The Long Emergency:
Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century
By James Howard Kunstler
Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005, 307 pages
Reviewed by Catherine MacLennan
The radio, and the telephone,
And the movies that we know
May just be passing fancies, and in time may go...
“Our Love is Here To Stay” – George Gershwin
In his book, The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century, James Howard Kuntstler quotes the above lines from a Gershwin tune - but not from the perspective of the early twentieth century of the song, which wasn’t sure about the lasting quality of such amusing inventions, but from 2005, looking towards the future – a future in which so many things we have come to rely on and a world we take for granted – may no longer exist.
When reading about history and all its man-made calamities, absurdities and horrors, one often thinks: What was the matter with these people? Were they crazy, stupid, brainwashed? Couldn’t they see the obvious? Couldn’t they see what they were doing was wrong? When the people from the future look back at the people of the twentieth century and the present, they will be asking these questions about us. How could they sacrifice the future for such small term gains? How could they destroy the environment they lived in and required to survive? What was so great about shopping in big box stores? How did they become so addicted to cars, and unable to walk even short distances?
Kunstler says that oil is about to “peak” (all the oil on earth has already been discovered; the oil that has been the cheapest and the easiest to get has already been used up; there is a limited amount of oil left and much of it is more difficult/less cost-effective to retrieve) – and as a result our present “oil-addicted” society will not last. The “Long Emergency” will be the long, difficult transition period from the oil-dependent society to whatever comes next (probably a much more scaled down and basic society - though only scaled down after hunger, strife and wars). Our world is dependent on oil not just for the obvious waste that is the suburbs, cars, stripmalls and highways (“surburbia is the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world”) but for just about everything the economy and society depends on – modern agriculture (agribusiness), transportation of goods, national and global (relative) peace. Wars will begin (have begun) over the last remaining sources of oil, with Western nations seeking to maintain current standards of living and large nations such as China and India requiring more oil than before as they industrialize heavily. Kunstler hypothesizes about the various geopolitical scenarios that may take place as the fight for the last drops of oil become desperate.
Since it all sounds depressingly plausible, reading these pages one hopes for alternate fuel resources. Kunstler predicts that reaction, and soon enough one turns to chapter called “Beyond Oil: Why Alternative Fuels Won’t Rescue Us.” Kunstler says the idea that we will magically come up with an altenative fuel to oil just when we need it is a “fantasy.” He describes why all of the proposed options are either limited, unworkable, untested, or require an oil-based society to operate, eliminating all as hoped-for alternatives that would be an equivalent to oil: natural gas, hydrogen, coal, hydroelectric power, solar and wind power, synthetic oil, thermal depolymerization, biomass, methane hydrates, zero-point energy and nuclear energy. If anything, he predicts we will end up using the known problematic sources of coal and nuclear power - and these will be more reduced and less flexible energy sources. The main focus of the book is the United States, which will undergo the biggest changes since it is the most oil dependent – even Europe, in comparison, has used more diversified sources of power and has still maintained much of its small town insfastructure and culture:
“Corporations such as Wal-Mart and its imitators used up their wealth and muscle to set up “superstores” on the cheap land frontier outside small towns and put every other retail merchant out of business, often destroying most of the town’s middle class. They also incidentally, destroyed the local capacity to produce goods. And the American public went along with it for the greater good of paying a few dollars less for a hair dryer. Bargain shopping justified the extermination of the middle class and all its relations with the locality. The American people were gulled into the fantasy that every day of the year would be like Christmas, Wal-Mart style. The public enjoyed this bonanza of supercheap manufactured goods without reckoning any of the collateral costs, which were astronomical.”
An economy that can only envision constant “growth”, Kunstler warns, is out of touch with reality and nature and one that it doomed in the Long Emergency. No one wants to talk about oil running out – not governments, not oil companies, not industry, not the media, and not the car-happy citizens. Not preparing for the future will only result in more dire consequences. Kunstler’s book outlines the many problems that may result – one hopes that somewhere people are listening and will act to find solutions for a viable future.