Hahyeong Lim
Environmental Studies
Ms. Claire Weiss
23rd February, 2014
‘Oil is our God. I don’t care if somebody says they worship Jesus, Buddha, Allah, whoever. They actually worship Petroleum.”
-Matthew David Savinar
1. This quote is quite offensive to me, as I do not think that petroleum is something that you can ‘worship’. There are certain type of deities and religions that you can worship to, but properties such as money and resources are not something that people actually ‘worship’. Those properties and materials are something that people desire for. They cannot replace religions and gods because they are intrinsically different matters. It is certainly true, with no doubt, that petroleum and energy resources are overwhelming and overtaking our lives, but it is just the way of life that the whole world is responsible for. People can desire and want petroleum, but they do not ‘worship’ it like it is going to save them and give forgiveness in life. I strongly think that the words ‘worship’ and ‘desire’ should be used appropriately in the right context, because they are distinctly different words. In this quote, Savinar must have used the word ‘worship’ just in order to emphasize the fact that oil is becoming a big part of our lives, because almost every product in the world is somehow related in oil industry.
2. http://www.therichest.com/expensive-lifestyle/location/the-10-biggest-oil-consuming-countries-in-the-world/
This source shows the top 10 biggest oil consuming countries in the world. Including South Korea where I come from, it includes many of the obvious oil consuming countries. Looking at the statistics, I was really shocked to know the actual number of oil barrels spent every day. I thought that the quotation is indeed quite true and accurate, because the world’s industry and production are seemed to be relying way too much on energy generated from oil resources. Virtually everything we use right now is produced with at least...