The Long Emergency: a Long Review

Well, "11 car trips per day" would seem to have some "give" in it. I wonder how many trips it would be at $10/gal?

"That Biomass is a joke- the fuel used to grow the corn that is mulched for biomass is greater than the output."

Biomass produced with industrial agriculture (with ton petrochemicals), sure.

Biomass from cellulose (of wood, hay or some fast growing weed.. Or hemp, according to some hippies); not so crazy, but of course would never be enough to replace oil and allow us to keep our crazy lifestyle.

So the author has a point, although I wouldn't quite say that biomass is "a joke".

An antidote to Kunstler's bleak vision is Nancy Jack Todd's _A Safe and Sustainble World_, her account of the history of New Alchemy Institute and its spin-off organizations like ANAI and Ocean Arks International.

Richard Duncan has studied world peak oil country by country for the last decade or so. He has something he calls the Olduvai Gorge Theory, that we have progressed from Olduvai Gorge and are going back there unless we stop our reliance on fossil fuels and begin scaling up our use of renewables.

Then again, a confirmatory vision for Kunstler might be Jack London's _The Scarlet Plague_ in which he relates how thin the veneer of "civilization" actually is, although the trigger event is a pandemic rather than an energy crunch.

See also:

"One long emergency"
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/002721.html

On the subject of lights, too many bicyclists are getting injured by motorists and bad drivers with cellphones glued to their ears.

Now, a novel flashlight offers to make pedestrians and cyclists safer.

Its like a Blackhawk Gladius high-end flashlight, but now made in Canada. A Blackhawk Gladius competitor. The Cdn. flashlight appears to have more than 2X the output, and costs less, too. The Blackhawk is US$250 and the Canadian (Po' Boy's Gladius) is only $150.

Its on eBay. Search for "gladius flashlight" located in Canada.

Or, here's a link to eBay search, below.

http://tinyurl.com/acrz5

It's interesting to propose that we're going to go from today's civilization to a more locallized agrarian barter system style society, might not be too bad, except that the meanwhile won't be so pretty. People won't and can't just willingly move out and start a small farm. The foundation of the advancement of our society has been improving the productivity of farming, so one person can work more and more acres, and we're at the point now where a few skilled machinists and green thumbs can produce hundreds of acres and a variety of crops. The 1.6% farm employment is unlikely to go up without some serious de-civilization. The same with the wal-mart economy, if they can't do well, then either people have wizened up and leveled the playing field for better business models, or nobody is doing well. Likely the latter.

More of the same old "the sky is falling, the sky is falling".

Kunstler is quite a pistol. I've been keeping an eye on him since I saw him in "The End of Suburbia" - essential viewing. He wrote an article in Rolling Stone that, I must say, made me wonder if his vision of the future is so bleak:

"The Long Emergency is going to be a tremendous trauma for the human race. We will not believe that this is happening to us, that 200 years of modernity can be brought to its knees by a world-wide power shortage. The survivors will have to cultivate a religion of hope -- that is, a deep and comprehensive belief that humanity is worth carrying on. If there is any positive side to stark changes coming our way, it may be in the benefits of close communal relations, of having to really work intimately (and physically) with our neighbors, to be part of an enterprise that really matters and to be fully engaged in meaningful social enactments instead of being merely entertained to avoid boredom."

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/7203633?rnd=1113439994015&has-player=true

I suspect that Kunstler is making this argument as extreme as he can, because you need to use this sort of drastic message to wake people up. There is a thread of hope buried deep within his message; the first step to fixing the problem is understanding what is broken, what needs fixing.

He understands that in order to get the masses of West Worlders to wake up to this problem, his drastic methods are required.

No matter how "small," "local," "anti sprawl" we get, we can still keep our communications networks alive. Globalism will not die with the new world order that Kunstler is describing. But we will have to make huge, earth-shattering changes to our culture; so many other things WILL die, in order for the planet to live.

The problem with making the argument extreme is that it ends up told so much that when it's really an issue, nobody will care.

Personally - I see that much of our economy will go back to being electric. We'll use rails and overhead wires for much of our transportation again (yes, for goods too). As oil becomes more expensive and demand increases for electricity, things like solar water heaters will become more widespread. Individuals will have solar panels and windmills to generate some of their electricity. In places like WA state, we're using hydro for most of our electricity anyway.

If the price of oil skyrockets, there will be innovation to return to electricity. Yes, it'll be slow. Many may die. But I don't see a fundamental shift in the way we live, just in how much electricity we use. People won't buy plastic junk anymore, at least.

Lloyd, source your comment about 11 car trips per day. That's definitely way too high - I suspect the average is two or three.

Ben, I read the book in one sitting and cannot find the reference, but it does not surprise me at all- two kids, pick them up , take them to soccer, pick them up, go to the store and the supermarket and throw going to work in there.

with respect to your comments about electricity, another thing not mentioned is our still fabulous rail network. The highways have been subsidized forever and have stolen much of the freight traffic from rail, which uses a tenth of the fuel that trucks do. Just moving freight back onto the rails (and passengers too!) would save incredible amounts of fuel (even if still diesel electric). We did it for a hundred years and it worked very well, and most of the infrastructure is still there.

