The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century – James Howard Kunstler
The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century – James Howard Kunstler, Atlantic Monthly Press (2005) 307pp. (S) **
Recently in the past few years, PBS produced its answer to commercial television’s “reality” TV. If this reviewer recalls correctly, there were three different programs devoted to three different time periods – one, the turn of the nineteenth century in England, another devoted to the frontier of the American west in the nineteenth century, and lastly, one about the colonial times in a New England colony. (If memory serves, there was also another one called “Manor House” which relived the experience of masters and servants.) In each program, participants sought to live as authentically as possible in the proscribed time period. To see modern families struggle through these privations was indeed an eye opening experience.
What happens when all we have taken for granted is no longer to be relied upon? This is essentially what the Long Emergency is about. What will life in America be like on the distant side of the “peak oil” curve (the period when half of all global oil reserves have been exhausted). Kunstler provides a pretty dark rendering, indeed, enough so for this reviewer to come to the blunt conclusion: we’re pretty much fucked.
Prognostication is always a tricky art. While it is known that oil and gas reserves are running out and that alternatives are too weak to meet overwhelming energy demands (the one exception that Kunstler allows for is nuclear, though given the immediacy of the need, no new plants would be able to meet needs in the interval during their construction), it is perhaps too soon to see with any accuracy what a post oil world will look like. According to Kunstler, where the age of liberal oil supply was about large economies of scale, interstate commerce, and global trade, the post-oil era will revert back to the local level, where small is beautiful and resourceful Americans will have to look out in how to feed, cloth, and house themselves in the absence of supermarkets, department stores, and automobiles. (Speaking of the latter, Kunstler oddly makes no mention of hybrid automotive technology, that if applied more widely, would make for a steadier transition into an era defined by limited petroleum supplies. Also strangely absent is any reference to the work of Mike Ruppert, a journalist who has been on the peak oil beat for some time now. But that is another matter.)
Where Kunstler seems to go wrong to the greatest degree, is in his brief analysis of U.S. foreign policy. He seems to be of the belief that the invasion and occupation of Iraq is a police action, with the intent of curbing Saddam Hussein’s access to his imaginative WMD being a valid reason to support war of aggression. “And so the eviction of Saddam became inevitable,”(p.87) he concludes. He also states, “The Iraq invasion was a desperate attempt by the United States to establish political stability in the Middle East . . . ”(p.89) Apparently Kunstler doesn’t listen much to the neo-conservative right, which envisions ongoing “democratic” revolution across the Middle East, a.k.a. the active fostering of political instability in the region being the explicit policy. What also goes amazingly over-looked by Kunstler is the role economics played in the invasion, where Saddam Hussein decided in 2000 to trade his oil in euros instead of dollars, an action that Iran is soon to mimic. Given these wider economic considerations, the entire Middle East could devolve into a state of permanent war, with the U.S. being the principle aggressor. Nor does Kunstler even consider how such a state of endless war might play out in his post oil America. It’s not hard to imagine how an increasingly totalitarian federal government might further exploit ongoing energy crises to solidify and expand its power, like, say, by ensuring that there’s plenty of conscripts for its war without end. The fact that members of the current administration have gone on record as saying “the war on terror” is a war that will not end in our lifetime, is a pretty good indicator that Iraq is just the beginning. While Kunstler’s approach is to take a long, historical look before jumping to his oil-less future dystopia, it would seem that what is lost is some basic analysis grounded in the present.
Recently in the past few years, PBS produced its answer to commercial television’s “reality” TV. If this reviewer recalls correctly, there were three different programs devoted to three different time periods – one, the turn of the nineteenth century in England, another devoted to the frontier of the American west in the nineteenth century, and lastly, one about the colonial times in a New England colony. (If memory serves, there was also another one called “Manor House” which relived the experience of masters and servants.) In each program, participants sought to live as authentically as possible in the proscribed time period. To see modern families struggle through these privations was indeed an eye opening experience.
What happens when all we have taken for granted is no longer to be relied upon? This is essentially what the Long Emergency is about. What will life in America be like on the distant side of the “peak oil” curve (the period when half of all global oil reserves have been exhausted). Kunstler provides a pretty dark rendering, indeed, enough so for this reviewer to come to the blunt conclusion: we’re pretty much fucked.
Prognostication is always a tricky art. While it is known that oil and gas reserves are running out and that alternatives are too weak to meet overwhelming energy demands (the one exception that Kunstler allows for is nuclear, though given the immediacy of the need, no new plants would be able to meet needs in the interval during their construction), it is perhaps too soon to see with any accuracy what a post oil world will look like. According to Kunstler, where the age of liberal oil supply was about large economies of scale, interstate commerce, and global trade, the post-oil era will revert back to the local level, where small is beautiful and resourceful Americans will have to look out in how to feed, cloth, and house themselves in the absence of supermarkets, department stores, and automobiles. (Speaking of the latter, Kunstler oddly makes no mention of hybrid automotive technology, that if applied more widely, would make for a steadier transition into an era defined by limited petroleum supplies. Also strangely absent is any reference to the work of Mike Ruppert, a journalist who has been on the peak oil beat for some time now. But that is another matter.)
Where Kunstler seems to go wrong to the greatest degree, is in his brief analysis of U.S. foreign policy. He seems to be of the belief that the invasion and occupation of Iraq is a police action, with the intent of curbing Saddam Hussein’s access to his imaginative WMD being a valid reason to support war of aggression. “And so the eviction of Saddam became inevitable,”(p.87) he concludes. He also states, “The Iraq invasion was a desperate attempt by the United States to establish political stability in the Middle East . . . ”(p.89) Apparently Kunstler doesn’t listen much to the neo-conservative right, which envisions ongoing “democratic” revolution across the Middle East, a.k.a. the active fostering of political instability in the region being the explicit policy. What also goes amazingly over-looked by Kunstler is the role economics played in the invasion, where Saddam Hussein decided in 2000 to trade his oil in euros instead of dollars, an action that Iran is soon to mimic. Given these wider economic considerations, the entire Middle East could devolve into a state of permanent war, with the U.S. being the principle aggressor. Nor does Kunstler even consider how such a state of endless war might play out in his post oil America. It’s not hard to imagine how an increasingly totalitarian federal government might further exploit ongoing energy crises to solidify and expand its power, like, say, by ensuring that there’s plenty of conscripts for its war without end. The fact that members of the current administration have gone on record as saying “the war on terror” is a war that will not end in our lifetime, is a pretty good indicator that Iraq is just the beginning. While Kunstler’s approach is to take a long, historical look before jumping to his oil-less future dystopia, it would seem that what is lost is some basic analysis grounded in the present.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home