Conflict, migration and economic upheaval will accompany the global move away from oil, unless governments act urgently to help the worst afflicted countries to cope, research has found.
Nigeria, Iran, Angola and Algeria are among the countries that will be severely affected, as they rely strongly on oil revenues for their government and provision of public services, but have little diversification and too little capital to cushion the blow.
Because we stop using oil therefore we’ve got to pay those we don’t buy it from. At the same time as everyone has to pay for having used oil in the past. Except, presumably, these suppliers of all that oil.
Consistency’s a lovely thing, no?
We should pay reparations for having discovered oil in these places.
“Conflict, migration and economic upheaval”
Conflict over what? If the oil becomes worthless, why is anyone going to fight over the land? There’s going to be less war in oil areas.
What will happen is the other two. If there’s no money being in Iran, people will leave. Like there are abandoned whaling towns, gold rush towns. If we didn’t prop it up, Merthyr would be a lot less populated.
People will leave, or people will find something else to do. And even though it’s 100m people in Iran, we’ll barely notice it because it’s going to take decades to happen.
Agreed with all you said, up until your last sentence.
Conflict over what?
Whatever remains. Barbarous folk in disintegrating economies tend to resort to violence to extract value. Warlords and crime syndicates are likely to emerge.
For a while, but war over land happens where land is most valuable. There’s not been a whole lot of war over Switzerland and Iceland for a reason.
Whatever the value of the land, barbarians in disintegrating societies will extract value where they can – eg by slavery, piracy, protection rackets, theft. As for Switzerland, the Holy Roman Empire fought hard to keep Switzerland….
If that was the whole story, Denmark and Iceland would be nothing but that. The land is really shit.
They didn’t of course. They found other ways to make money that were less about the land.
And yes, Holy Roman Empire. 1648. Who fought to get Swiss land after that? It’s like saying that the Normans and the Romans wanted England. Both were clearly less economically valuable, less justifiable in terms of spending on armies than say, Veneto which was being fought over until 1848. As agriculture or transport or whatever improved, it didn’t add up fighting over them so much.
Egypt and Turkey are more industrial than Saudi or Iran because they don’t have the mineral wealth of Iran or Saudi. So Egyptians make money from tourism, a little manufacturing. Turkey makes more cars than the UK.
Denmark has some of the best farmland in the world. Around 60% of its total land area is cultivated, which is right up there with the highest shares of any country. It’s a major food exporter. Norway not so much.
The Romans and Normans invaded England in climate warm periods. And yet I’ve never seen anyone point it out. Similarly the Germans and Dutch invaded in cold periods. Ditto.
And yet they’re both thriving. I wonder what the difference is between, say Nigeria and Iceland?
Nigeria has 6 times the GDP of Iceland.
And 50x the people?
That’s true. Somewhat pedantic about wealth of Nigeria vs wealth of Iceland.
But countries with lots of natural resources often suffer. Nigeria is improving and growing outside of oil, though.
There’s an item on phys.org about a National Park in Togo. It used to be run by a Swiss company, and had plenty of tourists and a hotel. Then the government took it over. The hotel is now ruined, no tourists and a lot of poaching and other eco damage.
An African parable…
Yet the biggest and nastiest conflict there remains, and has little to do with land or resources.
500x.
‘The poor will always be with us’ for 2o26 is now ‘The Third World will alwats be with us’
tl;dr: the third-world will return to its natural state of being. Of course, this wouldn’t be a problem if the British Establishment had shown an ability to: 1) secure our borders, and 2) say no to black and brown grifters…
Now that the farhardrighthatethugs have found a way to highlight and interfere with the boat scam (after the Dover protest/closure, two ports said “no thanks” to the RNLI bus service and they had to go all the way across to Portsmouth), what does Nigel do? He calls for the banning of balaclava wearing. Begone, clueless twat.
Nigel seems to think that this kind of direct action will damage Reform. I think he’s wrong, and I can see why they want to hide their faces in the current protest climate. I don’t think I would want my mugshot in a police intelligence database given the obvious attitude of some forces’ leaders.
These people would be his natural supporters but Are Nige never seems to miss a chance to shoot himself in the foot.
Whilst I disagree with him about the face masks in this instance, I think his opposition to the masks reveals his oft-overlooked principled side.
