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That would depend on how essential the industrialisation is.

Also, I wouldn't expect it to be a linear relationship. Beyond a certain point essential services stop working, so catastrophic social failure is more likely than linear degradation.

For example - beyond $200/bl a small but significant proportion of commuters in the UK will no longer be able to afford to drive to work. Beyond $300/bl that starts to become a serious problem, and at $400/bl fuel costs for an average 10,000 miles/year - which is less than many commuter runs - will be between £350 and £1000 per month, depending on efficiency.

Which is not a good thing when the median income is around £24k.

For many of these runs, there's no alternative transport. Trains certainly aren't an alternative because they're already more expensive - never mind in the future. Buses are too intermittent or unavailable.

So - some people will buy hybrids or very efficient cars, some will buy motorbikes, some will buy mopeds.

And many will stop coming in to work altogether - which will happen all over the world, proportionally.

So a more realistic model would look at critical paths in the economy, rather than GDP as a whole.

I'd guess that's going to reveal some essential dependencies which aren't being considered seriously yet.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Sun May 25th, 2008 at 07:42:43 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Onr quibble (4.00 / 2)

Trains certainly aren't an alternative because they're already more expensive - never mind in the future.

Why would their prices increase? Relatively speaking, they will soon look a lot cheaper.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Mon May 26th, 2008 at 03:27:21 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Onr quibble (4.00 / 2)

Lots of diesel trains, and lots of fossil-carbon electrical power in the mix feeding those trains.

When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon May 26th, 2008 at 03:49:41 AM EST
[ Parent ]

What proportion of the running cost is that?

Anyway, aren't the UK railways due for renationalisation soonish?

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Mon May 26th, 2008 at 03:50:53 AM EST
[ Parent ]

I don't know, but your argument about carsharing suddenly makes trains look unaffordable in the UK.

From earlier discussions (granted, of high-speed rail, not of commuter rail) it appears that as soon as you have two or three people per car they may become more energy efficient than rail. If all the energy is fossil carbon anyway...

Re: renationalisation, you'd need an Old Labour government. Give it 10 years, at least?

When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon May 26th, 2008 at 04:00:14 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Hah. Watch the Tories re-nationalise it when things get a bit sticky coming up to re-election time. You forget that re-nationalisation - with compensation - is a bonanza for their base.

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Mon May 26th, 2008 at 04:04:11 AM EST
[ Parent ]

With Cameron, you never know.

When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon May 26th, 2008 at 04:33:17 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Onr quibble (4.00 / 2)

The railways are already semi-nationalised. They're run centrally, and there's a thin veneer of privatisation. But this isn't about making them more efficient - it's about maintaining the fiction that the private sector is a good thing and the public sector is a bad one.

But the DfT literally has no clue about managing a railway - or anything else. Whitehall is full of neo-liberal drones, and I'd guess renationalisation is about as likely as Boris coming clean about being a secret Socialist Worker's Party mole.

The specification for the replacement for the UK's High Speed Trains - which are thirty years old, but a relative success - still includes a diesel option.

Whitehall doesn't believe in electrification. Electrification has been talked about for more than fifty years now, and it's still patchy and not planned for areas where it hasn't already happened.

But Whitehall does believe that hydrogen will save everyone. Since this is the same Whitehall which is costing its plans on the basis of oil costing $50/bl into the far future, competence doesn't seem likely.

As for car sharing - it's not a panacea when you have both workers and employers spread over a wide area. People often live on estates, and employers often live on trading estates and business parks, but there's no neat mapping between the two.

You'd get some savings that way, but it's not magically going to make the problem go away. It would also cause a lot of extra last-mile congestion as people swarm around dropping each other off.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Mon May 26th, 2008 at 07:28:55 AM EST
[ Parent ]

But the DfT literally has no clue about managing a railway - or anything else.

Why not? Don't they all have "management" degrees?

On the driving thingy... how long do you have to drive to your nearest supermarket?

