But that'll be the spin.

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

Besides, the whole point of making China whole on a loss to their current accounts would be to keep the current system running, except with less production of junk that's shipped to The West. If China can afford to lend us money to cover our current accounts deficit with them by exporting, then they can also afford to lend us money to cover our current accounts deficit with them if we pay them for not exporting.

All these cash flows are just bookkeeping - what matters is the flows of resources and products. If we use fewer Chinese-made toasters and cars, then there is a slack in the resource flow that can be put to more productive use. The bookkeeping can always be juggled around to make it work, if there is a serious political will to do so.

And the Chinese are not stupid - they know that global warming will smash their political system - their population is concentrated on the coast, and migrating upwards three quarters of a billion people in-land is not going to be a trivial exercise.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

Having said that, if the 6 billion people on this planet are going to survive this change, then we need to start thinking about it now. When the IEA starts to sound alarms, and when oil company execs  talk about it in public, then the message might just start getting through.

Oil reserves - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There are doubts about the reliability of official OPEC reserves estimates, which are not provided with any form of audit or verification that meet external reporting standards.^[19]

Since a system of country production quotas was introduced in the 1980s, partly based on reserves levels, there have been dramatic increases in reported reserves among Opec producers. In 1983, Kuwait increased its proven reserves from 67 Gbbl (10.7×10^⁹ m³) to 92 Gbbl (14.6×10^⁹ m³). In 1985-86, the UAE almost tripled its reserves from 33 Gbbl (5.2×10^⁹ m³) to 97 Gbbl (15.4×10^⁹ m³). Saudi Arabia raised its reported reserve number in 1988 by 50%. In 2001-02, Iran raised its proven reserves by some 30% to 130 Gbbl (21×10^⁹ m³), which advanced it to second place in reserves and ahead of Iraq. Iran denied accusations of a political motive behind the readjustment, attributing the increase instead to a combination of new discoveries and improved recovery. No details were offered of how any of the upgrades were arrived at.^[19][20]

The following table illustrates these rises.

And OPEC has more then half of the world's estimated reserves. So yeah, any number is a stab in the dark.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

The only two countries in the Middle East with any serious untapped resources, as far as I know, are Iran and Iraq.  Once again, even setting aside the issue of climate change and whether peak oil might be desirable in its ability to make us finally shape up rather than frightening, our alliances are completely nonsensical in that region.

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

For now there is gas.  But no one knows when the end will be.  North America will simply run out--well before Asia.  

The Fates are kind.