The Long Emergency

I heard James Howard Kunstler last night explaining his views on the consequences of peak oil as contained in his book, The Long Emergency..  It was his version of my "The Energy Revolution."  Although I am a couple of weeks late I thought it was worth mentioning.  His views are much more pessimistic than mine.  But who is too say that they are not a realistic view of what is yet to come.  The following are some (sometimes paraphrased) views as he wrote in a recent "Rolling Stone" article.

Americans are complacent about the price of gasoline ... Most immediately we face the end of the cheap-fossil-fuel era ... The few Americans who are even aware that there is a gathering global-energy predicament usually misunderstand the core of the argument ... The best estimates of when the "global oil-production peak" would occur had been between now and 2010 ... the most knowledgeable experts revised their predictions and now concur that 2005 is apt to be the year of all-time global peak production ... We know that our national leaders are hardly uninformed about this predicament (he quoted Hirsch and Bush and Chaney are well aquantied with Simmon's views) ... No combination of alternative fuels will allow us to run American life the way we have been used to running it ... The widely touted "hydrogen economy" is a particularly cruel hoax ... Wishful notions about rescuing our way of life with "renewables" are also unrealistic ... If we wish to keep the lights on in America after 2020, we may indeed have to resort to nuclear power ... The upshot of all this is that we are entering a historical period of potentially great instability, turbulence and hardship ... there is the problem of China ... The Long Emergency will require us to downscale and re-scale virtually everything we do and how we do it ... The American economy of the mid-twenty-first century may actually center on agriculture, not information, not high tech, not "services" ... WalMart's "warehouse on wheels" won't be such a bargain in a non-cheap-oil economy ... ordinary goods will probably be made on a "cottage industry" basis ... The automobile will be a diminished presence in our lives, to say the least ... America today has a railroad system that the Bulgarians would be ashamed of ... The commercial aviation industry, already on its knees financially, is likely to vanish ... These are daunting and even dreadful prospects ... The survivors will have to cultivate a religion of hope.

In a January speech he echoed a similar commentary.  The global peak oil production event will change everything about how we live ... As of the past 12 months, Saudi Arabia seems to have lost the ability to function as swing producer ...  Long before the oil actually depletes we will endure world-shaking political disturbances and economic disruptions ... We believe that if you wish for something, it will come true ... Cars will be a diminished presence in our lives ... The implications are clear: we will have to downscale and re-scale virtually everything we do ... We are going to have to live a lot more locally ... many types of corporations and governments will function very poorly in the post-cheap oil world ... All indications are that American life will have to be reconstituted along the lines of traditional towns, villages, and cities much reduced in their current scale ... We are entering a period of economic hardship and declining incomes ... Change is coming whether we like it or not; whether we are prepared for it or not.

While I disagree with many of his statements, the consequences of the end of cheap oil are going to be significant.  We need an energy policy that more aggressively addresses these problems.  We need mandated energy efficient cars and much more aggressive development of alternate liquid fuels. We need to reassign our priorities, away from hydrogen, to nearer term, realistic solutions.

Comments

[scotty]

I have figured out how to build a engine that does not need any fuel, wind, water or electricity. it is almost unlimited on the power it can produce. it could be built to turn any generator ever built.just think of one machine that could produce as much energy as a nuclear power plant with no pollution to the air and no fuel to produce it.all it needs is to be built.very cost efficient. only routine mateniance nessesary for upkeep.unbelievable discovery for the people and planet.i cant wait to get some help to build this thing