Book Notes: The Long Emergency
Review of The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century
James Kunstler, 2005
Read August 2006
Synopsis
[All opinions are the author’s.]
It’s not going to be fun.
We are at, if not already passed, an oil peak. After the peak, oil production will drop steadily and irreversibly. Oil underlays our modern way of life, to a degree that few of us realize. The decreasing amounts of energy will make it harder for us to deal with all the other challenges coming down the pike, especially global warming, disease (think influenza and AIDS), economic fragility, and geopolitical instability.
Energy alternatives will help, but not much. Most are oversold; some (hydrogen) are fantasies; ethanol, because of our mech-heavy agricultural methods is actually a net oil loss. Wind, solar are great, but you still need oil to produce the components. We are already past peak for natural gas. Coal will make a comeback, but it is dirty, and the amount of reserves are probably overstated and not high-quality. Solar sucks; the author had an off-the-grid system in 2001 and it was no good. Nuclear will help, but again you need petroleum to support the construction, mining, and maintenance required. Sure, science may be able to improve some of these, but probably not in the time we have left.
American civilization has been built on the premise of cheap energy. Especially the suburbs, which require massive energy expenditures to be liveable – because of inefficient transportation and inefficient, overlarge houses.
Global warming will wreak havoc on our food supplies. Our agricultural system is based on mechanization and fertilizer, both of which require massive amounts of fossil fuels. Meanwhile, our current factory-farming infrastructure will leave us the legacy of mad cow disease and antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
Too bad our economy is in no shape to meet these challenges. The current American economy is no longer based on creating real value (i.e. goods). Instead, we have a musical-chairs, service economy, and a byte-pushing digital economy that isn’t tangible. Our economy is mostly propped up by speculation in the stock and housing markets, and all that will come spiralling down.
What will happen? Well, first off, a lot of people will die from famine and disease. From there – the prediction is that as transportation becomes more expensive, localization increases. Food and goods will be grown locally; cities will shrink and the suburbs will disappear. More of us will become farmers.
Commentary
This is not a very good book. If you like to contemplate dark scenarios or to hear biting critiques of contemporary American society, you may enjoy it. But as far as a realistic considering of the future – the author doesn’t treat his ideas critically enough.
Most of us could write a comparable book. To do that:
· List out all the aspects of our culture that you dislike.
· Imagine all the bad things that might arise out of them, and assume that they all will come to pass.
· Figure out how those bad things will interact to make worse things.
· Read some more books to find out more bad things you didn’t think of, and throw those into the mix.
· Top it all off with cultural and racial stereotypes so you can slam types you don’t like.
· Most importantly, don’t challenge your own assumptions. Just let them all build on each other.
Those of us who are pessimists or cynical might have a good time writing such a book. It wouldn’t make what we write true, however.
The last chapter is especially offensive or entertaining, depending on your tastes. Kunstler cuts loose on the South (“the southern cracker lumpenproletariat”), Hispanics, Blacks, and Christians. The Pacific Northwest will probably do all right, but they should worry because China and Japan, and the hordes might invade.
Where are the mistakes in Kunstler’s thinking? He has three key assumptions:
1. Anything that can go wrong, will, often in the worst way. Oil, the economy, global warming, plague.
2. Oil production will decrease so rapidly as to make adjustments nigh impossible. Actually, he tacitly backs of this assumption as the book proceeds … but once he does this some of his earlier arguments are undercut.
3. Society will have no way of allocating petroleum so that the most important needs are met.
I won’t argue the points here, although I would like to address them in future posts. For now I will say that as for item (2), there is so much needless energy usage (or waste, if you will) in American society, that we could drop our consumption a goodly amount without sacrificing much. That alone buys us a lot of time.
One item for comment. Kunstler hates the suburbs. He really, really, hates the suburbs. In fact, one of his prior books (The Geography of Nowhere) was a hate-filled rant against the suburbs. Did I mention that he hates them? On page after page he drops snide remarks about suburbia and its culture. I hope to write a post someday about suburbia-hating, but for now let me remark that (i) the hating is pretty much beside the point, (ii) the gratuitous insults of the culture of is supposedly his target audience is weird, and (iii) his hatred is so strong that sometimes I get the feeling that it shaped the book more than it should. I’m not sure how to verbalize that, but it’s almost as if he chose some of his conclusions by thinking of which would be worst for the suburbs.
Ok, so the book sucked, but there was one thing I liked about it. It did remind us to be grateful for the cheap energy that we have, and the luxuries that it has provided us with. “Irony, hipness, cutting-edge coolness will seem either quaint or utterly inexplicable to people struggling to produce enough food to get through the winter.” Something we should keep in mind more often.
