An Evening with Jeff Rubin
Tuesday Jun 23 2015 7:00 pm, Saskatoon, Travel Alcove
Speaking and Signing The Carbon Bubble: What Happens to Us When It Bursts (Random House of Canada), in conversation with , environment columnist with the Saskatoon StarPhoenix and author of Eleven.
For the first time at book length, bestselling author and economist Jeff Rubin addresses Canada’s national economic future--and the financial security of all Canadians.
Since 2006 and the election of the first Harper government, the vision of Canada's future as an energy superpower has driven the political agenda, as well as the fast-paced development of Alberta's oil sands and the push for more pipelines across the country. Anyone who objects is labeled a dreamer, or worse--an environmentalist: someone who puts the health of the planet ahead of the economic survival of their neighbours. In The Carbon Bubble, Jeff Rubin compellingly shows how changes in energy markets in the US--where domestic production is booming while demand for oil is shrinking--are quickly turning Harper's dream into an economic nightmare. The same trade and investment ties to oil that pushed the Canadian dollar to record highs are now pulling it down, and the Toronto Stock Exchange, one of the most carbon-intensive stock indexes in the world, will be increasingly exposed to the rest of the world's efforts to reduce carbon emissions.
Rubin argues that there is a lifeline to a better future. The very climate change that will leave much of the country's carbon unburnable could at the same time make some of Canada's other resource assets more valuable: our water and our land. In tomorrow's economy, he argues, Canada won't be an energy superpower, but it has the makings of one of the world's great breadbaskets. And in the global climate that the world's carbon emissions are inexorably creating, food will soon be a lot more valuable than oil.
was the Chief Economist and Chief Strategist at CIBC World Markets where he worked for over 20 years. He was one of the first economists to accurately predict soaring oil prices back in 2000 and is now one of the world’s most sought-after energy experts. He is the author of national bestsellers The End of Growth and Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller. He lives in Toronto.
has published extensively on the environment, agriculture, and other topics, including three previous books. He is a recipient of the Canadian Environment Award and a 2015 Saskatchewan Book Award.
See:
Eleven
-
Trade paperback
$27.99
Reader Reward Price: $25.19
Eleven billion people will crowd this marvelous planet by century's end. If the global economy were to grow five-fold during this period as predicted, humanity's ecological footprint would exceed Earth's biocapacity by 400%. We need to chart a new course to the future. The sweeping changes that make a 'full world' work--involving dual processes of destruction and reconstruction--will transform global culture, agriculture, and ultimately the human race. ELEVEN is a call to consciousness. Only an 'ethical revolution' will allow us to carry forward an ever-advancing civilization. Paul Hanley proposes a transformational model that will help individuals, institutions, and communities make an eleven-billion world work for everyone--and the planet.
The End of Growth
- Jeff Rubin 
Trade paperback
$22.00
Reader Reward Price: $19.80
In an urgent follow-up to his bestselling Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller, Jeff Rubin argues that the end of cheap oil means the end of growth. What will it be like to live in a world where growth is over? Now updated with a new afterword.
Economist and resource analyst Jeff Rubin is certain that the world's governments are getting it wrong. Instead of moving us toward economic recovery, measures being taken around the globe right now are digging us into a deeper hole. Both politicians and economists are missing the fact that the real engine of economic growth has always been cheap, abundant fuel and resources. But that era is over. The end of cheap oil, Rubin argues, signals the end of growth--and the end of easy answers to renewing prosperity.
Rubin's own equation is clear: with China and India sucking up the lion's share of the world's ever more limited resources, the rest of us will have to make do with less. But is this all bad? Can less actually be more? It doesn't matter whether it's bad or good, it's the new reality: our world is not only about to get smaller, our day-to-day lives are about to be a whole lot different.
Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller
- Jeff Rubin
Trade paperback
$23.00
Reader Reward Price: $20.70
What do subprime mortgages, Atlantic salmon dinners, SUVs and globalization have in common?
They all depend on cheap oil. And in a world of dwindling oil supplies and steadily mounting demand around the world, there is no such thing as cheap oil. Oil might be less expensive in the middle of a recession, but it will never be cheap again.
Take away cheap oil, and the global economy is getting the shock of its life.
From the ageing oilfields of Saudi Arabia and the United States to the Canadian tar sands, from the shopping malls of Dubai to the shuttered auto plants of North America and Europe, from the made-in-China products on the shelves of the Wal-Mart down the road to the collapse of Wall Street giants, everything is connected to the price of oil
Interest rates, carbon trading, inflation, farmers' markets and the wave of trade protectionism washing up all over the world in the wake of various economic stimulus and bailout packages - they all hinge on the new realities of a world where demand for oil eventually outstrips supply.
According to maverick economist Jeff Rubin, there will be no energy bailout. The global economy has suffered oil crises in the past, but this time around the rules have changed. And that means the future is not going to be a continuation of the past. For generations we have built wealth by burning more and more oil. Our cars, our homes, our whole world has been getting bigger in the cheap-oil era. Now it is about to get smaller.
There will be winners as well as losers as the age of globalization comes to an end. The auto industry will never recover from this oil-induced recession, but other manufacturers will be opening up mothballed factories. Distance will soon cost money, and so will burning carbon - both will bring long-lost jobs back home. We may not see the kind of economic growth that globalization has brought, but local economies will be revitalized, as will our cities and neighborhoods.
Whether we like it or not, our world is about to get a whole lot smaller.
