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This book extrapolates and predicts what will happen to the American way of life after the Peak Oil starts seriously diminishing the available supply of cheap energy that becomes more concentrated on seriously unreachable and hostile areas. Technology will not create more energy any more than eating will create more food. Various alternative forms of energy production will not help with the possible exception of building more nuclear power, but that will not be politically feasible until the overall situation gets to the point where it is no longer socially and technologically feasible. (I would imagine that a few winter weeks without heat will quickly eradicate the irrational opposition of the evil death rays of the atomic power, but that point it will be too late.)
After going through the history of the past century and how cheap oil allowed it to happen, Kunstler analyzes the transition phase that takes place while the world is "running on fumes". It features the following funny observation about hippies that sure is worth keeping around:
The rebellion of the hippies --- of which the author was nominally one --- based itself on the notion that abundance was a natural entitlement and one could "drop out" of an insecure, deadly, and frightening industrial culture to live off the fat of the land. It was inescapably a jejune philosophy, fraught with contradiction. For the hippies the natural order of things included items such as stereo record players, electric guitars, motor vehicles for adventuring around the country, cheap bulk whole grains, and other products of an oil-intensive industrial way of life. The hippie platform, so to speak, with all its mystical incunabula, rested on the platform of "normal" American life, and would have been impossible without it.
On a related note,
Kunstler doesn't say this, but I have myself occasionally wondered why
leftists and progressives seem to hate science, energy, technology and
Western culture so much, since in the end these are the only things
that allow many other things that leftists profess to love and take for
granted. For example, the equality between sexes. Take away any one of
these essential prerequisites, and pretty soon the single urban women
won't be throwing their hats triumphantly in the air on their way to
work at the office.
The last (and the longest) chapter of the
book examines the way that everyday life will drastically change after
peak oil. After discussing general changes, it includes an analysis of
what will happen to various parts of USA and the world when energy will
no longer be cheap. The South (as in the "Old Confederacy") will fare
the worst for various interconnected reasons (of which religious
nutjobbery and religious idolization of automobile are not the least
ones), followed closely by the hot and dry Southwestern areas. After
this, Kunstler pretty much predicts an all-out race war erupting
between whites, blacks and Latinos, once the pretensions of
multiculturalism and equality that cheap oil has so far allowed
Americans to pretend to hold while ignoring the problems can no longer
be maintained. The same will happen to the concepts of "irony, hipness
and cutting-edge coolness". Conservatives will get their total
ideological victory in pretty much every front, but they won't be
enjoying it very much once they fully realize how dependent their
"rugged individualist" life is on the cheap energy. It really won't be
much fun being a cowboy without your SUV.
From here up North,
things look a little bit better with the energy resources of Alberta
and this country having avoided the suburban sprawl and drive-in
utopias much better than Americans. Unlike Kunstler, whose opinion on
buildings higher than five stories is very negative (and here I thought
that urban density is a good thing), I think that I'll be happy to
watch how the situation plays out from a 24th floor apartment. Hey,
when it gets hot I can even turn off the AC and open the windows if I
have to.
Have you already begun to train for expensive energy future and stopped using elevator? Living on the 24th floor is not very nice thing when you have to use stairs, especially when you are older.
Posted by Anonymous | 3:35 PM
I think he should hire one (or more, depending on on how well fed he and they are) of the desperate starving wretches that inhabit the wasteland to the south to carry him up.
My prediction: Kunstler is absolutely wrong and after he passes his obituary will adopt a tone of pity, if not ridicule.
Posted by tggp | 4:42 PM
Kunstler predicted imminent destruction of society at Y2K.
Posted by Anonymous | 5:41 PM
Geez, what does this guy have against the suburbs? I live in an exurb in the United States, way outside of New York City (Ridgefield, CT). Of all the people I've met in town, only about 5% work in New York City. The rest of us all work in other suburbs. Those that do work in NYC drive fifteen minutes then take an electric train, powered by nuclear, gas, and hydro power.
