The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the 21st Century - James Howard Kunstler

I read this book simultaneously with Andrew Nikiforuk’s Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent (both for research into an article I was writing) and believe me, it started to get pretty grim inside my head for a while. Both books did make me view the world differently though, and both made me alter the way I live my life. Seriously.

In The Long Emergency, social commentator Kunstler looks at the history and geopolitics of this glorious petroleum age that we have been enjoying for the past 100 years or so, and how everything will change when it comes to an end, within our lifetimes. Because everything will certainly change when we run out of oil, and many believe that we have already surpassed peak oil production.

There is no question that this is a scary book. Kunstler spends one entire chapter explaining why alternate fuels will never be able to replace our reliance on oil. Quite simply, nothing works quite like oil does, in terms of its physical properties, movability, and large-scale economy. And many of the alternative energies that are being touted as the saviours of our current lifestyle simply cannot be produced or continue to run without the initial input of petroleum.

But this is also fascinating book, both as a thorough, yet entirely readable, overview of 20^th century history and geopolitics, and as speculation into the realities of a post-oil world. The world Kunstler envisions is drastically different from the one we currently inhabit. Suburbia, which Kunstler calls the great American mistake, will become unlivable. As will large cities without a nearby source of food to provide for those living in the high-rises which nobody will be able to access anyway. Our world will become, out of necessity, intensely local. Food production will become a constant struggle without mechanized farming, pesticides and fertilizers, irrigation, or transportation. No more grapes from Chile. Kunstler foresees the emergence of a sort of feudal system, in which those with arable land will employ the rest of us to produce food.

It is more than a little disturbing to imagine the breakdown of central government and the unsustainability of infrastructure like roads, airlines, and the electrical grid. I guess that would mean no more blogging either, so I had better indulge while I still can.

Oddly enough, The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the 21st Century is also a darkly funny book. And despite the decades of incredible hardship that Kunstler foresees us suffering through, there is ultimately a flicker of hopefulness in his long-term visualization of a world beyond oil.