Last week I scared some of you with the prospect that the plastics in your kitchen and bathroom were leeching carcinogens into your food and body with Slow Death By Rubber Duck. This week’s entry into the prospect of “gloom and doom” is James Howard Kunstler’s The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century. I read The Long Emergency because Kunstler has written a series of novels based on his conception of a post-oil society. You’ll be seeing those reviews in the weeks ahead. As for The Long Emergency, it could have been titled: Worst Case Scenario. If all of Kunstler’s predictions about the end of oil and the effects of climate change and food shortages come true, we’re looking at the end of civilization as we know it. Yes, this is indeed scary stuff. GRADE: B+
Looks a bit like a Cliff’s Notes cover. At my age, I don’t have to worry about these long emergencies. Too bad for the whippersnappers, though.
Our kids are going to have to tough it out, Bill, if Kunstler’s right.
I like Kunstler’s blog (entitled “Clusterf*ck Nation”–without the asterisk), especially a wonderful feature called “Eyesore of the Month,” where he dissects the worst in modern architecture. Kunstler believes that many of the aspects of modern society (architecture, obesity, pornography, politics, reality TV, etc.) are the result of cultural entropy. I like his writing style (I’ve read a couple of his fictional works–including one that seemed to be a roman-a-clef about Martha Stewart), but I think his non-fiction may be too pessimistic for me (and I’m no Pollyanna), in that he never seems to think that humans will manage to avert or overcome a crisis, even though history has shown that we can do just that (and often do).
I like Kunstler’s blog, too, Deb. I’m reading Kunstler’s novels based on THE LONG EMERGENCY, WORLD MADE BY HAND and THE WITCH OF HEBRON. Reviews upcoming.
Could never read it. Looked like a couple of candidates for future reading were in the NYT Book Review today. You read them for us, George, and give us a synopsis. I want to cut my throat too many days as it is. Yay, Deb, I like your style.
I haven’t picked up the Sunday NY TIMES yet, Patti. I’ll check out the Book Review section. Stay away from sharp objects!
Reading Krugman and Friedman in the NYT is depressing enough about where this country is going (down the tubes, fast). I can’t read too much of this.
Kunstler echoes much of warnings Friedman and Krugman have published in the NY TIMES, Jeff. But Kunstler is a little more strident.
George, does Mr. Kunstler tell us when things will go boom? Is he thinking 2050 or 2020 or 2011?
Kustler thinks we’re in Deep Trouble already, Drongo. His basic premise is that civilization will go south as we deplete our oil supplies. Until we come up with another energy source, hydrogen perhaps, we’re facing wars over natural resources. Kunstler also posits that we’ll go back to a pre-oil society where the population will be around a billion (down from the current 6 billion). We can’t support more people than that without petroleum-based fertilizers.
Not for the first time I’m glad I’m of the generation I am, and wouldn’t want to be a child or young parent in these and future times. Sure, there may be a golden age just around the corner, and the paranoia about nuclear energy may someday go away, but with the seeming super conservative sentiment in this country, stirred up mostly by right wing political commentators and politicians, any moves toward positive change will be slow and painful, while political and corporate greed and hunger for power take us toward an Orwellian future.
It’s hard to be optimistic after reading THE LONG EMERGENCY, Rick. Too many confluences of catastrophe looming on the horizon…
I’m looking forward to a new Age of Steam as depicted in Goerge Metzger’s “Beyond Time and Again.”
Kunstler doesn’t paint a pretty picture of a post-oil society, Bob. But it is a fascinating one.