Oil Dependence .
Modern industry, modern civilizations are run almost entirely on oil, to a less extent, also on coke coal. But oil is quite literally the wheels of industry throughout the world. And the desire for oil, the need for oil, the craving for oil, the guzzling of oil is one of the great phenomena of the 20th century. We know that oil is decreasing, the stocks of it are decreasing inevitably and that some day, since they are finite, they will run out altogether, but that day hasn't, of course, arrived yet and new reserves are found from time to time to enable us to go on in the same old ways. But the problems are increasing. Some day we shall have to invent some means of transport which isn't dependent on oil, upon electricity or something like that, because electricity itself is oil-dependent to some extent. We shall have to become less and less oil-dependent. First, dependence on oil – this rapidly dwindling resource – is one of our major problems, and we hope, all of us, that scientists will be able to find alternative sources of energy: solar energy, water power from the seas, so to say, and it is derived from sea power and the building of dams. This will take the place, we hope, on the oil-fired and coal-fired power stations which we depend on so much today, and nearly all our transport is fuelled by oil or by its derivative – petrol. We shall have to do something about that. There'll be required a technological revolution. We hope we'll acquire one, at any rate, which will bring about a new way of life which is less pollutant, less polluting, less dangerous to our environment. Let us look a little bit at the picture today. We are all aware of this: in order to satisfy our almost boundless need for oil today we send huge tankers to transport it from one country where it is to be found, where it is drawn up from the ground, to another. There are many countries that have no oil of their own at all, they have to import it.