Signature Lecture with Jeff Rubin: "Oil and the End of Globalization"

What do subprime mortgages, Atlantic salmon dinners, SUVs and globalization all have in common? They depend on cheap oil.

According to Jeff Rubin, we are poised on the brink of massive change. Dependent as it is on cheap oil, our global civilization is about to get the shock of its life.

Systems of trade, of finance, of shipping and manufacturing, of labor and international relations are all about to be rearranged. Get ready for a new world—one in which domestic manufacturing will be reinvigorated and the products and services we still enjoy will start coming from places much closer to home. There will be winners as well as losers when the age of globalization comes to an end. Distance will soon cost money, and so will burning carbon—both will bring long-lost jobs back home.

We may not see the kind of economic growth that globalization has brought, but local economies will be revitalized, as will our cities and neighbourhoods. Whether we like it or not, our world is about to get a whole lot smaller.

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• Jeff Rubin
• world economy
• subprime mortgages
• oil
• domestic manufacturing
• economic growth
• globalization
• environment

[vlada881]

Great speech. Jeff Rubin is a great economist i feel sorry for those who still dont see the bigger picture of problem of peak oil. Thanks for upload.

[Knossos22]

Reductio ad absurdum:

Remove all oil from the economy and almost all transportation would halt. The consequences would be too horrifying to contemplate. One of the consequences would be unbelievable inflation.

Attempt to spread oil between 4 billion people instead of 1 billion people. What do you get? Inflation. What has happened in the past ten years? About 3 billion people have begun seeking access to the oil previous consumed by 1 billion.

What will happen? What happened in 2008 -2010

[vanislefan1]

He sounds eerily like Jack Nicholson in Easy Rider. Great speaker and refreshing to not have to listen to the economic news narrated and spun by CNN.

[Knossos22]

@kessass83 The end of the age of oil will come over time... There is still lots of oil flowing. However, the total quantity coming out of the ground will not increase by much, if at all, and the rapidly rising number of people wanting to join in the fossil-hydrocarbon combustion way of life is causing increasing pressures in the economic system. I fear we will witness a break in the system that will result in a global collapse. The changes are so rapid now, that we will witness the outcome.

[kessass83]

@Knossos22 Transportation just make up the small part of the game. Steel production, plastic which is the most widely used by product in current economic system. Everything, I mean literally everything would stop.

[dwdeclare]

"to be sure, a super exchange rate will bring back some long lost nhl franchises."

oh canada, you and your priorities.

[144jr144]

ok- i get it re interest rates. he's calling interest rates a measure of inflation. however, what happens when resources prices spike is lenders get skeptical of debtors repaying. there's a higher "risk premium" meaning that interest rates offered by lenders rise rapidly. however, conservative lending is not currency inflation nor credit inflation. demanding collateral or co-signers before issuing a loan is not inflation either. open market interest rates are just that! inflation is total A/Rs.

[144jr144]

to me, the idea of an oil shortage leading to inflation (not just rising prices of fuel or goods worldwide, but inflation of any particular currency) is not clear. economies require oil to expand or inflate, then when oil supplies drop, credit also evaporates or deflates. this deflating, which has been going on since 1989 in japan and more recently in europe and north america, has rippled through prices of airline stocks, high tech stocks, real estate, financial stocks, and stocks in general.

[PersianPaladin]

Jeff is an excellent speaker. He can just continue seamlessly without any "umms" or "errs". But he needs water, his voice starts to rasp after a while.

[KrunchyJD]

What about living closer together and riding bikes more, and walking more. People will be healthier.

[KrunchyJD]

What about living closer together and riding bikes more, and walking more.