He’s not a moderate purely as a cynical way to garner votes, he’s a moderate because he understands how close we are to the precipice.
In that sense he’s a better man than he’s usually given credit for.
To be fair to Nigel, he’s got form on this. He was calling for bans on face coverings as early as 2010. Then dropped it, didn’t oppose it when Nuttall was leading UKIP, then brought it back again last year. And now opposes it.
Somewhere in the intervening years he turned from politically active (and successful) to a politician. If he’d ever stuck to a principle he’d be a lot more successful.
Good work by ‘Tommo’ in Portsmouth – who will no doubt soon be referred to as ‘Real name Daniel Thomas’ by breathless reporter who are eager to bring us the ‘latest scoop’
There is no global move away from oil and there isn’t gonna be until a better way of creating transportable energy comes along. And a way of making plastic from unicorn farts.
I have been working on this and think that I have arrived at a breakthrough in renewable energy for ships.
We get big poles, stick them on the boats and suspend huge bits of cloth from them and let the wind…
Nah, it’ll never work…
Welcome to the Horse Latitudes and the Doldrums again.
That’s when you stick the long poles out of the portholes and wiggle them about by hand.
But . . . but . . . Guardian says ‘urgently.’ !!!
So, buy oil/sink dinghies then?
The basic premise of the article is wrong. There is no indication that oil use is decreasing.
It’s not just the “science” that makes me a “climate change denier”, it’s the convenience of having a very big stick available to beat your opponents with that is difficult and time consuming to argue against. It’s a brief phrase, easily mastered and can be used by anyone against anyone else, unlike the old argument ender “racist” which can only be used against white folk…
“the global move away from oil”
30 seconds research =
“Total global consumption increased from roughly 96 million barrels per day (mb/d) in 2016 to over 102–105 mb/d in 2026”
Tbf the article is forward-looking so it would also be appropriate to look at projections of global oil consumption in, say, 2040.
But even there, Goldman Sachs expects consumption to rise to 113 mb/d due to the increased demand in developing countries. https://www.spglobal.com/energy/en/news-research/latest-news/crude-oil/111425-goldman-sees-oil-demand-rising-through-2040-driven-by-petchem-jet-fuel-growth
Opec estimate 2040 even higher at 122 mb/d with 2050 barely any higher at 124 mb/d, so they do expect a slowdown but not soon. https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news-and-insights/latest-market-news/2841268-opec-revises-2050-oil-demand-forecast-higher
Vitol expect a peak of 112 mb/d in the mid 2030s followed by a decline, but 2040 still 5 mb/d higher than today. https://vitoloutlook.com/outlook-to-2040/
Curiously BP estimate 2030 consumption will be the peak at 103 mb/d, down to 83 mb/d by 2050. So they’re expecting a relatively fast energy transition – yet even these figures are raised from their earlier estimates when they thought 2025 would be the peak and 77 mb/d for 2050. Maybe their outlook explains why BP tried pivoting away from oil and gas, but this is one group with skin in the game who predict a decline is coming soon. Odd they’re so at odds with the rest of the industry though. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/sep/25/bp-oil-and-gas-clean-energy-ukraine-middle-east-tariffs
Maybe their pivot away from oil and gas explains their outlook.
‘The Danes find it a pain in the arse to catch fish and would much rather just come here and avail themselves of our corn and mutton. We must act urgently to help them to cope, research has found.’
– Alfred the Great, 878 AD (attrib)
“They are willing to trade, they have developed a product derived from pork. It is called bayconne. I fear what our thousands of Musulmann Moorish settlers will make of this…”
Classic Guardian appeal to pity: using unsympathetic characters.
There is a Leftard parallel with their appeals to pity for the “most vulnerable.”
Just who are these “most vulnerabe?” Losers, addicts, loones. We are to give up all for them.
Decadence. You don’t have that kind of money anymore.
…governments act urgently to help…
Don’t those places have enough problems already?
If I remember correctly from the time I spent in Algeria, the “unpleasantness” was ragheads attacking the oil infrastructure. Quite honestly, there isn’t much else in the country worth fighting over. Take that away & it’s basically agriculture. So I can’t really see it being a war hotspot.
Even in 1943, it was just somewhere for the Yanks to drive through to meet the British in Tunisia.
And they even messed that up at Kasserine.
Problem with you lot. You don’t learn from other’s mistakes.