Oil Owns Us
This column was written by CBS News Early Show Co-Anchor Harry Smith.
So I was on an aircraft carrier on the Arabian Sea last week. And while flying out to the USS Theodore Roosevelt, I got to see something I may never forget.
Just after crossing the desert and mountains near Dubai, there is a giant bay. In this bay were moored dozens and dozens of the biggest tanker ships in the world.
The ships stretched almost to the horizon. There they sat waiting to be filled with oil. A half million barrels for this one, a half million barrels for that one.
After while you begin to realize just how addicted the world is to oil. And how much power those who control it have on the rest of us. Like addicts, oil owns us.
We don't know how to live without it, only when it became really expensive did we begin to dream about a life without it.
Oil prices have plummeted recently and I fear we will soon forget the bondage we have been in. When we begin to break oil's lock on our lives, things will get better, I promise.