Focus: Oil

Someday someone – perhaps a composer is already at work on it – will write a great operatic cycle on the rise and fall of oil. In Wagner’s Ring it was gold that was taken from the Rhinemaidens, to the curse of all who possessed it until the commodity could be returned to the river whence it came.

In the case of oil, it is “black gold” that has been wrested from the earth where it has lain for millions of years, to bring wealth and misery in equal measure upon those who find it, those who own it and those who consume it. Only when the world can move away from the corrosive and corrupting substance can society be at ease with itself.

The Independent