last updated 14th September 05
By 4ecotips

Huge civil disruption lies ahead over oil

The UK Green Party today made an appeal to the British government to show real leadership and foresight in developing more sustainable transport systems for the 21st century.

Green Party speaker, Keith Taylor, says: "The reality is that oil is a finite resource. As it depletes, and demand grows, it will increase in price, and that is what we are witnessing, prompted by Hurricane Katrina's effects on US supplies.

"The Chancellor of the Exchequer has said that global issues need global solutions - but these solutions must also be sustainable. With the growing industrialisation of China and India, the situation is only going to get worse. To ask that Opec increase oil production by 500,000 extra barrels a day, as he has done, is dangerously short sighted."

According to Taylor a responsible government would be planning now for when oil is even more expensive and in short supply. Industry analysts, he said, predicted that crude oil would double from its present price within the next few years. We were currently seeing the upset petrol pump price rises of a few pence per litre could cause. But there was a real potential for huge civil disruption when peak oil predictions came true.

Cutting the petrol tax is not the answer to the problem. We needed to dramatically reduce the oil dependency of our economy which made us vulnerable to periodic shocks and disruption such as now, rather than continue to massively subsidise motorists.

Official statistics showed that between 1987 and 2000, although petrol and oil prices had increased by 45% and tax and insurance payments by over 40%, the total costs of motoring in real terms had risen by only 5.6-7.2%. The same figures also revealed that
bus and coach fares increased by 18%, and rail fares by 21%, in real terms.

The Green Party believed this was patently unsustainable and irresponsible.