Kunstler the crank
The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century
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The Long Emergency is James Kunstler's book about a looming crisis where world oil production peaks and oil-dependent nations enter a period of extended economic contraction, famine, pestilence, war, and other bad things
Kunstler's basic argument is that North American society is built on a "platform" of cheap fossil fuels, mainly oil. That platform is in danger of collapsing because of peak oil, poor design choices like suburban housing developments and SUVs, and greater consumption from rapidly industrializing nations like India and China. [1]
Certainly the best point in this book, the one that makes Kunstler's long emergency seem plausible, is that oil is a platform energy source (virtually everything we do requires it) and that there are no ready alternatives once it becomes scarce. Alternative fuels (solar, wind, biomass, even nucular) require oil in their manufacturing, or the construction of their infrastructure. Technological innovations like hydrogren fuel cells are, as Kunstler says, wishful thinking.
Kunstler also argues the so-called long emergency won't come gradually. It will be a cascading failure caused by relatively small fluctuations in supply (the analogy he gives is dehydration, which only requires a 10% loss in body water to be fatal). It will be quick and there won't be time to make preparations, discover new energy sources or make alternative fuels self-sustaining.
There's a lot of discussion on these topics, and I'm certainly no expert, but these ideas seemed plausible to me. Like many complex topics, your position on peak oil is more likely to be based on your existing viewpoints than the data. There's a lot of data, much of it obtuse, and there are influential opinions on both sides of the issue.
If you're market-friendly, then you'll probably think that the market will drive innovation and find a solution. I have a green bias so I find Kunstler persuasive, in an alarmist way, about the potential challenges.
Unfortunately, the alarmism is a problem [2]. Parts of this book read like the ravings of a cranky, frustrated ideologue. Kunstler's veiled predictions of war with China, revolution in Saudi Arabia, and upheaval at home seem gleefully dire. He says he fears for the future, but he also spends at least 30 pages vilifying surburbia [3]. It seems like he's looking forward to the crisis and hoping it's a kind of corporal mortification for America.
Outside of the unnecessary alarmism, Kunstler makes some really good points. Oil production will probably peak sometime soon [4], the cheap oil is basically gone, oil consumption is increasing dramatically, and there are no credible alternatives. What will our society look like when it's prohibitively costly to drive? How far will we go--as individuals and as nations--to secure our oil supplies?
1. You might have seen similar ideas in The End of Suburbia. There's a lot more to Kunstler's book than just peak oil, but that's the major part.
2. Okay, maybe the alarmism isn't completely unwarranted. Kunstler makes the point that we're sleepwalking toward the future. Fair enough. This all seems terribly important, and I'm just reading about it now (several months after at least one credible prediction of the global oil peak). And look, here's a Scientific American article from 1998 that talks about peak oil. Maybe the real question is "what am I so behind?"
3. Kunstler is rabidly anti-suburban for aesthetic and cultural reasons as much as economic ones. He's what peak oil critics call a "doomer," someone who believes the after effects of peak oil will be apolcalyptic.
4. Predictions range from last year to 2020 to 2030 and beyond. This opinion from the ASPO 7th International Oil Summit (April 2006) seems both informed and credible: "Malcolm Brinded, Executive Director of Exploration and Production for Shell, accepted that easy oil now is peaking, but saw no problems in increasing production steadily to 2020. Production from deep water, Arctic oil, heavy oil, oil sand and oil shales should be sufficient." Note that oil from these other sources can be significantly more expensive to produce than conventional crude.
