 James
Kunstler's The Long Emergency is, at its heart, a story. It is a
dystopia, but an entirely credible one. The pieces of this story have
all been told before -- the failure to learn from the lessons of
history, the fact that nothing (including civilization) lasts forever,
the scenarios of a world riven by cultural strife, and by the ultimate
necessity to repay resource overuse and financial debts racked up in a
reckless "tomorrow will take care of itself" spending spree. The story
has a frighteningly familiar ring to it -- it is a retelling of the
stories our parents taught us about living beyond our means.
It
is also a narrative about the laws of thermodynamics, and about what
happens when we blithely assume that technology will magically find
ways to overturn them. Its message is simple: we have to learn to live with less
-- much less, and very soon. Those that see Kunstler as a glum
neo-Malthusian should consider that in this book he predicted, six
months before it happened, the attack of Islamic fanatics on London.
The
law of supply and demand is as inexorable as the laws of
thermodynamics. Chinese demand for oil is growing at 16% per year and
accelerating. Saudi oil supplies are being taxed to the limit using
colossal amounts of expensive injected seawater, ultimately shortening
their lives. The US is currently codependent on both cheap Mideast oil
and cheap Chinese manufactured goods. The debt level of the US
government and its corporations and citizens is unprecedented in the
history of civilization and requires low interest rates to be sustained
indefinitely to keep all three groups from bankruptcy. China's water
table is dropping at a phenomenal 3 to 10 feet per year,while land
available for agricultural production is shrinking rapidly, meaning
that China is going to need to ratchet up its oil consumption not only
to sustain its exploding manufacturing economy but its agricultural
economy as well -- and it has virtual no oil reserves of its own and is
entering a period of sustained water crisis. Put these together and any
economist could tell you the long-term price of oil will be (following
huge short-term whipsaws) infinitely large, and the long-term value of
the US dollar will be (following equally huge short-term currency
instability) infinitely small.
Kunstler begins the book by
hinting at the future, kind of working you into it slowly and then,
before his narrative takes full flight, he painstakingly deconstructs
the myths that energy salvation will come from natural gas, tar sands,
hydrogen, coal, hydroelectricity, solar and wind power, biomass,
nuclear, and six other forms of energy I hadn't even heard of. He is
not dismissive (Kunstler is so pragmatic and cautious that he actually
accepted there was some logic to Bush's invasion of Iraq, due to
Hussein's unwillingness to grant access to the UN inspectors to the
underground bunkers beneath the dictator's palaces). He sees a huge
role for coal and nuclear power (with their attendant damages and
risks) in mitigating the massive lifestyle changes that will be
required to survive in the future with reduced, unaffordable oil.
But ultimately, he illustrates, the problem will reach crisis because of cultural unpreparedness
and inertia -- the inability of Western 'suburban' culture to
"entertain the possibility that industrial civilization will not be
rescued by technological innovation". This will be compounded, he
argues, by "multidimensional turbulence" in the Islamic world --
"religious, ethnic, ideological, economic, taking place on an
underlayer of ecological desperation as populations in many Muslim
nations grossly overshoot the carrying capacities of the places they
inhabit", compounded further by an end to free-ride handouts from those
nations' utterly corrupt and dysfunctional governments.
The
equation Kunstler lays out is simple: The more human food we have, the
more humans we create to consume it. And vice versa. Most human food is
now oil-dependent (without oil the 250% yield increases of the 'Green
Revolution' will end, and we will be left with massively depleted soil
-- compounded by a severe water shortage). Less oil, less food. Less
food, fewer people. The oil production curve in the top illustration
above will be followed very quickly by an almost identical human
population curve. Unpleasant, unpreventable, precedented, and
predictable.
Those in denial will not bother reading Kunstler's
book (though that won't stop them from criticizing it). I'm not going
to relate the evidence he provides to support his scenario, or the
scenario itself, but here are a few of the lessons his story could
teach us:
- "The future will be much more about staying where you are than traveling incessantly from place to place"
- We
should not forget that fossil fuels are essential not only for modern
travel and food production, but also for electric light (giving us
respite from "the despotic darkness of night") and for making safe,
sanitary 'private' homes affordable for the majority for the first time
in history. We think of light, security and sanitation as perpetual and
permanent, but they are recent and dependent on resources that are
running out, so they are all at risk.
- "If it takes a barrel of
oil to get a barrel of oil out of the ground, then you are engaged in
an act of futility". As the second chart above shows, we are getting
increasingly and precipitously close to that level of futility now, and
much of the remaining oil in the ground is well beyond that level, even
allowing for foreseeable improvements in extraction technology.
- "It
is not their job to look after the future of the world", BP oil
geologist Colin Campbell has written, as explanation of why Big Oil
knows, but is not telling us, about the energy crisis on the horizon
and the need to prepare for a future of energy scarcity.
- There
is a significant possibility that China, whose appetite for oil is
skyrocketing, could strike a devil's bargain with the Mideast countries
(once the fundamentalists overthrow the playboy sheiks in Saudi
Arabia), offering them the opportunity to cut off supplies to the West
entirely, while still giving them a huge market for their oil, an offer
that could prove irresistible to many oil-rich Islamic nations.
- "Under
the current profligate industrial farming system, it takes 16 calories
of inputs (largely oil products) to produce one gram of grain, and 70
calories of inputs to produce one gram of meat". The
Cargill/ConAgra/ADM oligopoly model of food production is perverse and
bankrupt (in more ways than one) and will be one of the first
casualties of the end of cheap oil.
The last chapter tells the
future story of the local economy of upstate New York, describing in
detail how every part of their daily lives -- commuting, shopping,
producing and obtaining food, keeping warm etc. will change with the
end of cheap abundant energy. He goes on to explain how the situation
of big cities and suburbs will be even more dire (they are too remote
from food supplies and too dependent on energy, and will ultimately
become unsafe and unsanitary as infrastructure becomes unsustainable
and begins to deteriorate. The best situated Americans, he says, will
be those in small towns with fertile agricultural hinterlands (good
food close), ideally located on rivers, with dense, walkable
infrastructure, and buildings that are well-insulated and have roofs
that will be easy to keep in good repair.
"We will be compelled
by the circumstances of the Long Emergency to conduct the activities of
our daily life on a smaller scale, whether we like it or not, and the
only intelligent course of action is to prepare for it." The
alternative, in his very compelling portrayal, is chaos, leading to a
feudal economy and a society increasingly dominated by evangelical
religion (these religions are less dependent on the oil economy than
more centralized social infrastructure like central governments and
large corporations, both of which could collapse as they become unable
to afford or enforce continued operations).
Kunstler's story
read likes progress and time read backwards -- about a regression
almost exactly mirroring in pace and attributes the steps we took to
get to where we are now. Even the future need for masses of working
animals to do what we humans cannot do on muscle power alone, is
anticipated and presented in an astonishing plausible and credible
scenario.
What is most frightening to me about Kunstler's
scenario is that it sounds so much, in every respect, like the lead-up
to and events of the Great Depression, except on a much larger and more
enduring scale. We have all been here before. We had a sneak preview of
our likely future, but it was too long ago, a lesson we have long
forgotten. |
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