I have another source of "trip" info. The National Bicycling and Walking study, availavle here:

http://www.bicyclinginfo.org/

says:

"The NBWS, however, called for a doubling of the percentage of trips made by bicycling and walking. This percentage has increased from 7.9 percent to 9.5 percent. The disparity between the near doubling of actual trips and the slight percentage increase can be explained by the explosive growth in total reported trips made; from 249 billion in 1990 to 407 billion in 2001. In short, reported bicycling and walking trips have increased significantly, but the number of reported driving trips has increased at a rate that eclipses that of bicycling and walking."

... I don't know, do we divide the 400 billion trips by the number of active drivers?

Plastic junk? The oil runs out and the plastic junk made from petroleum byproducts will no longer be cheap. It will be very very expensive and "antique" plastic will be all the rage. Save your best plastic pieces now! So you can auction them off at Sothebys when they become scarce and collectible.

I just finished this book and while depressing, it was a real eye-opener in that it provided, if you will, a unified theory of America's decay. Most of us who've lived 25+ years can look back over our short span of history and cite examples of increasing ennui in all aspects of of "society".

I've seen it mentioned elsewhere and I must agree, at times Kunstler's sterotyping of various cultures is frustrating and detracts from his overall message. But as others have said, stereotypes wouldn't exist if there weren't trends to create them from. Kunstler just extrapolates from the most common stereotypes and asks the question, "how well will this stereotype handle the extreme changes coming?" Frequently the answer is not well, particularly if you look at how the oil-boom of the 20th century has reinforced those stereotypes and added, to each of them, a grim specter of "entitlement".

Regarding hydro-power Kunstler points out that our massive dams and generation facilities will have limited lifespans following the oil crunch because of silting and our inability to effectively manage these behemoths of modern engineering.

While it sometimes seems abysmal and apocalyptic, The Long Emergency presents a great deal of food for thought... for example, perhaps buying a $400,000 2BR home on a 1/4 acre lot in the middle of a sea of identical homes, 11 miles from the town center, is not actually a wise investment.

one of the common responses to this story of impending doom is that "we will just switch to this or that" but Kunstler makes a good point that a viable economy is required to fund such massive endeavors. there's also the power for the machinery needed to do the job, which has to be oil unless we're going to do it old school. where is the will to do that?

we could start now of course, but the strategy is instead to gain control of the remaining oil and pretend that everything is fine! there is actually probably no other way considering the shit storm our leaders would face if they admitted that they made such bad choices for so long. they have "no choice" but to stockpile their compounds and close the gates behind them.

11 car trips is about right. 2 for work, 2 for the store, 2 to take the kids to and from soccer/piano/aikido/whatever, 2 more to get whatever you forgot to get from the store and a trip out to McDonald's during lunch - that's 9 trips right there. One reason the average is so high is the number of people who drive for a living - cabbies, pizza delivery, etc. Add in teenagers, who can easily do 15-25 trips a day, and you're talking serious mileage. That being said, I'd like to see the methodology and sample data for the statistics.

Going electric - sure, Oregon and Washington are 75% hydro (or more), but all the good hydro sites are taken already, and hydro across the nation as a whole is about 10% of total electricity. Do we say "screw you" to the rest of the nation? Half our electricity is generated by coal, transported by oil-burning (diesel) locomotives. The average coal plant has 30-90 days of coal - what happens if the trains can't run (for whatever reason)? An increase in electrical generation is going to require a lot more coal or lots of nuclear - neither option is really desirable.

As for stereotyping of cultures - it's easy to stereotype a culture. Stereotypes are like statistics - if the sampling is large enough, it's very accurate. Some are not pretty, and some are downright wrong. Most stereotypes of a culture are going to be fairly truthful. The problem with both stereotypes and statistics is that they rarely if ever apply to individuals. Never judge someone by their race, religion, political affiliation, gender, sexual preference, etc, etc. - in all likelihood, they won't match the stereotype. We're all individuals and are each unique. We should treat each other as such. Unfortunately, as a large group, our individual quirks, traits, etc average each other out, and general trends become very evident, providing the basis for stereotypes and statistical information, just like the dots in a pointillist painting resolve into a picture. The fact that individual dots find the picture offensive does not change the picture, nor does it make a blue dot into a green one. Each dot retains its individual characteristics.

I think Kunstler has a fairly good handle on what's coming up - it sounds really depressing, but it really isn't if we can get along with our neighbors and manage our resources successfully. The end of the oil era and suburbia is a tremendous opportunity to build community again, if we can manage to embrace diversity and get along with each other.

Having read this book in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina I am sure there will be big changes in the next 10 to 20 years (and beyond) Very few of them will be made as concious rational choices and even fewer will be pretty, easy or gracious. I remember the gas rationing of the 70's and expect to see rationing of most if not all resources in the near future.
I do not believe that things are as bleak as portrayed by Kunstler but he is TOO Close For Comfort! Anybody remember the old movie "Soilant Green"?

I'm purchasing land in Kansas near a river. With a house and outbuildings. I grew up there, and if necessary, am prepared to return.