Book Review: The Long Emergency
For Christmas my brother gave me a great book that I read in about 3 days by James Howard Kunstler called “The Long Emergency“.
If you want to learn more about how totally screwed we are, and about the upcoming energy crisis in not just America, but the world, then I highly recommend this book.
I’ve read other books by Kunstler, such as “The Geography of Nowhere” And I love the man’s writing style. Kunstler is unapologetic about the crisis we are about to face as we are on the eve (or perhaps already at) the era of peak oil.
The book gets into a lot of detail on the problem; it’s not the end of the oil age that’s gong hurt so bad as the beginning of the end of the oil age, or the peak oil period, where demand continues to rise, and at the same time the worlds production level tops off, and slowly begins to decline.
Kunstler gets into a lot of the fallacies about alternative energy, technology, and market forces. In a nutshell, it’s not a pretty site, for example, he talks about how bio-diesel and other crop-based energy sources are a sham. Why? Because it takes more energy (in the form of oil) for fertilizers, pesticides, transportation than you get out. It would make more sense to just use that oil for fuel in the first place. When you do the math, it becomes a real eye opener.
Kunstler also details why the typical arguments of market forces and new technology won’t save our behinds either, and you really start to get a great understanding how everything in our society, from the $1.75 salad at Burger King, the cheap shoes you’re wearing made in China, to driving 45 miles to work, is ALL based on cheap, available oil, and that once its no longer available and/or cheap, our society will be forced to change in drastic, and possibly catastrophically painful ways.
Get this book, I highly recommend it, and if Kunstler is right, the bleak future of the never-ending “Long Emergency” could be only 2-5 years away.
Porter
ot — On 4-10-2006 at 12:22 am
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ken — On 4-10-2006 at 3:04 am
I agree and we have already reach peek oil point The trouble is already began and it will be plan to see this summer!
Porter Venn — On 4-10-2006 at 8:50 am
Some estimates are that the world hit Historical Peak Oil around 3 months ago. Although its really hard to tell when the peak was until a few years have gone by, either way, its either recent, right now, or very soon.
David. — On 4-25-2006 at 4:54 pm
The comment that you use more oil than you can produce to manufacture crop-based fuels is utter nonsense. The ratio of fuel used (which can of course be crop based in the first place) to fuel manufactured is well over 1:50, even being as pessimistic as possible.
This has even been proven, as I’ve harvested linseed to manufacture a bio-fuel, and kept track of everything.
What concerns me is that if this mistake is present in the book… how many others are there?
Porter Venn — On 4-25-2006 at 4:57 pm
1.5? David thats nothing compared to the Efficiency of easily available Oil. Also, where are all these crops going to come from? There’s nowhere near enough crops in the USA to replace 10 million barrells of oil every day. How can you ever hope to get yields that will replace that? And what of the oil inputs? if you take oil out of the equation, where do you get your pesticides, and fertilizers that allow you to have such high yields in the first place?
Porter Venn — On 4-25-2006 at 5:00 pm
Also… With your linseed experiment… a few questions. (a) did you use any oil-based products to grow the linseed? Fertlizers/Pesticides etc. (b) did you use any petrol in transportation or harvesting? (c) the amount you harvested, was the amount of energy return significant for the time, energy, land use etc. that you put into it?