Helinski+Crude+Impact

James Jandak Wood 2006
 * Crude Impact**

This film paints a gruesome imagine that may soon become known as our future solely due to our depletion of natural resources and reaching a point in time that could be considered the global tipping point. The stresses caused from our over consumption of resources will begin to inflict great stress upon many facets of the American way of life including a failing economy, and destroyed environment as well as destruction within our political system as it is overrun with corruption and faults. As in many situations, the destruction which we have brought upon ourselves has been fueled by the population’s resistance to believe such claims and instead choose to continue their means of life unaltered.

The backbone of the upcoming downfall of humanity belongs to those who are solely responsible for many of the perceived issues, the oil corporations. Solely driven by the concept of making a profit, many of them have expanded outside of their boundaries in order to continue their expansion without any regard to human rights or safety. Unfortunately these corporations have a sense of security from the countries which depend upon them for economic stability. The US for an example has a society that is driven by these corporations, so when there is such a high demand for a product, the oil corporations will continue their ever expanding control to continually increase their profits. It is an unfortunate and dangerous circle.

Most of these expansions involve moving into countries where human rights and quality of life are in the direct path of the corporation’s development, which of course hold no value to the companies where time is money. Even if these people had the ability to express their opinions or voices about the expansion of big oil, there is no way which they could compete economically with the never ending pockets of oil. These underdeveloped nations have no choice but to fall to the power of the Oil companies, which it most situations continue to grow untested. The expansion in these areas usually leads to environmental areas because they are less regulated with such economic instability, so there is no one watching over the procedure that occurs within the oil facilities.

One of the largest issues due to our dependency on oil that is addressed by this film is the disconnect between the end users of the petroleum products and those who are taken advantaged of in order to obtain it by the oil companies. Most westerners are living a comfortable life that is filled with products that derive from petroleum products or are surrounded by a fossil fuel powered world. Very few of these citizens are aware of what actions are taken for them to be living such a privileged lifestyle or understand the amount of human right violation has occurred for them to be able to drive their car to the grocery store. This disconnect has allowed western civilization to grow at exponential rates without considering what is needed the support these ever expanding communities. As it states in the film, “The American life style is non-negotiable” is the perfect example of the common train of thought of western civilization. It is this train of thought that is going to drive civilization to its own destruction and due to the ignorance of most common people, it is going to be too late for anything to change before people adjust their perspectives.

This continuous circle of population growth and demand for increased quality of life is an uncontrollable circle that is no longer just within the US, but is expanding globally and reaching countries in the East such as China. With such a large nation as China increasing as rapidly as it is in order to catch up to life style of most western nations, the strain on fossil fuels are going to grow exponentially which could lead to the destruction of life as we know it. A shown through the film as it explains the expansion of the world population, the increments it took for the last few billion people to be reached is quite honestly alarming. Not only are populations increasing but the ways in which people live their lives are reaching points that will but be supportable. Having the average person encountering 30,000 products that are tied to petroleum is an unbelievable statistic, which only puts more strain as the population grows which requires that many more people to encounter that many more items.

Being a compelling story and providing information that who make the average viewer a believer that change is required, I was not completely convinced by the method which all of the information was presented. Many of the speakers mentioned on multiple occasions that other countries are not going to be able to live their lives in the manner that the US does without requiring unattainable amounts of fossil fuels, yet the film itself makes it seem as though we are the only country that should have that liberty. Especially in the discussion of China and its ever growing population and great increase of automobiles, many of the speakers say that that will just be impossible to achieve, yet the US has been living that life styles for years. It is obvious that we are going to need to change the way which the world conduct itself in order to reduce oil consumption, but this is not something that is only needed from expanding countries such as China, but from our own country as well. It seemed as though it was a very one sided argument in the film. The message behind this film was that education is situations like this are the one thing that can save the world before it is too late. This film talked about many points that are all factors in the over dependency on oil, but most of them are not known by the common public. If such things are the population explosion was brought to the attention of the mass population, perhaps there could be a change in this devastating population growth. Not implying that it should reach the state of a single child per family law, but rather informing and education women especially. As the film addressed in countries where women are in power and are educated such as in Iran, there has been a zero population growth compared to countries like Saudi Arabia where women have no right in their bearing of children. The population growth is something that needs to be addressed if anything is going to change. The population needs to be brought back to balance with the earth as it is suggested in the film.

Other actions suggested by the film all have the potential of making an impact just not as drastic as the control of the population. The food industry is a massive consumer of fossil fuels using them for everything from transportation of food, to storage, to the growing of the food itself. All of these methods use fuels in a manner which allows food to reach destinations that it would never be able to naturally. Going back to our roots and supporting local farmers and incorporating more local products and produce I our diets is a small step that could be taken In order to reduce the carbon impact and fue required for you and your family to be fed. The talk about population growth is something that interested me very much through this film and made me wonder how it is viewed around the world. I found the issue with Chain and it’s one child law to be very interesting and amazing to what kinds of complications it brought to the society. Looking into population control in a safe and effective mean is something that I feel as though would not only inform myself but could make a drastic impact on many people and countries. This information was researched slightly after viewing this film.