The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century is a book by James Howard Kunstler exploring the consequences of a world oil production peak, coinciding with the forces of climate change, resurgent diseases, water scarcity, global economic instability, and warfare to cause major trouble for future generations.
The book's principal theme explores the effects of a peak in oil extraction on American society as well as the rest of the world. In both this book and in his other writings, Kunstler argues that the economic upheavals caused by peak oil will force Americans to live in more localized, self-sufficient communities.
The Long Emergency contains examples of:
- Apocalypse How: Kunstler predicts a potential societal collapse due to the scarcity of resources.
- Artificial Stupidity: Kunstler argues that governments will be incapable of effectively managing the problems caused by scarcity and collapse.
- City Noir: Large cities are depicted as particularly vulnerable to the effects of the long emergency, facing mass starvation, disease, and civil unrest.
- Crapsack World: Kunstler claims that Global Warming brought by the burning of fossil fuels coupled with decelerating industrialism because of depleting them is leading to the breakdown of society.
- Death by Genre Savviness: Kunstler suggests that alternative energy sources will be insufficient to meet the energy needs, leading to dire consequences.
- Depopulation Bomb: Kunstler discusses the possibility of human population decline due to diseases and explores various perspectives on this issue. He presents three viewpoints: nature's revenge against human arrogance, a moral victory against wickedness, and a positive development for the planet's health. Kunstler also discusses the irony of advocating population control while relying on resources like cheap oil for contraception. He argues that even stabilizing population levels may not prevent exceeding the Earth's carrying capacity. Kunstler concludes by highlighting the profound and unexpected repercussions that a decline in population or demographic changes would have on everyday life.
- Dystopia: The book portrays a bleak future in which transportation becomes difficult or impossible, causing the unavailability of necessary commodities and leading to mass suffering.
- The End of the World as We Know It: Kunstler's vision of the long emergency suggests a significant shift in the way society functions, with mass starvation, disease, and civil unrest becoming prevalent.
- False Utopia: Alternative energy sources, such as hydroelectric, solar, and wind power, are presented as inadequate to meet energy needs in the face of scarcity.
- The Famine: Kunstler predicts that the scarcity of resources will lead to increasing costs of shipping food and manufactured items, eventually resulting in prohibitively expensive commodities and potential civil unrest.
- Fertile Feet: Kunstler emphasizes the importance of local communities becoming self-sufficient in food production as a means to combat the scarcity of resources.
- Lost Technology: Kunstler argues that technologies like coal and nuclear power, which are considered environmentally harmful or risky, will become necessary despite their drawbacks.
- No Endor Holocaust: Kunstler dismisses hydrogen as a viable energy source, as it cannot be obtained directly from the earth and requires extraction from other sources with a net energy loss.
- Post-Peak Oil: Kunstler's premise is that easy-to-find oil is the foundation of industrial society and the pervasiveness of its effects is not widely appreciated. Through the 21st century, hydrocarbons like oil and natural gas will become increasingly difficult to obtain, becoming increasingly expensive and ultimately unavailable.
- Riches to Rags: Kunstler maintains that suburban sprawl is a living arrangement with no future in an oil-scarce world.
- Scavenger World: The scarcity of resources in Kunstler's vision implies a future where societies struggle to obtain necessary commodities, leading to a potential collapse.
- Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Kunstler's portrayal of the long emergency leans toward cynicism, highlighting the potential for mass starvation, disease, and civil unrest.
- Terminally Dependent Society: Everything characteristic of modern life could have been possible only with the harnessing of fossil fuels. The scarcity of petroleum will cause significant problems for transportation and the generation of electrical power. In addition, shipping of food and manufactured items will become increasingly expensive, ultimately prohibitively so. Also, natural gas is vitally important to food production as it is the raw material for much of commercial crop fertilizers. In the industrialized West, most food production and manufacturing are performed far from and abstracted away from the consumer.
- The World Is Not Ready: The book argues that the pervasiveness of the effects of cheap and plentiful oil is not widely appreciated, leading to potential unpreparedness for the long emergency.
- You Cannot Grasp the True Form: Zig-Zagged. Human brains are not equipped to process events on scales longer than a human lifetime. However, it is known that hydrocarbons accumulated in the Earth's crust over hundreds of millions of years.
