Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller by Jeff Rubin

I think everyone who has to buy gas for a car should read this book. We can all remember the $4.00 per gallon gas prices of two years ago and we feel like it is such a relief to not have to pay those rates in this bad economy. However, according to this author, we are living in a false paradise.

According to Rubin, gas pump prices went up so dramatically because the total amount of oil available for refining is decreasing. The amount of available oil in the world is decreasing. That means that no matter how we cut back, or decrease demand (which is the reason why gas prices have been lower the last two years), the amount of oil left in the world is finite and dwindling. When we use it, there won't be any more. Rubin predicts that when demand for oil increases again, which it will since prices are lower, the price will start to creep back up. We are already seeing it as gas pump prices are nearing $3.00 per gallon.

But forget about the more immediate implications of oil scarcity in gas prices. Look at what a dwindling world oil supply means for the way we live our lives. The delicious apples you bought at the grocery store last week are affordable, even though they were grown hundreds or even thousands of miles away from here, because the price of oil was cheap enough to transport them here. What if oil was three or four hundred dollars a barrel? How could the apple grower afford to ship their produce to Florida from Washington state? They couldn't. We would have to go without apples for part of the year. We would have to rely on locally grown produce or locally manufactured products for our consumption. Think about the implications of that for the way we currently live our lives.

Rubin makes the optimistic point that a shortage of oil could be good for the United States' economy. Conceivably, we could have more jobs in this country because no one can afford to ship products from overseas. But the adjustment to that sort of economy is going to be a very painful one.


Debbi Dinkins