The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

by Peter Zeihan

Third, now that most of humanity has experienced things like electricity, it bears consideration that people will not consciously choose to go back to a preindustrial lifestyle, even if globalization collapses. Something the modern environmental movement often misses is that oil and natural gas are not only the world’s low-carbon fossil fuels, they are also the fuels that are internationally traded. In a post-globalized world, the primary fuel most countries can source locally is coal. And not just any coal, but low-caloric, low-temperature burning, high-contaminant soft or brown coal that generates far more carbon emissions than burning . . . almost anything else. We are completely capable as a species of devolving into a fractured, dark, poor, hungry world while still increasing greenhouse gas emissions.