil industry! Terrorism exists in all sorts of forms, some of which is created by citizens of oil rich nations, but mostly by small groups of misogynists, with delusions of grandeur. The fact that the USA policy of uncritical support of Israel has naturally made (it) a target for extremist groups in the US, (but) has very little to do with oil. It just happens that some of Israel’s neighbors are oil-rich. (But the largest supplier of oil to US is Canada).

I’m not persuaded by this, and point out:

• Yes, the U.S. is itself a terrorist nation to the extent that it supports Israel in the latter’s obvious atrocities against human rights and gross violations of international law.   I despise that about my country, but I don’t see its relevance to the relationship between oil and terror.  Are you saying it’s the reason that ISIS is systematically beheading Christian children?

• The fact that the U.S. buys most of its oil from Canada (rather from countries that are directly connected with terrorism, e.g., Saudi Arabia) is also irrelevant.  Every drop of oil we buy from Canada is a drop someone else is forced to buy from the Saudis (or pick another from the dozens of oil-rich supporters of terror in the Middle East or Africa).

• In a world where oil has no special value, Islamist extremists lose their power to kidnap, rape, torture, bomb, behead, deny the most basic rights to women, etc.

• In the wider sense of the word “terrorism,” many people who study the world energy supply refer to the pursuit of oil as de facto “eco-terrorism.” Especially in today’s world in which the easy-to-find petroleum is long gone, each year brings a new set of environmentally damaging extraction techniques: drilling in the arctic, processing of tar sands, etc.

One also occasionally encounters the argument that, although oil admittedly is the coin of the realm today, and thus does have a relationship to terror, anything with which oil could be replaced (lithium, neodymium, thorium, etc.) will ultimately have the same horrific effect.

I’m not saying that such is impossible, but if I were defending my position in court, I’d interrupt: “Objection.  Calls for speculation.”   Seriously, if you’re going to go that far, you could speculate that thorium might turn out to be coveted by some alien species that now becomes provoked to attack the human race.  It’s not altogether impossible, but there is no good reason to make decisions as if that might be the case.