Which place will be harder hit? The First world, or Third?

MonteQuest · Posted: Sun Dec 05, 2004 11:41 am Post subject:

Today it is difficult to overstate oil's importance to first world economies, especially the US. Four percent of the world's people, we use 25% of the world's oil. The automobile is our most cherished icon, a new car our symbol of success. An average American drives 1,000 miles a month, 12,000 miles a year and we consume our weight in petroleum every 7 days. In 1900, oil married the automobile. Together they gave birth to a century of travel. Today oil is so thoroughly woven into the fabric of America that we canâ€™t imagine life without it. Fish donâ€™t worry about water and Americans donâ€™t worry about oil. Instead we swim in it.

Oil depletion is a slow, wasting disease. It only becomes chaotic when man does, and that is the big unknown. Most people abhor change. Change is scary. Mentally, we tend to be prisoners of the past, hoping that the future will be just like the present, only more so. Inexpensive oil is so deeply embedded in our economy, psychology, and even diet that itâ€™s difficult to imagine a world in which oil will be more expensive. Psychology will come into play, too, since inexpensive oil buttresses the belief that growth is inevitable, stocks go up, and things get better. But, come what may, higher gasoline prices are not the end of life as we know it. In the best of all worlds, after a rocky year or two or three of global recession, people could adjust, life can go on. Most Europeans already pay much much more for gasoline; Americans presumably could, too. The difference will come when gas, at any price, canâ€™t be had or the economy cannot grow and provide jobs and infrastructure for the newcomers. Thatâ€™s when the SHTF.

And, too, it has a lot to do with perspective. The main difference between us and the third world is that we are totally dependent upon cheap energy to maintain our complex infrastructure, while the third world is not. Strange to say, if there are to be any winners in the coming catastrophe, it will be third-world subsistence farmers who till the land that has been sustainably productive for generations, through the â€œprimitiveâ€ method of raising food through the toil of their own labor and that of their draft animals. And much of the poor countries rely on biomass for their energy source, mostly wood. They are used to doing without, we are not. We have become so complex a society that it makes us far more vulnerable to the effects of peak-oil than a poor peasant in a third world country who has neither electricity nor running water. While undoubtedly, things will get much worse for the poorer countries of the world, I rather doubt that the US moving to third-world conditions will be less so. The masses will not go quietly to the slaughter. They will not like losing their jobs, their homes, and their future security. The bigger you are the harder you fallâ€¦and the bigger the noise you make when you do. Squawk! llorar

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pkofsocal · Tar Sands Joined: Nov 23, 2004 Posts: 31

>The countries that develop or have developed energy alternatives will suffer much less.

>For example FRANCE . 90 % of their electricity is produced from nuclear power stations.

I argued this with another person who refused to believe the world is entering a hopeless mess.

Most of their nuclear fuel are dependent on Russia, Australia and other faraway locales. With oilflow slowing down, it would be harder for them to transport the yellowcakes.

Once they somehow reach the port, will they use horse-and-buggy to move these stuff? I do know they are heavy, and horses are not immune to radioactivity either.

Even when I told him all these things, he refused to acknowledge the situation. Oh, well.

I do think that some LOCALES will survive the PO relatively intact, providing they are sufficiently isolated enough from the paths of big armies and small marauders.

But I do think that France, for example, is too big as a unit to survive after PO.