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Who will benefit from peak oil?
That's an almost heretical question to ask when the mainstream peak oil position is worldwide economic collapse, followed by electrical grids going down then mass starvation.

I propose as a possible scenario that peak oil will be rather like the period during and immediately after the second world war.


Some heavily petroleum dependent countries will collapse economically, during the peak period while others (notably export land countries) will boom. Some other countries who are less dependent on oil will transition painfully away from oil, and in the recovery phase, world manufacturing will re-locate to these regions. These regions will see a long lasting boom similar to that experienced in the United States after world war II and they will supply manufactured products to the rest of the world (including the now impoverished previously rich countries). Without the manufacturing in the petroleum independent countries any recovery would be very difficult, but with the industrial base underpinned by non petroleum electricity supply, renewables could continue to expand and eventually build up in the countries who collapsed due to their over dependence on oil.

Anywhere with good alternative energy supplies that can replace oil.

China, Russia, Australia, Canada, USA, Poland, S. Africa: they have coal.

Anywhere with decent hydropower: Norway, Switzerland, Brazil

Brazil also has biofuels aplenty

Iceland with geothermal

so that means manufacturing will continue its flight from places like Japan, UK etc that have dwindling access/control of energy?

Nobody else want to pitch in and play devil's advocate against the dieoff/olduvai gorge meme?

fifthcolumn wrote:Nobody else want to pitch in and play devil's advocate against the dieoff/olduvai gorge meme?

Why bother. My speculation is no better and probably no worse than anyone else's. In the end it's all just speculation. The more certain someone is with predictions of the world at plateau or post peak the less I tend to listen to them. What ever world view someone inhabits colors their opinion of where we go on the downside (if they accept there is a downside).

Two issues with the question are what do you mean by "benefit from" and do you mean in absolute terms or relative terms.

For example American has one of the highest GDP per capita but rank fairly lowly on happiness indexes - what's better?

In absolute terms an oil exporting country may find itself in a worse position 10 years post peak than before, but its relative standing amongst other countries may have improved. Has it benefit from peak oil?

clv101 wrote:Two issues with the question are what do you mean by "benefit from" and do you mean in absolute terms or relative terms.

What's amazing about this site is how little agreement there is even on basic terms. If we don't even agree, what hope is there of the masses getting it.

By "benefit from" I mean, profit from in a way that they wouldn't have without the existence of peak oil.

fifthcolumn wrote:By "benefit from" I mean, profit from in a way that they wouldn't have without the existence of peak oil.

Part of what makes this subject so interesting is that so many of these terms are up for redefinition now. It's a paradigm shift. Recognising that the 'economy', the pounds and pence that we actually count, is only a small fraction of the world. That ecosystem services are more valuable but very hard to quantify puts a lot of conventional thinking on shaky ground.

Well, to give a simple example of the need for clarification, any types who like being warlords, and are successful at it, will "benefit" in the sense of realising their career aspirations(!), but having done so they probably won't live very long (Dead Men's Shoes and all that).

It's possible that (the descendents of) today's poorest Nigerians will benefit in absolute terms, as in be no longer saddled with the "resource curse".

But frankly I think most of it's just going to be the luck of the draw.

RenewableCandy wrote:Well, to give a simple example of the need for clarification, any types who like being warlords

Excellent!

and are successful at it

Hmmm. Tricky that bit.

Fish

We wont have the energy to go and catch them all.

ziggy12345 wrote:Fish

We wont have the energy to go and catch them all.

Good point! They were the star performers in "The World Without Us" iirc.

fifthcolumn wrote:Who will benefit from peak oil?

EVERYONE! Whether they like it or not!

Yeah, life was awesome when people round here died at 40 from malnutrition

DominicJ wrote:Yeah, life was awesome when people round here died at 40 from malnutrition

Even if our energy inputs dropped dramatically we wouldn't necessarily need to lose everything we've learned about health and nutrition over the last few decades.

Richard Heinberg.

(well, someone has to play 'devil's advocate'.)