When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon May 26th, 2008 at 07:34:49 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Onr quibble (4.00 / 3)

all the people I've met who have come straight from college with management degrees are just about competent to make the tea, if you're lucky. Heads full of theories that will quickly result in your business grinding to a halt, and frequently with an I know everything attitude, because they've got a management degree. Usually the shop floor manages to correct this fairly quickly, but the ones that are insistent tend to get promoted to where they have more people carrying them and able to repair their mistakes.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Mon May 26th, 2008 at 07:55:26 AM EST
[ Parent ]

It's about seven miles from here to the nearest supermarkets.

It's doable by bike if I'm feeling energetic and it's not cold and wet outside.

When I was without a car for a couple of weeks last year I did the public transport thing, and it reliably added a couple of hours to a round trip - about the same time for a bike, but not as wet.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Mon May 26th, 2008 at 08:26:00 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Onr quibble (4.00 / 3)

Does anybody know how New Zealand has managed to reverse course and renationalise the railroads? What makes them so different from everywhere else?

by gk (gk (gk quattro due due sette @gmail.com)) on Mon May 26th, 2008 at 07:35:44 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Being ahead of the curve?

they started the foolishness earlier,
they don't have that many railways to "hide the problems in the network",
they privatised passsenger transport more consequently (no high hidden subsidies and de-facto bailouts),
the resulting problems included multiple bankrupcies and service collapses,
investors themselkves realised they'd burn their toes real fast if they meddled there.

From what I read, in effect, they had no other choice faced with public anger.

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Mon May 26th, 2008 at 12:03:46 PM EST
[ Parent ]

I mean the mix feeding the other trains.

When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon May 26th, 2008 at 04:38:07 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Ot they'll car-share effectively and cut their bills by 75%. How many of those four or five seat cars are currently single-occupancy? Or they'll do something else that you haven't thought of. Employers will run buses.

I think that at this point you are selectively filtering evidence in support of a conclusion you've already arrived at.

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Mon May 26th, 2008 at 03:37:06 AM EST
[ Parent ]

But there's also a big push around flexible working - which impedes use of car share or using employer run transport if the times are fixed. The difficulty that many working parents have is getting childen to nursery/school and then getting onto work, especially if that needs to be done by public transport. The EOC did a really interesting report on transport and gender a couple of years ago.

I did a car share thing in one of my old jobs, I was always the one driving and it had to be done otherwise 2 of my colleagues would have been consistently late every day. So it worked in that sense but only because largely we did all need to be at work at the same time.

by In Wales (inwales aaat eurotrib.com) on Mon May 26th, 2008 at 05:10:49 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Colman:

I think that at this point you are selectively filtering evidence in support of a conclusion you've already arrived at.

No, I think you're the one who hasn't made any effort at all to think this through.

The evidence is the stats which show that you'll get something like a 15-40% ride reduction with car pooling because it's impossible to get everyone from where they want to be to where they need to be without adding extra journeys and creating congestion at each end. And there are some journeys it doesn't work at all for. The real figure is likely to be around 30%.

Expecting 75% has no connection with reality, because the probability of someone near you doing a journey close enough to the one you both need to make it worth sharing - assuming perfect communication which guarantees you can find each other - isn't anywhere close to 1.

You can increase the probability by allowing larger 'compatibility areas' at each end, but as you do you're making the total journey longer, and the saving smaller.

Likewise with busses, which I'll leave as an exercise for the reader. (M4 corridor - 150 miles long - more than a million commuters a day - how many busses are going to be needed, and how will they be scheduled and organised?)

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Mon May 26th, 2008 at 08:18:44 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Likewise with busses, which I'll leave as an exercise for the reader. (M4 corridor - 150 miles long - more than a million commuters a day - how many busses are going to be needed, and how will they be scheduled and organised?)

Take your typical M4 traffic jam. Replace 30 cars with one bus.

When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon May 26th, 2008 at 08:34:07 AM EST
[ Parent ]

No, I think you're the one who hasn't made any effort at all to think this through.

Maybe you could write a diary to enlighten the rest of us.

When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon May 26th, 2008 at 08:35:45 AM EST
[ Parent ]

The evidence is the stats which show that you'll get something like a 15-40% ride reduction with car pooling

Could you give us a link?

it's impossible to get everyone from where they want to be to where they need to be without adding extra journeys and creating congestion at each end.

