I don’t know what God was thinking when he gave out all the oil; he gave it to all the world’s bastards.”
-Ezra Levant
I’m watching a debate conducted in 2010 between “ethical oil” founder Ezra Levant and anti-oilsands journalist Andrew Nikiforuk, at http://ezralevant.com/2010/11/oilsands-debate-ezra-levant-vs.html. Don’t bother reading the comments; it’s on Levant’s own website, so you’re not going to get much more debate there.
I’m only a little ways in so far, so I can’t comment on the debate overall, but what struck me immediately was that quote about God’s preferential selection of dictators to manage the world’s oil supply. This is the foundation of his Ethical Oil thesis: that the alternative to the oil sands is conflict oil from some of the world’s worst countries.
I had never heard it phrased that way, though, so I paused the video and thought about it for a moment. Did God give all the energy wealth to “the bastards” – or did the bastards show up to claim the oil?
Did their countries slowly (or abruptly) fall into the hands of dictators? And could this have anything to do with the oil wealth itself? Why do energy superpowers turn out to be led by the worst kinds of oppressive “bastards”?
As I watch Prime Minister Stephen Harper, an oil man himself, declare war on environmental groups, I wonder where we’re headed. And I wonder what Canada will look like as we become, according to Harper, “an energy superpower.”
Jimmy Thomson 