- Naimi and other Saudi leaders have worried for years that climate change and high crude prices will boost energy efficiency, encourage renewables, and accelerate a switch to alternative fuels such as natural gas, especially in the emerging markets that they count on for growth. They see how demand for the commodity that’s created the kingdom’s enormous wealth—and is still abundant beneath the desert sands—may be nearing its peak.
Well I can certainly understand why the Saudi's or any OPEC country would want to keep oil alive. Especially with things like brain drain causing issues with the development of anything not oil related, and the knowledge that, sans oil, their prospects are incredibly dim.
The prospects post-oil are bad for the country, and worse for the leadership. I doubt that one university is going to do the trick. In the case of Saudi Arabia, they likely need to start with a complete overhaul of the education system, raising a new generation that is cultural and technically able to adapt to a post-oil scenario. Of course, the current Monarchical rule probably won't survive in any case.
Bad for the entire region -- insert statistics I don't have time to find for GDP of Middle East related and unrelated to oil. Oil GDP is massive, GDP of the rest is comparable to like a small Eastern European country. EDIT: and by bad I mean they are utterly and completely screwed.
It's fascinating to think that such a large aspect of the global economy can be at the direction of one man. I am currently reading Lords of Finance by Liaquat Ahamed, in which Ahamed argues that the stock market bubble prior to the Great Depression was largely promoted by the efforts of Benjamin Strong, who maintained low US interest rates (~4%!) so as to push US gold reserves into Great Britain in an effort to save the gold standard. I can't help but think that our current global economic situation is in a state of flux.
I think it's primarily depressing. The only silver lining is the realization that renewables are an inevitability. Naomi Klein makes a very strong argument in her book that those who stand to gain from delaying that inevitability are exactly those who are so often in power: the rich.It's fascinating to think that such a large aspect of the global economy can be at the direction of one man.