Congestion at each end? How in the hell? As for 'impossible', I'm no expert on car-sharing at all, except remembering occasions when one car transported both my parents to work and me and my two siblings towards three different schools; so I will only say I believe that car-sharing efficiency is a matter of organisation. Planning of the route, and coordination of how people spend their time. In the era of cell phones, that should not be difficult at all. (Thinking of more recent experiences, I don't drive nor have a cell phone, but on the rare occasions I hitch a ride, I was never left stranded...)

Well, as a start, as Migeru said: this is ridiculous, buses have a much larger passenger per route mile density... To continue, I don't think buses should take the bulk of it. (I'm of course thinking trains, and not a single line.)

But as a comparison for this traffic load: the 988 buses of the main Hungarian long-distance bus company Volánbusz carried 97 million passengers for a traffic load of 1708 million passenger-km in 2006. That's average trips of around 11 miles, and on average [weekends, holidays included] 266,000 daily passengers. I don't see a requirement of much more than 10,000 buses for the M4 as you describe from this.

As a high estimate, let's assume that all commuters have to be taken into town over the duration of the shortest bus trip, thus no round trips. With articulated long-distance buses (50+ seats), you'd need 20,000 buses.

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Mon May 26th, 2008 at 01:08:32 PM EST
[ Parent ]

I didn't talk about linearity of effects, I was considering a measure of vulnerability to see whose wheels will come off first, and it won't be ours.

For many of these runs, there's no alternative transport. Trains certainly aren't an alternative because they're already more expensive - never mind in the future. Buses are too intermittent or unavailable.
So - some people will buy hybrids or very efficient cars, some will buy motorbikes, some will buy mopeds.
And many will stop coming in to work altogether - which will happen all over the world, proportionally.

And some local authorities will buy a few more buses. Sheesh.

So a more realistic model would look at critical paths in the economy, rather than GDP as a whole.

No debate from me on that point. I was just relaying version 0.0

When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon May 26th, 2008 at 03:45:03 AM EST
[ Parent ]

That would depend on how essential the industrialisation is.

My point is probably that The West™ is largely post-industrial already, and Francois just pointed out that still largely pre-industrial countries will not suffer much. But there is a large franction of the world's population who is now living in a bout of oil-fuelled industrialization and if that screeches to a halt, they-re the ones who are going to hurt.

When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon May 26th, 2008 at 04:30:22 AM EST
[ Parent ]

The West is certainly not postindustrial, even if the UK is.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid on Mon May 26th, 2008 at 05:56:20 AM EST
[ Parent ]

What fraction of the workforce in Sweden is in the service sector?

When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon May 26th, 2008 at 06:32:21 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Don't forget (4.00 / 3)

that a lot of what is now labelled "services" are functions that used to be internalised in industrial groups and are supporting the "real" productive (ie industrial) activity.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Mon May 26th, 2008 at 08:07:19 AM EST
[ Parent ]

I can't recall the fraction, but is higher(!) than 30 years ago. This in spite of the fact that many integrated service jobs (security, administration etc) which used to be counted as industry jobs are now done by external firms specialising in those things, and are hence counted as service jobs.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid on Tue May 27th, 2008 at 08:10:23 PM EST
[ Parent ]

The West^TM is certainly not post-industrial, except in the fevered minds of neo-libs, left and right alike, and in the few countries that actually drunk the kool-aid aka. the UK. This article this morning is to the point on that matter.

The real difference is in the infrastructure (in the largest meaning, physical, intellectual) and in the modes of productions, which are CAPEX intensive in the West^TM - lots of money upfront but highly efficients on inputs (particularly, labor and energy) - and OPEX intensive in emerging/newly industrializing economies - cheap on upfront investments but very expensive on inputs, including oil, the way the West^TM was 50 years ago.

by Francois in Paris on Mon May 26th, 2008 at 07:12:24 PM EST
[ Parent ]

I really don't know about China.

