Dr. Colin Campbell, retired oil geologist and founder of ASPO, was recently interviewed by Walter-Ryan Purcell in West Cork.
Colin outlines his peak oil thesis which sees energy constraints as inextricably linked to the economic collapse: the bankers and bond-holders borrowed vast amounts from the future, predicated on continuing growth. This growth has stalled because, Colin believes, we passed a peak in world production (of “conventional” oil) in about 2006, and are now “peering over the abyss” at a future of declining energy supplies.
Hence the current financial collapse, which Colin sees as precipitating over the next few decades, a societal collapse which will inevitably lead to population collapse as a world with less liquid fuels must contract, and the heavily oil-dependent agricultural sector struggles to feed the world’s still growing population.
He points out that the trade in oil futures exceeds actual oil production 10-30-fold, and that financial traders do not like stability- it is in their interests to have fluctuating markets and boom-and-bust cycles.
The densely populated UK is in a “desperate situation”, and should look to controlling immigration; while Ireland, with good farmland and far less people is relatively better off and could look forward again to becoming the food basket for the UK. He suggests however that Ireland should strengthen its navy in order to fend off burgeoning numbers of refugees desperate to reach our green and fertile land.
China’s economic boom has arrived “at 5 minutes to midnight” and considering its depleting aquifers, horrendous pollution and huge population, the future for this giant country looks extraordinarily bleak, with the return of famine on a massive scale to look forward to;
whilst in dire need of radical reform, including the downsizing of its “completely unnecessary” military, with its vast natural resources and innovative and resilient populace, Colin sees the USA as being relatively well placed to adapt over time. (Interestingly, this viewpoint is in stark contrast to fellow-doomer Dmitri Orlov for example, who sees the plight of the US as being worse even than that faced by Russia in the 1990s.)
Colin feels a move to more regionalism, with regional currencies based on real measurements of value like work, will be necessary, pointing to the potential devolution of Scotland from the UK.
All is not bad news however. The survivors- those who can achieve local self-sufficiency and make a life for themselves outside of the global financial system, may still look to a bright future and a simpler existence that may even be preferable in some ways.
Thanks, Colin! And Happy Christmas 🙂
Skepteco 
I’m half in agreement. But I would say that the unsustainable fractional reserve banking system can only make sense if resources are both a ‘free good’ and ‘inexhaustable’. As physics and common sense tell us that resources are finite the banking system was bound to fail. So, yes, peak oil signals a decline in economic systems but, more importantly, economic systems can not grow forever in a finite world.