> in a climate-change-drought-crippled land that has become populated well above its agricultural carrying capacity

There was a recent HN article about Israel's progress with desalination[1]. Obvious funding issues aside, I wonder if that approach could ease some of the water issues?

Perhaps that kind of investment would be a good use for the oil income, whilst they've still got it.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12191089

Fortunately some countries (like Saudi Arabia) are making steps to reduce their dependency on oil, because they can see the coming problems if they don't.

> In the short term, it's going to be very, very bad for them indeed

It's not like they would not see it coming. Petrol is eventually going to become too expensive at some point, and they should invest accordingly. But numerous past examples of countries relying on raw resources have shown they usually don't adapt and plan, so I don't have too much hope in their case either.

I can see that happening to Saudi Arabia but not the middle east as a whole. A lot of them don't really see the benefit of the oil wealth (especially in surrounding 'pipeline' countries that don't have oil), they only get to deal with the fallout.