The country is so heterogeneous in conditions. A good part is not better off or even worse off than it was in the 80s and somewhat comparable to an India average while the other part is more in the situation of South Korea in the 70s, right smack in the eye of the cyclone of oil-fueled hyper-growth. So, which part of the country are we talking about?

But they also have a tradition of central planning which is actually a good thing for adapting infrastructure quickly (if the planners are smart) and a lot of cash reserves to burn through to smooth things out in the transition. So they may be OK at the cost of a huge trade deficit with oil producing countries.

And, of course, whenever talking about China, there's always the incoming great demographic clusterfuck.

by Francois in Paris on Sun May 25th, 2008 at 08:18:07 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Also, as you talk about India and to qualify what I wrote above, observe that at the very bottom of the development scale, oil prices are not an issue. You don't care that much about the cost of diesel if you don't have a water pump or a tractor to burn it in the first place. Same thing if you started to use pumps and tractors only very recently. The old non-oil dependent infrastructure is still in place and reverting is easy.

I've read something very funny a few weeks ago about the booming comeback of camels in India as draught animals for farming. Replaced by tractors over the last decade but suddenly very much back in fashion. Long-scorned camel raisers are doing like bandits*.

My hunch is the vulnerability vs. development curve is more or less a bell, skewed towards high vulnerability in the middle half of the scale, with probably some bumps in the middle, with various stages where adaptation is more or less painful because of more or less invested in existing infrastructures so less or more to adapt.

I think overall Europe will do among the best: already adapted to high fuel costs through taxation, dense, highly industrialized hence capable to invest and rebuild its infrastructure where it needs to. I'm not too worried about the US either, no matter what Kunstler bleats about.

(* a good thing 'cause camels are just great, nearly as great as giraffes).

by Francois in Paris on Sun May 25th, 2008 at 08:26:25 PM EST
[ Parent ]

My hunch is the vulnerability vs. development curve is more or less a bell, skewed towards high vulnerability in the middle half of the scale, with probably some bumps in the middle, with various stages where adaptation is more or less painful because of more or less invested in existing infrastructures so less or more to adapt.

True, but you would expect this middle-development peak to manifest itself already in the "oil consumption as a fraction of GDP" measure - if you're barely industrialised your per capita energy use is very low which compensates for low productivity.

When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon May 26th, 2008 at 03:40:35 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Well, I got ahold of the IEA 2007 Key stats (2005 data) and this is the result... Puts a whole new spin on "Russia's energy weapon".

The other two unlabelled points above the line are microstates: Gibraltar and the Netherlands Antilles

When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon May 26th, 2008 at 10:32:21 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Hmm... that line looks fishy.

I'm not saying that you are necessarily wrong, but I would dearly like to see a somewhat more convincing figure, because all that this one seems to show is that there is a powerlaw relation between GDP and oil imports.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Mon May 26th, 2008 at 10:45:58 AM EST
[ Parent ]

That line is not a fit, it's to guide the eye, and it serves as a cutoff.

When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon May 26th, 2008 at 10:47:57 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Yes, but I am not convinced that the examples you highlight are systematically or structurally different from the others. If I didn't know better (and based on the graph alone, I don't) I'd say that they are simply at the unfortunate end of the noise.

Now, as anyone who has ever played poker will know, being on the unfortunate end of the statistical noise can be rather painful, so in that sense that observation is relevant. But I think that there are more convincing arguments to be made than a bad roll of the demographic dice, if we want to draw geopolitical conclusions.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Mon May 26th, 2008 at 11:27:10 AM EST
[ Parent ]

They all happen to be former Soviet republics without their own energy resources.

When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon May 26th, 2008 at 11:46:32 AM EST
[ Parent ]

You can also compare the net oil imports to a country's currency reserves. It turns out that US and some European countries don't have a very thick cushion to protect themselves form rising oil prices, but the economic impact (a function of GDP) is not too dire. However, Belarus and Tajikistan are vulnerable both because they import a large amount of oil relative to their GDP but also relative to their reserves, so they can't shield the blow and it's going to hurt. I'll leave the geopolitical implications to you...

When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon May 26th, 2008 at 12:02:35 PM EST
[ Parent ]