I just finished reading "The Long Emergency" by James Howard Kunstler. I'm totally floored. I recommend that every Kossack-- indeed everyone in the Blogosphere-- read this book ASAP:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0871138883/qid=1127488836/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/103-
1178532-5209409?v=glance&s=books
Here's what I pulled out of it (below):
- This whole blogosphere, the Internet, the "netroots", the Open Source and Free Software movements, Flickr, Google, Wikipedia, and the always-on DSL/Cable and dirt-cheap PC's and cellphones on which these progressive tech-marvels are based, are all part of a technology bubble that is based on cheap fossil fuels. Which, of course, is doomed. Natural gas (used for electricity generation) is already past peak, coal is not as cheap, and oil is near or past peak. And all this stuff is made out of plastic too: oil.
- Our society did a profoundly stupid thing with its hundred-or-so years of oil wealth: it built suburbia. We in the blogopshere can do something much smarter with our remaining explosion of online digital connectivity-wealth: build local institutions and local communities that will survive the digital boom. This is exactly what Chairman Dean's DFA and "50-state strategy" is about-- and it is by far the smartest investment of our technorati boom possible. We must use our good fortune in cheap and near-ubiquitous connectivity to build local, low-tech institutions that will endure.
- Suburbia-- which is, as Kunstler calls it, "the single biggest misallocation of resources in human history"-- votes its best interests. Kunstler's view diverges from, say, that of "What's the Matter with Kansas?". According to "The Long Emergency", poor whites in the south, midwest, and west, are not doing anything at all anomalous by voting for Repugs. Almost all of them live in suburbia. Cheap oil is a damned requirement for them-- their livelihoods, house values, and daily survival depends on it. Blood for oil? Absolutely-- want it or not, they need it. 50% of this country lives in suburbia. 50% voted Repug in 2004. I think they are the same people, and what they did was completely rational. As I've said for years: Shrub is the symptom, not the problem. I hadn't identified what the problem is though, and Kunstler did: the death of cheap oil.
- We don't need to fight or battle globalisation, the rape of people and environment by corporate banditry, outsourcing, or the destruction of local commerce. Expensive oil will eliminate all these evils for us. Goodie, you say? Maybe, if we prepare for it. But we're not right now. The cure might be worse than the disease.
- All regions of this country are profoundly fucked, each in different ways. Those that have functioning small towns surrounded by productive farmland are less fucked, and present the best chances for survival.
- The survival skills we parents must teach our chilren are: organic farming, ranching, hunting, handcrafts, repairing and reusing tech detrius for useful purposes, the old-style trades and vocations, and-- most importantly-- how to build and maintain community and work together with each other.
Basically, the hippies had it right. The safest and healthiest place to be as energy prices scream up into the stratosphere-- is on an organic farming commune.
I have always found the idea of returning to a more local way of living in harmony with our neighbours and with the land, to be a hopeful and positive thing. I also have an enduring faith in human ingenuity-- which will help us survive but in no way will return us to the normality we know today. But the transition to that kind of equilibrium will be a huge step away from the land and from harmony. As governments, corporations (our current de-facto government) and regulatory agencies fall apart, pollution and violence will both get much worse before they get any better.
In short, there was nothing hopeful or positive about this book-- Kunstler is relentlessly negative and I found him very difficult and frightening to read. Maybe the post-oil-boom world will be spiritually healthier in the long run, but I'm now convinced that in the short run it will be hell on Earth. The America of the next 100 years or so won't resemble pre-industrial, Jeffersonian America as much as it'll resemble today's Baghdad... or New Orleans... or possibly tomorrow's Houston.