Commentary: Globalization Promotes Oil Depletion

Due to globalization and “free trade”, more and more businesses are shutting down factories in nations with higher wages, moving production to low wage countries in East Asia, Eastern Europe, and Central America. People in higher-wage nations should not only look at this in terms of employment loss, but in depletion of oil and increased pollution.

A large amount of oil-based fuels and other energy resources are used to transport products which were once made in the United States or Western Europe from countries like the Phillipines, China, and the Dominican Republic. This helps to deplete the world’s oil reserves more quickly than it would if these products were still manufactured in the nations they are consumed by. It also increases pollution produced by transport vehicles and in the manufacturing process, because of less-restrictive environmental regulations in most low-wage countries.

By permitting their businesses to move production to lower-wage countries, nations have made themselves dependent on the ability to transport products internationally. Foreign political changes and military conflicts could also jeopardize the supply of products. Nonetheless, Western corporations will continue to embrace globalization as long as it provides them with greater profits.

If the world’s supply of oil is to be prolonged, while reducing global warming and other environmental problems, all nations should become more self-reliant in manufacturing products they use. Otherwise, the world economy will face a difficult period of collapse when oil supplies are depleted, with many nations lacking any method of producing or importing most products.

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