Falling oil demand would strip Middle East rulers of their coercive funding

Evidence

In time, the advance of science and technology, which first made oil necessary, will make it obsolete, and replace it with cleaner, cheaper, and more accessible sources of energy. When that happens, oil wealth will no longer be available to sustain tyranny at home and finance terror abroad, and the outside world will no doubt view the struggles and upheavals of the Middle East with the same calm detachment—or as some might put it, callous indifference—as it now views the civil wars in Somalia and Sierra Leone. Until then, the consumer countries— Europe and the Far East much more than the U.S.—will be anxiously dependent on whoever rules the oil wells and the oil routes, and will have to devise and apply their policies accordingly. It will be neither a safe nor an easy task. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1676

Categorization

• QUESTION: This is now partially testable with renewables data — is the energy transition actually decoupling oil wealth from regional tyranny, or is the mechanism more stickier than Lewis predicted?