Dear Editor,
The headline, “People are Still Suffering Although we have Oil”, (Kaieteur News, Monday 18th December 2023), is so naturally appealing but so persuasively misguiding, I could not let it pass though weeks late in my preparations for Christ-mas and the New Year. Certainly, we want no suffering: we want to end suffering in a steadily reducing and sustainable way. Let us recognize, firstly, that numbered are the days of getting lots of money from oil, of oil production providing an ATM machine, and oil not spoiling. A big step forward for our Earth and Mankind, out of the recently concluded COP 28, was the World Commitment to “transitioning away from fossil fuels” and hence moving away from the use, purchasing and production of coal, oil and gas. In ten, twenty, thirty years we and others may still have lots of oil but the costs of offsetting the adverse effects on our atmosphere will soon put the great majority if not all oil fields out of production.
Secondly, it is instructive to state the obvious to bring things into a more conscious focus and to see them through. It is not the physical barrels of oil, nor even the dollar notes or cheques from its sale that suffering people need. They need more and better food (grown and prepared by some of us), better housing and furnishing (built by others of us) and improved health and education services (provided by others of us). The point is that there must be increased supply of goods and services, so that suffering people may get more even as they themselves become more productive and contributing to the common wealth. We all have to become better people to reduce “people suffering.” The next ten, twenty years may well be our years of plenty, when we must avoid the often referred to Dutch Disease, and instead create storehouses of ourselves, as we each store in ourselves increased capabilities and an increased effectiveness in getting on with each other, as we build our physical infrastructure: as we and all the people of the world position ourselves to soon live with lots of oil still in the ground, but no longer of any use or worth to us.
In today’s world, oil is not our bright future, but we can make it a bridge to a bright future, without oil. As ever, it is what we make of ourselves that will matter.
Sincerely,
Samual A.A. Hinds
Ambassador
