Here’s What Peak Oil Actually Looks Like

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“Here in the first world, we still have the luxury of armchair theorizing about peak oil, and paying a bit more for gasoline, but the third world is actually feeling the pain of peak oil today. Rising oil prices are acting as a regressive worldwide tax, pricing poorer countries right out of the market.

Since their experience must to some extent herald ours as peak sets in, let’s see how peak oil feels to those who are undergoing it firsthand.”

I think many Americans who have never visited the third world really have no idea how dependent the infrastructure of even very poor people is on energy – that is, many people envision poor nations as existing without meaningful energy infrastructure, and in some rural areas, this is true. But most of the poor people in the world live in cities right now, and even rural places depend on outside infrastructure for things like roads, vaccinations, birth control and water pumping.
The disruption of energy supplies and infrastructure makes already poor people poorer. In places like Bangladesh, that use their electricity in, among other things, hundreds of pumping stations to keep back flooding, this magnifies the effects of climate change. Estimates suggest that right now, 30% of the country is underwater, or has been in the last week.

Thousands of basic needs are going unmet because the price of energy is simply too high for poor nations to compete with the rich ones. And the price of this is measured in lives. If you don’t yet see the evidence for peak oil, you aren’t looking in the right places.

Casaubon’s Book