At Davos, the World Economic Forum release its 2008 Environmental Performance index (EPI) where it ranks 149 countries based on 25 indicators tracked across 6 categories including air pollution, water resources, biodiversity and habitat, environmental health, productive natural resources and climate change.

Sweden, Norway, Finland and Costa Rica top the list, while the US comes in 39th, just behind Georgia and Argentina and way behind the UK (14th) and Japan (21st), but the real news was who represented pretty much the entire bottom half of the list.  It was filled with all of the countries in Africa and the Middle East that always seem to be at war or where some sort of unrest is always happening.

No Government, No Energy, No Water - WAR!
It should come to most of you that it is now surprise that where there is no sustainable energy infrastructure or sustainable water infrastructure there will be problems.  If you look at the EPI published map below, (yellow, orange and red means a bad score) there seems to be an incredibly high correlation between those countries that were ranked lowest by the World Economic Forum and those countries who are currently experiencing unrest at the moment.  Most of these countries have little or no energy infrastructure and what they have is either completely based on fossil fuels or it is nuclear.

 What Happens When Peak Oil Hits?
This could be one of the most important questions this decade.  Peak Oil is when the amount of oil that we as humans are capable of producing each year is less than the amount we humans need each year.  Imagine a tasty cake given to a classroom of 12 year olds and there's not enough to go around.  Who get's the cake.  The bullies do.  The theory is that when peak oil hits, many of the weaker countries will simply get squeezed out, they won't get the energy they need and their energy infrasructures along with their countries will collapse.  However, the big countries will never let this happen, because it would create a world-wide crisis - plus for all of the super-powers out there, this eventuality represents an opportunity for a power grab.

So What's a 3rd World Country to Do?
Well, it seems that the options are somewhat limited, but all share a commonality.  They all result in an important power grab by all of the 1st world countries.  Take a look and you will see what I mean:

1. A country could build a new infrastructure based on nuclear (pros: at least its not oil, cons: the cost is astronomical and they would have get the money from other countries to which they would be come beholden)
2. A country could build a new infrastructure based on wind, solar or other green technologies (same, pros, same cons)
3. A country could keep its existing infrastructure and create partnerships with larger countries (no pros, with the same cons)

The outcome of these decisions is incredibly important.  Choosing any one of these options makes these countries more dependant on some outside country and puts them under the thumb of whoever they choose as their "ally." We've all seen in the past what happens when a large portion of the world is up for grabs, one two or three super powers either fight it out behind the scenes or in a more active way (like war.)  Look for a significant increase in the coverage of "infrastructure" deals between these types of countries and "private equity" companies that are investment arms of competing nations.   

 

Posted by Steve Newcomb on January 30, 2008 05:36 PM | Permalink