The Long Emergency

Thanks for posting this story! There are not enough level-headed bloggers (or actual reporters) covering this story. While I haven't followed your links to actually read what this guy says--based on your blurb, I am reminded what I find so frustrating about these Chicken Littles. I don't deny that the oil/sky may be falling, but to scoff at solutions like hydrogen and wind and to say "there's no replacement for oil--our way of life is over" are both overly alarmist and shallow. He's right, in a way--there is no *single* replacement for oil. However, if we use good, old-fashioned human ingenuity I bet we can craft a replacement made up several alt energy sources to generally keep us doing what we are doing.

Wind, hydro, solar, hydrogen fiber/vegetable-based solutions are all out there and working together, I have a feeling, can solve many if not all of the practical oil problems regarding the way we live our lives.

Of course, I'm not talking about our economy here. Our way of life may be salvageable, but as we all know, a huge part of our economy is tied up in oil. I don't know enough about alt energy or money to figure out how to save that... Still, my point is that it seem like either you've got your head in the sand about Peak Oil or you're a doomsday prophet. More black and white arguements from people who should know better in a world that is filled with gray areas.

Well, things will keep working with alt-energies, but they will only do if a big part of the solution is conservation and efficiency; I think that's what Kunstler meant.

"Our way of life" which is tied with overconsumption and driving a lot in individual vehicles would certainly be very hard to imagine without cheap oil. We will still travel and buy things in the future, but I think that without cheap oil, filling the tank (be it with hydrogen, gas or electricity) will make you think twice about wasting any of it. Same from the consumer side: without cheap oil, say goodbye to cheap goods made on the other side of the world and shipped to your locality.

Kunstler bases his ideas on his many years of looking at the depradations of suburban sprawl. Some of the solutions he is talking about - local self-sufficiency, locally-based agriculture - have been ideas that the once and future counterculture were all over in the 70s. You know, before Reagan killed us, Bush I drove the nails deep into the coffin, and Bush II buried us six feet or more.

Conservation and efficiency and smart use of renewables can do a lot but the days of SUVs and 60 mile commutes will indeed be insupportable.

My own particular hobby horse is small scale solar from button batteries to AAs and up to 12 volt DC. I'd like to develop a solar rechargeable LED reading light that any child around the world could afford to read under the covers. Should be technologically feasible. Maybe mass marketing would make it economically affordable as well.

Go from that one product and step up the power curve from there. You can read more about such ideas at http://solarray.blogspot.com

I think his point is that making things more sustainable isn't enough, we have to fundamentally rethink the way we approach modern living. We can stave off the inevitable but our whole infrastructure is based on a lie. Apres la cheap oil fiesta, c'est la deluge!

No pun intended but I think a little bit of doomsday fear is the perfect fuel to start a major change in American lifestyle habits and create a green friendly political conscienceness. Even if Kunstler' book overplays the doomsday stuff (prayer has its place) and downplays the effectiveness of alt energy the possible consequences of doing nothing have to be made very clear to the American public. No energy=No food. No food=death. Your kids are going to live in poverty if they are lucky and can survive. ect. The reactionary politicians have been very successful in manipulating people by using fear. Fear of imaginary threats, fear of other cultures and races, fear of taxes, and the fear of breaking social taboos. The comming oil crisis is a very real threat based on real geological and economic facts. Most of the people I talk to about this issue do not understand the economic implications of a steady rise in oil prices let alone the basic concepts of peak oil. No, simply buying a Prius will not help. I believe the only viable solutions to this comming crisis will require massive New Deal style goverment programs like rebuilding Amtrak and creating a new agricultural system. People need to get get scared and demand that their leaders do something fast. Otherwise the fun and games will be over and its everyone for themselves.

I have a problem with people who say our ingenuity will get us out of any fix. Perhaps, if we had started in the 70's, we might be far enough along, but basically we still haven't started and the window is rapidly closing.

Sure, we're ingenous. But a lot of this research requires the energy (i.e. cheap oil) we have now to conduct. If we continue to wait we will be too late.

At any rate, there's no denying that cheap oil is going away, and that the profligate lifestyle we are living to this point will be going as well. Much of what we do is wasteful, and even if not wasteful of energy, wasteful of other resources.