Do I believe in peak oil? Well, I guess I believe that we're probably close to the maximum production, but I think that once production does fall, like everything else in the market, we'll adopt more energy sources. More nuclear power plants will be built. Right now, it's not that economical based on red tape, storage of waste, etc, but once oil and gas prices rise, nuclear will become more competitive. So will electric or hybrid power cars (that you can plug in overnight). Tar sands and shale oil will be extracted. And people will conserve. But it's not going to mean the end of civilization, or the end of the suburbs. It's going to be more subtle than that. More people may indeed move to the inner city areas, but there'll still be a lot of people living in the suburbs, driving more fuel efficient cars or not driving nearly as much.
The price of oil is highly emotional. Eve if the price of oil were to double, the suburbs wouldn't end. The price of oil doubling would equate to probably $5.00 a gallon gas in the states (gas wouldn't quite double when oil did). This is still less than what gas costs in Europe, and they still are getting along.
Posted by GMR | 6:21 PM
Kuntsler is a fool.
I cannot believe THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE actually let this guy write not one, but two articles for them.
He is a short, ugly, superBALD man. No wonder he hates the whole world and is eager to see it revert back to the stone age.
We have more shale oil in Colorado than the whole PLANET has in conventional oil. All we have to do is heat it up to 700 degrees to melt it down to liquid before we pump it up. It will cost about 4 bucks a gallon to do so. Nevertheless, we obviously would do EVEN this before forgetting about transportation (and thus ruining our economy). We have tons of oil off Florida's coast, we have tons of oil in Alaska, we have a good bit of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, we could make a great deal of ethanol from orange rinds and sugar cane produced in Southern States if we just HAD to. We can fire up three or four really big nuclear facilities out west in the deserts for power. The new solar panels are fairly efficient *(albeit expensive to produce), we have miles of coast line for wave energy like New Zeland is using right now. We have many rivers that are not using hydroelectic power on them as of yet. Zero-point energy is also being worked on for the future. Geo-thermal possibilities (there is a huge magma-steam source of energy right under our feet a few miles down) are profound.
This ugly little man, Kuntsler, just hates people like every other eco-green weenie. I guess he's upset that nature made him short, ugly, profoundly bald and wants to take that resentment out by telling mankind that they are all goners like he is because he cant find a woman. Phuck him, he'll be a bore even in the old folks home where nobody else will want to speak to him.
Posted by Anonymous | 8:22 AM
I agree. If Kunstler is so sure about oil crisis, has he put his money where his mouth is? So how big position he has taken in oil market?
Btw nazies produced 25% of their oil from coal in WW2.
Much bigger threat that peak oil is global warming. Even it does not destoy civilization, it just costs so much (with all those storms etc).
Posted by Anonymous | 10:01 AM
Anonymous (the last one),
The ethanol we could produce like Brazil is using is a green fuel source.
Electric cars that are recharged at night while plugged in from new nuclear facilities produce no hydrocarbons.
Hydrogen-Fuel cell cars that use hydrogen made from nuclear, wind, solar, hydroelectric, wave or ocean energy, geo-thermal, zero-point energy ...........would also be "green".
Even coal, due to a new process discovered by a Vanderbilt professor, that gets it to burn while producing absolutely now greenhouse gases could be used to give juice to electric cars or to make hydrogen fuel cell cars.
We dont have to live in the stone-age to stop making greenhouse gases. Thats what makes me sick about the Sierra Club and their ilk. SO help me God, these folks just want us to not have electricity because they really hate people and like to see them live like animals. We'd still be in log cabins if they had their way. They have never fooled me. By the way...........guess who the Sierra Club's biggest funder is? ....................British Petroleum. I bet if you followed the money behind the anti-nuclear energy fanatics....you'd find big oil. They have too good a monopoly right now.
Posted by Anonymous | 3:52 PM
What a bunch of SUV-driving retards in denial. Guess if Kunstler had more hair follicles he would be more credible.
When objective reality hits the fan these mortgage slaves will be first to suffer.
Posted by Anonymous | 4:59 AM