James Kunstler, 2005
Read August 2006
Synopsis
[All opinions are the author’s.]
It’s not going to be fun.
We are at, if not already passed, an oil peak. After the peak, oil production will drop steadily and irreversibly. Oil underlays our modern way of life, to a degree that few of us realize. The decreasing amounts of energy will make it harder for us to deal with all the other challenges coming down the pike, especially global warming, disease (think influenza and AIDS), economic fragility, and geopolitical instability.
Energy alternatives will help, but not much. Most are oversold; some (hydrogen) are fantasies; ethanol, because of our mech-heavy agricultural methods is actually a net oil loss. Wind, solar are great, but you still need oil to produce the components. We are already past peak for natural gas. Coal will make a comeback, but it is dirty, and the amount of reserves are probably overstated and not high-quality. Solar sucks; the author had an off-the-grid system in 2001 and it was no good. Nuclear will help, but again you need petroleum to support the construction, mining, and maintenance required. Sure, science may be able to improve some of these, but probably not in the time we have left.
American civilization has been built on the premise of cheap energy. Especially the suburbs, which require massive energy expenditures to be liveable – because of inefficient transportation and inefficient, overlarge houses.
Global warming will wreak havoc on our food supplies. Our agricultural system is based on mechanization and fertilizer, both of which require massive amounts of fossil fuels. Meanwhile, our current factory-farming infrastructure will leave us the legacy of mad cow disease and antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
Too bad our economy is in no shape to meet these challenges. The current American economy is no longer based on creating real value (i.e. goods). Instead, we have a musical-chairs, service economy, and a byte-pushing digital economy that isn’t tangible. Our economy is mostly propped up by speculation in the stock and housing markets, and all that will come spiralling down.
What will happen? Well, first off, a lot of people will die from famine and disease. From there – the prediction is that as transportation becomes more expensive, localization increases. Food and goods will be grown locally; cities will shrink and the suburbs will disappear. More of us will become farmers.
Commentary
This is not a very good book. If you like to contemplate dark scenarios or to hear biting critiques of contemporary American society, you may enjoy it. But as far as a realistic considering of the future – the author doesn’t treat his ideas critically enough.
Most of us could write a comparable book. To do that:
· List out all the aspects of our culture that you dislike.
· Imagine all the bad things that might arise out of them, and assume that they all will come to pass.
· Figure out how those bad things will interact to make worse things.
· Read some more books to find out more bad things you didn’t think of, and throw those into the mix.
· Top it all off with cultural and racial stereotypes so you can slam types you don’t like.
· Most importantly, don’t challenge your own assumptions. Just let them all build on each other.
Those of us who are pessimists or cynical might have a good time writing such a book. It wouldn’t make what we write true, however.
The last chapter is especially offensive or entertaining, depending on your tastes. Kunstler cuts loose on the South (“the southern cracker lumpenproletariat”), Hispanics, Blacks, and Christians. The Pacific Northwest will probably do all right, but they should worry because China and Japan, and the hordes might invade.
Where are the mistakes in Kunstler’s thinking? He has three key assumptions:
1. Anything that can go wrong, will, often in the worst way. Oil, the economy, global warming, plague.
2. Oil production will decrease so rapidly as to make adjustments nigh impossible. Actually, he tacitly backs of this assumption as the book proceeds … but once he does this some of his earlier arguments are undercut.
3. Society will have no way of allocating petroleum so that the most important needs are met.
I won’t argue the points here, although I would like to address them in future posts. For now I will say that as for item (2), there is so much needless energy usage (or waste, if you will) in American society, that we could drop our consumption a goodly amount without sacrificing much. That alone buys us a lot of time.
One item for comment. Kunstler hates the suburbs. He really, really, hates the suburbs. In fact, one of his prior books (The Geography of Nowhere) was a hate-filled rant against the suburbs. Did I mention that he hates them? On page after page he drops snide remarks about suburbia and its culture. I hope to write a post someday about suburbia-hating, but for now let me remark that (i) the hating is pretty much beside the point, (ii) the gratuitous insults of the culture of is supposedly his target audience is weird, and (iii) his hatred is so strong that sometimes I get the feeling that it shaped the book more than it should. I’m not sure how to verbalize that, but it’s almost as if he chose some of his conclusions by thinking of which would be worst for the suburbs.
Ok, so the book sucked, but there was one thing I liked about it. It did remind us to be grateful for the cheap energy that we have, and the luxuries that it has provided us with. “Irony, hipness, cutting-edge coolness will seem either quaint or utterly inexplicable to people struggling to produce enough food to get through the winter.” Something we should keep in mind more often.
posted by Jim at
9:38 PM
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