A coming world that's 'a whole lot smaller'

Jeff Rubin has taken his long-standing forecast that inevitably declining production and rising demand will send oil prices inexorably higher – over $200 (U.S.) a barrel by 2012 or earlier, just for a start – and imagines how the world will have to change to adjust to such a reality.

“This book [Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller] is not about how to make money. It’s [about] how you change your life,” he said. “What car you drive next, where you live, what are the industries where you’re likely to get a job, what are the industries where you’re likely to lose a job. Where are you likely to go on your next vacation, where are you likely never to go on a vacation again. What kind of changes are you going to make to your diet. Those kind of things.”
By Mr. Rubin’s own account, his deep interest in the big-picture oil puzzle had increasingly moved him away from the typical day-to-day research of an investment bank.

“I think the kinds of things that I was working on, and where our research had gone in the past couple of years, maybe an investment bank wasn’t the best platform for that kind of research or those kinds of messages,” he said.

Like many oil crisis prophets, Mr. Rubin is a disciple of “peak oil” theory – the concept that world oil production is near its peak, and is destined to a long, slow decline, as existing low-cost oil fields dry up and new supplies become harder and more expensive to unlock.

Less than 10 years ago, the theory was so little known and held in so little regard that, when Mr. Rubin gave a speech to Calgary’s Petroleum Club explaining it, he was met with a mixture of disbelieving stares and dismissive guffaws. That was before $140-a-barrel oil awakened the world to the peak oil threat.

“People have to realize that this is not a shock, it’s a permanent set of conditions that we have to adapt to,” he said. “I think that’s a lot easier sell than when I first started articulating this message eight, ten years ago.”

But unlike many previous peak oil books, which typically don’t get much past “we’re in big trouble,” Mr. Rubin’s conclusions are refreshingly optimistic. His world of the oil-starved future, at least for Western societies, looks a lot like the bygone years of our fond memory, where people work and vacation nearer to home, eat locally grown foods and buy locally produced goods, and suburban sprawl is replaced by revitalized cities.

Globe and Mail