Breaking The Laws of Petropolitics

In case you missed it, there's a big leak in the Gulf of Mexico that has begun to cause a lot of problems for wildlife and the American economy - and American lives. We view it at a distance here, almost certain that the leak could never actually hit Trinidad or Tobago. CARICOM has warned of the danger to Jamaica and the Bahamas - but to people in Trinidad and Tobago, it might as well be happening in Antarctica. It's not that we don't care. It's that it's not right under our own noses. Let one flying fish get oil on it and Barbados and T&T will likely fight over it. And Chavez will likely say that the fish was stealing his oil, and he wants it back.

I've been reading Thomas L. Friedman's Hot, Flat, and Crowded 2.0: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America and I came across something he wrote that seems to explain away a lot of what I see in Trinidad and Tobago: 

...Wherever governments can raise most of their revenues by simply drilling a hole in the ground rather than tapping their people's energy, creativity, and entrepreneurship, freedom tends to be curtailed, education underfunded, and human development retarded. That is because of what I call the First Law of Petropolitics.

That hits close to home. Or should. And the question should be:

What are you going to do about it? When an addiction to oil has the United States in such a compromised position (oil profits fund terrorism) and the world is so desperate for oil that they'll drill where they have no emergency plan... Maybe that diversification of the economy that so many of my friends and so few of the general public seem so... interested in.

While other nations have lowered their dependence on oil, it make sense that Trinidad and Tobago should break the budgetary dependency on oil and natural gas. And yet every time diversification is mentioned, it's for big business. It's not about tapping people's energy, creativity and entrepeneurship.

And in my opinion, it should be. It should have been a long time ago. Now might be a good time. We'll see.