Christina's review
The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century
by James Howard Kunstler
Christina's review
The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century by James Howard Kunstler
Christina's review
rating:
bookshelves:
current-events,
non-fiction
Scathing and scary. Not much here for individual survival, as the author seems primarily interested in the survival of the "project of human civilization". But lots of good info on Peak Oil, including a history of oil and steady reminders of how thoroughly oil has become part of the daily fabric of American life. It's not just what we feed our cars, it's how we heat our homes and grow our food. It's an ingredient in or part of the manufacturing process for darn near everything. America has built it's current living arrangements around cheap, abundant oil... and doesn't seem to show any signs of changing it's tune. Whether the author's timeline of a Long Emergency being well underway by 2025 is accurate or not, it's likely that no one in a position to do something on a national scale will be successful in a timely enough fashion to stave off all the catastrophes coming with the end of the Cheap Oil Age and the onset of Climate Change, whenever they arrive.
