"Triple Digit Oil Prices Will Reverse Globalization"

This was the title of a presentation given by Jeff Rubin, an economist from CIBC World Markets at the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (USA) conference taking place right now in the states.

According to the Oil Drum, Rubin showed a slide comparing the cost of shipping a 40 foot container from China to the US.

A few years ago, the cost would have been $3,000. It now costs $10,000. If oil rises to $150 a barrel, it will cost $15,000.

Think about this for a moment.

In a world where nations are fighting it out for the one resource the world relies on for...just about everything...the first major causality will be transport.

Yeah, you'll be driving and flying less, big deal, we can live with that. But as for imports, all that stuff we get via cheap labour in the east, what do you think will happen to that? What impact will that have on your life?

So what will happen?

At best: manged re-localisation, this is where transition initiatives and projects come into play on a local/regional scale, and government resources on the nationwide scale.

At worst: an unmanaged powerdown, nations battling it out, suffering on a huge scale and not just in the third world, this means us, "sitting here in my safe European home".