Anachronism

> He read up on the situation. The USGS estimated that Antarctica held perhaps fifty billion barrels of oil; only a couple more decades’ worth, at current consumption rates. _*But at twenty dollars a barrel, that was a trillion dollars.*_ Which was only a year of the U.S. government’s budget, and only a year of the world’s military budgets; but more than enough to pay off all the debts that had the southern nations lashed to the harshest austerity programs the World Bank and IMF could devise. He could see how the logic of the system might drive them to it.
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> Kim Stanley Robinson, _Antarctica_ (1998)

[Oil sets new record near $147 a barrel](http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i5TtajgUpSm7KY5jf-lCJGHBB-tAD91RLHAO0).

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