It was a significant year in terms of the global economy: social unrest around the world over a spike in the cost of staple foods, and the runaway price of oil that eventually triggered the worst global economic crash since the Great Depression. While there were undoubtedly other factors behind the downturn, 2008 stands as a benchmark in terms of oil and economics – a shorthand for high oil prices and economic turmoil. We don’t want another 2008, especially with the faltering recovery that has yet to turn substantive cash injections into jobs.

Now, it may be just coincidence, but it looks suspiciously like the issues that shaped the first half of 2008 are back: oil demand is surging, its price is rising, and people in the poorer nations are consequently finding the cost of staple foods out of reach. There is a direct link between the cost of oil and food – which I’ll return to in a subsequent post – and so the first to suffer from a rise in oil prices are people in developing countries living on a couple of dollars a day who cannot absorb rising costs.

If the cost of oil goes on rising – and all indicators suggest it will – then we will see a growing humanitarian disaster around the globe. Neither are our industrial economies immune: based on the assumption that $150-per-barrel oil breaks the machine, how much space do we have before we see oil prices triggering another global recession?