Hi Bob!
Low oil price. The following trends emerging:
- Significant economic damage in oil-producing countries beyond OPEC and Russia, including Argentina, Brazil, Guyana, Ivory Coast, Malaysia, Indonesia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan
- Major economic and possibly social disruption in nations with fragile democracies, like Iraq, Algeria, Nigeria, Gabon. Iraq is a particular worry, given its partial emergence from war and insurgency.
- Bankruptcies, unemployment, rural decay, elevated drug use, "deaths of despair" likely in U.S. states where the oil boom is active, such as Texas, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, North Dakota, Alaska, Ohio, among others.
- Ultra-cheap carbon fuels might turn public interest and vehicle manufacturer incentives away from higher fuel economy and efficiency, including nontransport uses.
- Cheap fuel could become a possible hurdle to all-electric transport, which is now at a critical period, as major car and truck manufacturers bring out full lines of electric vehicles through 2025.
- Major decline in the value of recyclable plastics as manufacturing new plastic becomes cheaper than the cost of recycling.
- Even more importance on government policy to advance action on lowering emissions, therefore on politics, which has not yet proven reliable in this sphere.
- Low-price oil could become especially attractive to less developed nations (transport, power generation, heating) now undergoing energy modernization and lacking in income.
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