Oil 1 Peak Oil 21

Democracy Module

Frederic Leder, Analyst at Esso Research and Engineering & Judith Shapiro, President of Strategic Enterprises, August, ‘8

(Energy Policy, Volume 36, Issue 8, p. 2840-2842, Science Direct) [Bozman]
A sustained period of ever-increasing oil prices, the most likely outcome of peaking oil, will result in an enormous transfer of wealth to oil-producing countries. Each year the Unites States buys 14 mb/d of foreign oil, which, at present prices of approximately $100 per barrel, costs $500 billion per year. The oil producers in the Middle East, for example, supply 25 mb/d to the industrialized world, bringing in an estimated $1 trillion per year in revenues. This bounty frees them from the need to institute economic and political reforms, which otherwise would be prerequisites for economic growth. In fact, enormous oil revenues are likely to strengthen the status quo, which tends to be authoritarian. Larry Diamond (2008) points out that none of the 23 countries whose economies are dominated by oil are democracies. Moreover, “All of the oil-rich countries of the world remained under or returned to authoritarian rule after1974.” Russia is a good example. Its retreat from democracy has only gained momentum as oil revenues have soared. Venezuela and Nigeria are following a similar path. Finally, as the gap between the demand and supply of oil grows, oil-importing countries will need to form strategic alliances with oil-producing countries in order to secure preferential access not only to oil but also to the capital needed to mitigate the negative effects of expensive oil. As the power and influence of oil-producing countries grow, Western countries will find good reason to do business with authoritarian regimes, regardless of their human rights records or support for terrorism. Oil-consuming counties such as China, which has a history of authoritarian rule, will point to the decoupling of economic development from freedom as reason to delay or abandon free market reforms. Liberal democracy, which seemed the wave of the future after the fall of the Soviet Union, will become a blip in the past.
B. Extinction.

Larry Diamond, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, December, PROMOTING DEMOCRACY IN THE 1990S, 1995, p. http://www.carnegie.org//sub/pubs/deadly/diam_rpt.html //

Disease Module

A. Peak oil will collapse the worlds public health systems, risking global pandemics.

Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow at the Post Carbon Institute, ‘5

(The Party's Over : Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies, p. 201-203) [Bozman]
International, national, and local systems of public health, which protect the human population against communicable diseases and parasites, are also vulnerable to declines in the availability of cheap energy. Water and sewage treatment, medical research, and the production and distribution of antibiotics and vaccines all require power. In the next few decades, unless the percentage of total available money and energy devoted to public health increases, more- as well as less-industrialized societies will face at worst severe epidemics and at best increased disease-related death rates. Today, infectious diseases already cause approximately 37 percent of all deaths worldwide. Waterborne infections account for 80 percent of all infectious diseases globally, and 90 percent of all infectious diseases occur in the less-consuming countries. Each year, a lack of sanitary conditions contributes to approximately 2 billion human infections causing diarrhea, from which 4 million infants and children die. Even in industrialized nations, waterborne diseases pose a significant health hazard: in the US they account for 940,000 infections and approximately 900 deaths each year. 8 Approximately 1.2 billion people in less-consuming nations lack clean, safe water. Of India?s 3,119 towns and cities, just 209 have partial treatment facilities and only 8 have full wastewater treatment plants; 114 cities dump untreated sewage and partially cremated bodies directly into the sacred Ganges River. Many diseases that can easily and cheaply be treated or prevented still pose problems in many areas of the world. New strains of E. coli are spreading in parts of Africa and Asia where humans are crowded and where water and food contamination is rampant. At least 300 million acute cases of malaria occur globally each year, resulting in more than a million deaths, most of them in SubSaharan Africa. Moreover, tuberculosis is on the rise in many nations due to crowding and drug resistance. Currently, an estimated 1.7 billion people worldwide are infected with TB, with approximately 95 percent of deaths occurring in less-consuming countries. In 1990, the annual number of new TB infections was 7.5 million; by 2000, the number had reached 10 million. 9 Human plague ? which is assumed to have been the disease that decimated European societies throughout the medieval period ? continues to break out periodically. The plague parasite, Yersinia pestis, is transmitted by human contact with rodents. In the 1980s, the average of the annually reported cases in the world was 1,350; in the 1990s, the average annual number rose to 2,500. Nearly 60 percent of the reported cases occurred in Africa. Diphtheria had been under control for many years; but, following the breakup of the former Soviet Union, the disease made a startling comeback. In 1975, about 100 cases were recorded in Russia; but in 1995 alone, 51,000 new cases were reported. The World Health Organization attributes this recent explosion in diphtheria in Russia to a decline in the effectiveness of that nation?s public health program. In the decades ahead, global warming will likely contribute to the spread of infectious tropical diseases such as malaria, putting a further strain on already over-taxed public health systems. Meanwhile, as many long-familiar diseases that were formerly in decline are making a comeback, entirely new diseases continue to arise, including hantavirus, Lyme disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, Legionnaire?s disease, West Nile virus, ebola haemorrhagic fever, Venezuelan haemorrhagic fever, Brazilian haemorrhagic fever, and AIDS. The last of these poses perhaps the greatest public-health challenge in the world today. In eastern and southern Africa, HIV infection is cutting down an alarming percentage of Africa?s most energetic and productive adults aged 15 to 49. In 2001, more people on the continent succumbed to HIV than to any other cause of death, including malaria. While only 10 percent of the world?s population lives in sub-Saharan Africa, the region is home to two-thirds of the world?s HIV-positive people and has suffered more than 80 percent of all AIDS deaths. In Zaire and Zimbabwe, more than a quarter of the adults carry the virus. In a few districts, rates of infection approach 60 percent. If infection rates continue to grow unchecked and if mortality figures follow infection rates, AIDS will soon dwarf every catastrophe in Africa?s recorded past. 10 AIDS cases are now being reported in rapidly increasing numbers in Russia and China as well. In short, global public health systems are already taxed beyond their limits. 11 But what will be the impact of a reduced energy availability on those under-funded and over-extended systems? It could be argued that the impact of oil depletion on the medical and health infrastructure need not be severe since many public-health problems (such as those stemming from lack of clean water) can theoretically be solved relatively cheaply. Moreover, even if the end of oil and natural gas were to mean turning back the clock of technological development to pre-industrial levels, that would not necessarily imply the loss of all intervening advances in medical science. Anesthesia, antiseptics, surgery, and transfusions save tens of thousands of lives annually and need not disappear with reduced energy availability. Nevertheless, modern medicine taken as a whole is a highly energy-intensive enterprise. A hospital in a typical industrial city uses more energy per square foot of space than nearly any other kind of building. As the interval of cheap energy wanes, the wealthy few will likely continue to have access to modern forms of care for their various health problems, but even the richest countries will find it increasingly difficult to support the development or distribution of new vaccines or of new antibiotics to combat the rapidly emerging strains of resistant diseases. While the severity of the public-health problems the next generation will face is impossible to estimate, worst-case scenarios are truly horrific.

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