Interesting perspective. I would have thought that given the amount of crises that Gail describes, it is likely that economic downfall (quite rapid) would lead to a complete loss of oil production.
Let's take a closer look at her 'stuff'.
First she talks about individual countries going through a rough time. Yes, the Soviet Union did break apart but the world did not collapse. The world also did not collapse when Venezuela couldn't sell its oil and went very sour.
A few years back China separated fossil fuel use and economic growth. China is installing a lot of low carbon generation and moving to a service economy which does not require as much energy. That has not and will not cause the world to collapse. China continues to grow its economy while using less and less fossil fuel.
"Wind and solar are assumed to replace only the fuel that creates high quality electricity. The amount of backup generating capacity required is virtually unchanged."
So what? We install a lot of wind and solar. Burn less fossil fuel. Worst case, a country that doesn't have FF to turn off can install hydro, storage, CCNG, or biofuel fill-in. Any new additions to a grid have to be backed up if there isn't already more backup capacity than the grid needs. At this point the US is burning about 6% less coal and natural gas than it did in 2010 in order to generate the same amount of electricity.
"More long distance transmission is needed."
Well, yes. Part of creating the least cost grid is to harvest RE over a larger area. Or install locally along with adequate storage. When transmission is the least expensive option we'll install transmission.
"Shrinking coal consumption is bringing down world energy consumption"
Exactly as one would expect. About 60% of the energy we get from coal is wasted. We blow it out the smokestack and out the cooling vents for the steam plant. If we replace a MWh of coal electricity we need only install 0.4 MWh of wind or solar electricity.
It even gets better with oil. Internal combustion engine cars waste about 80% of the energy in each gallon of fuel we pump in. EVs waste about 10% of the electricity we use to operate them when we charge the batteries and another 10% driving the car. We'll have to replace only 20% of the energy we now get from oil. As we move to EVs we'll see a huge decrease in world energy consumption.
Gail is correct when she talks about oil producing countries being in for a rough stretch as oil consumption (likely) rapidly falls. Look at Venezuela. Some countries will not have prepared to lose a major part of their income. Others are preparing.
I will not be surprised to see some Middle Eastern country governments fall. (Of course things are pretty bad there now.) But at the same time the economies of other countries will get a huge boost as hundreds of thousands of jobs are created in RE industries and countries no longer ship hundreds of billions of dollars to other countries in exchange for fossil fuel.
Not to mention the hundreds of billions of dollars in health care and lost labor that will be saved.
Gail is a long term doomer. For years she predicted an end to affordable oil and an end of civilization as we know it. When it became clear that there is a lot more oil (we discovered shale oil) she found a new basis for predicting collapse. She seems to be blind to potential solutions.