We should be looking at ways to improve the planet, not trying to set HR records, play Nintendo on subways, or drive the biggest SUV on the block.

I read Mr Kusntler's _The Long Emergency_ yesterday, from cover to cover, and am still reeling. It is perhaps worth adding to Mr Kusntler's many excellent points the observation that recent European history abounds in examples of sudden and catastrophic breakdown. For my parents' generation in Estonia, life was tranquil right up to the autumn of 1939. Life meant summers by the river, winters in the university lecture halls and cafes and ballrooms. When the war had begun, my dad (at that time in Switzerland on a scholarship) asked his dad whether it might be appropriate to transfer some assets out of our Estonian home city to a safer haven. Grandfather said no. Five years later, our cities were in ruins and perhaps one Estonian out of four or five was dead, in penurious exile in the West (like my parents), or deported to Siberia. Family lore has it that the Soviet secret police gave my little uncle not even enough time to find his OTHER SHOE as his household was hauled off to the cattle cars for the long trip east. When social breakdown comes, folks, it can be quick. The USA has not had such a trauma since the 1860s, but that's not to say we're safe now. Privately, I look first and foremost at numbers. How many watts, I ask, can we get from five hundred dollars' worth of solar panel? (Answer: in strong sunlight, some dozens. That suffices for a couple of desklamps, but not for a microwave oven.) Or from a wind turbine erected, with petroleum-burning cranes, at a cost of a couple of million dollars, to the height of a multi-storey office tower? (Answer: in a month of reasonable Toronto wind, a couple of hundred kilowatts, average. That suffices for a couple of hundred severely frugal homes, in which turning the microwave on means turning everything else off.) Our present consumerist lifestyle is, as Mr Kunstler cogently argues, doomed It's doomed, I add, even as the political arrangements of 1930s Europe, which seemed so safe to my poor parents and grandparents, were doomed. (I've analyzed this topic at some length in my 'Utopia 2184', on my http://www.metascientia.com.)

I would like to state, for the record, that back in 1992-1993 a scientist in Nevada created a magnetic motor for automobiles which with an eight hour charge could give 400 to 600 miles and provide around 300 hp.
I read the article in either an automotive mag or a science mag. Unfortunately I do not remember much more than that about it. The writer stated that the government would not allow a patent for undisclosed reasons, and that the BIG THREE bought his rights to the design.
Have we heard of any kind of technology such as this replacing gasoline engines? NO. Why? Because the big three are set on keeping us dependant on oil/fossil fuels.
It truly is sad when with all the creativity and ability we have as "intelligent" beings, we are forced by those with money and control to succumb to whatever they say is they way it is.
If anyone can find any information regarding this magnetic motor, please send me whatever information you find. I have looked and was unsuccessful in locating anything.

I do believe every sector of life is in for major change. As the availability of cheap oil declines, it will be prudent to consider Personal Rapid Transit (www.skywebexpress.com) as an option to move people in urban areas. PRT, in its infancy, has not been implemented yet anywhere in the world. However, several companies are ready to do so (Minnesota, Wales). Personal Rapid Transit has much potential and is more efficient that buses, cars, or light rail.

Magnetic motors? Batteries? Toomas Karmo (posted above)seems to understand the ramifications of the delicine in fossil fuel as outlined in James Howard Kunstler's book and the futility of an 11th-hour scramble. Yes, the powers that be have had their agendas, but the point is moot - when the fount of fossil fuel stops flowing, mass production of magnets, batteries, solar panels, wind power turbines, and the like will be impossible.As a country, the U.S. (like many others) is ill-equipped to contend with a lack of fossil fuel. Our rail system (run on fossil fuel), large-scale food production (fossil fuel driven), and personal transportation will leave us all stranded and hungry.

Initially, after reading The Long Emergency, I envisioned a garden plot on our property here in Vermont, a chicken coop, horse, etc., but quickly realized I have no animal husbandry skills and a seriously flawed green thumb. After the "emergency," where would one buy seeds for crops? How does one cook daily on a gas stove that has no gas?

The brilliant thing about Kunstler's book is that, while dark, it does invite you to take a look at the most mundane details of life and realize how reliant we have become on such a finite fuel source.