A realistic, yet depressing, scenario

books:


	• The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the ... Grove Press, 2006 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 198 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A learning experience

This is my first peak oil & energy book so it was a learning experience.

The first six chapters are good.
1. Sleepwalking into the Future
2. Modernity and the Fossil Fuels Dilemma
3. Geopolitics and the Global Oil Peak
4. Beyond Oil: Why Alternative Fuels Won't Rescue Us
5. Nature Bites Back: Climate Change, Epidemic Disease, Water Scarcity, Habitat Destruction, and the Dark Side of the Industrial Age
6. Running on Fumes: The Hallucinated Economy. A history of how we got where we did. Gets a bit tedious. I had a headache that day and it made it worse.

The last was not so
7. Living in the Long Emergency

"Synopsis:
The depletion of nonrenewable fossil fuels (oil, nat. gas, coal) is about to radically change life much sooner than anticipated. This title describes what to expect after the honeymoon of affordable energy is over, preparing readers for economic, political, and social changes of an unimaginable scale."

So. what I expected out of chapter 7 was a timeline of what would go down first, second, third, etc. ....when and why. But he doesn't give you one. Can a model timeline be figured using currant data?
From reading this you get the impression it's gonna happen over night. Boom! 2025. I guess you have to read his novel 'World Made by Hand' to get that info.

There's no practical advice spelled out for you. Even the author hasn't seriously prepared himself. I guess like me he figures he'll be dead by then. And again like me he has no children to tend to. He's tucked away in a small town like me only we have two dams and a small 20mw hydroelectric plant, lots of wood. Possibly he has other homes in strategic locals.

Mr. Kunstler has an aggravating tendency to repeat himself ... a lot. And to harping endlessly on certain immutable issues ... like suburbia. He just HATES suburbia, yet doesn't lay out his solution, not that I could see anyway. I guess that's in his other book 'Home from Nowhere'.

I'm a cynic and a lifetime misanthrope, same as Mr. Kunstler, but his repetitious ranting anger in places became tiresome. So be forewarned.

There's no index. And hey!, what about Hawaii and Alaska?

Remember: Gene Rosellini. Highly intelligent/knowledgeable.
He arrived in Cordova (Alaska) in 1977 and began a remarkable anthropological experiment in which he wanted to find out if it was possible to live independently of modern technology.

"I began my adult life with the hypothesis that it would be possible to become a Stone Age native." He "purged his life of all but the most primitive tools, which he fashioned from native materials with his own hands," Krakauer (Into the Wild) writes. For TEN years, Rossellini toughed it out. Eventually, however, he gave up: "I would say I realistically experienced the physical, mental and emotional reality of the Stone Age. But to borrow a Buddhist phrase, eventually came a setting face-to-face with pure reality. I learned that it is not possible for human beings as we know them to live off the land." We had devolved

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A Tsunami Warning !

Kunstler's Book the Long Emergency is a 'Tsunami warning'. WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF OIL...what do you think the last 7 years have been about? It is both well written and tightly argued. The logic of it is dreadfully inescapable. Even if we agree that 'peak' oil (which most probably has already happened) is not the end of supply we must admit that it is the end of cheap supply and I think we are all seeing that at the pump. Add to that the potential for supply interruptions due to political instability and terrorism and..well...you can see the problem. Disruption could lead to cascading system failures throughout our economy reminding me of the sinking of the titanic. Once the four compartments were flooded the ships designer, Mr. Andrews, knew the ship would founder. We have been headed down an illusory primrose path with our McMansions and SUV's and our luck is about to run out. It is not that our society is addicted to oil it is that our entire supporting infrastructure is predicated on it. Without the inputs the house will come tumbling down and very rapidly indeed. Even if we could formulate a solution to the problem in time by utilizing some other combination of alternate energy sources the shape and character of our society would be forever altered. The most feasible types of alternative energy do not support a suburban sprawl based configuration. Kunstler is quite correct about this. Most likely we will have to retreat to more traditional community based local living arrangements. It is going to be a rough ride...but I have hope that we will make it in the end and be the better for it. I think the implications of Mr. Kuunstler's argument are too terrible for most people to fathom and so...they take the blue pill and go back to sleep.

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Doom and Gloom

The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler is a sobering view of a post- 'peak-oil' America. 'Peak-oil' refers to the point in time when the maximum rate of global petroleum production is reached, after which the rate of production enters its terminal decline. Basically, the point when we've pumped out more than half of the oil that has ever been created. There are many estimations for when this will occur, as there are many factors that make it nearly impossible to predict. For instance, it is in the producer's best interest to keep their reserves secret...Saudi Arabia has maintained that they have around 260 billion barrels, but that figure has not changed in 40 years. Sure, we can keep finding new reserves and creating new technologies that allow us to reach oil that was previously uneconomical...but this cannot go on forever. Kunstler takes a rather pessimistic view, saying the peak will occur between 2000 and 2010.

