About the speaker:

Jeff Rubin, Former head of CIBC World Markets, Author of “Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller”

About the lecture:

What do subprime mortgages, Atlantic salmon dinners, SUVs and globalization all have in common?  They depend on cheap oil.

According to Jeff Rubin, we are poised on the brink of massive change. Dependent as it is on cheap oil, our global civilization is about to get the shock of its life. Systems of trade, of finance, of shipping and manufacturing, of labor and international relations are all about to be rearranged. Get ready for a new world—one in which domestic manufacturing will be reinvigorated and the products and services we still enjoy will start coming from places much closer to home.

There will be winners as well as losers when the age of globalization comes to an end. 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 neighbourhoods. Whether we like it or not, our world is about to get a whole lot smaller.