Oil Men or Straw Men?

The main theme of Linda McQuaig’s new book, It’s the Crude, Dude: War, Big Oil and the Fight for the Planet, is the argument that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was to secure access to and maintain long-term control of its “massive” oil reserves, supposedly “at least 10% of the world’s oil.” Indeed, McQuaig thinks that Iraq’s oil wealth is potentially second only to Saudi Arabia, which has 25 percent of the world’s oil reserves. A second theme is that the world should try to rely less on oil in the future since its price is going up as it becomes scarcer. The world should switch to alternative sources of energy. As McQuaig puts it, “there’s not enough oil to meet the world’s growing consumption, but that growing consumption is itself threatening to ruin the world.” The last phrase takes us to her third theme: that global warming is mainly caused by gasoline emissions, and that drivers of SUVs and the producers of oil are both engaged in immoral activities. As Americans...