This means we have used about half of all the oil that was ever created...great, right? That sounds like we have plenty of time. The only problem is the world uses a bit more oil these days than it has in the past, actually a lot more. In fact we've used 25% of all the world's reserves in the past decade. The author estimates at current trends, we have about 35-40 years left of oil...the oil that is the hardest to get...and if it takes more input energy than you get out, it is not a winning proposition. Bottom line, we WILL run out of oil someday, it's only a matter of when.

The problem with this, we soon realize, is that our entire way of life - modern western civilization - has been created and subsidized by copious amounts of cheap energy. Contemplate the rise of technology after the discovery of oil...kerosene lamp, car, plane, transistor, computer, space flight...all within about 100 years. When this cheap source of energy is expended, what happens? Perhaps a regression to a time prior to the industrial revolution? Unfortunately, there is no inherent guarantee that human advancement will continue; especially in a continuous, unbroken, upward slope. There have been regressions in the past; mighty and advanced civilizations have faltered before...

The optimist in us all believes that some magic technology will rescue us, perhaps some alternate fuel that is in the works right now. The author does a pretty good job of systematically raining on the parade of every legitimate alternate fuel source. Natural Gas, Hydrogen, Fuel Cells, Coal, Hydroelectric, Solar, Wind, Synthetic Oil, Thermal Depolymerization, and Nuclear are all discussed and largely discounted.

After a few chapters discussing how he feels global warming is going to get us and how the global economy is destined to fail and how the suburbs are the bane of human existence, he hits us with his view of life in America without cheap oil: The Long Emergency.

I'm not going to ruin the ending, you'll have to check it out for yourself. I will just say that the book is very pessimistic, and at times it seems as though he is relishing the thought of his post-apocalyptic existence. The biggest problem with the book is that I can't really find too many faults with his logic (he was wrong about Y2k, however). Peak oil is either upon us now, or will be in our lifetime. Any alternative that we currently have is either more expensive or has other major drawbacks. I feel it may come down to not 'if'; but 'when', and 'how severe'. I highly recommend this book. While I don't think (and certainly don't hope) the future will be as dire as depicted; I do think there are some important insights to be gleaned concerning overall trends that could be instrumental in making sound long-term decisions: where to live/retire, employment, investing, etc. These insights can also be leveraged in everyday decision making: what we eat, what we buy, who we buy from, etc.; that may lessen or even prevent The Long Emergency. But you don't have to take my word for it...head down to your local library and check it out for yourself.

http://tragedy-of-the-commons.blogspot.com/

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A realistic, yet depressing, scenario

Books with disturbing, unconventional ideas are invariably controversial and James Howard Kunstler's dire treatise falls into this category. He presents global warming and the impending oil crisis as a simultaneous set of calamities, and contends that the U.S. faces economic, political and social crises as a result of the looming fuel shortage and climate change. This is not an upbeat prediction, but it packs a shocking punch that could alter your point of view. Certainly, his central theme - the demise of cheap oil colliding with the impact of global warming - rings true, but since no one has an accurate estimate on when the flow of oil will end or how climate change will unfold, his predictions warrant more investigation. Kunstler relates drought, famine, upheaval and disease to oil shortages and climate change. Despite some repetition, his arguments, especially regarding globalism, provide a needed, mind-changing perspective. Kunstler raises interesting questions. The challenge will be finding out if any of them have answers. getAbstract thinks this provocative book could stir widespread debate, especially in business circles.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

James Howard Kunstler's The Long Emergency was an underground hit, going into nine printings of the hardcover edition. His shocking vision for our post-oil future caught the attention of environmentalists and business leaders and was the subject of much debate, stimulating discussion about our dependence on fossil fuels. Now in paperback, with a new afterword, The Long Emergency is set to reach an even larger audience.

The last two hundred years have seen the greatest explosion of progress and wealth in the history of mankind, much of it based on the exploitation of cheap, nonrenewable fossil-fuel energy. But the oil age is at an end. Life as we know it is about to change radically, and much sooner than we think. The Long Emergency tells us just what to expect after we pass the point of global peak oil production and the honeymoon of affordable energy is over, preparing us for economic, political, and social changes of an unimaginable scale. Riveting and authoritative, The Long Emergency is a devastating indictment that brings new urgency and accessibility to the critical issues that will shape our future, and that we can no longer afford to ignore.

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