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The Long Emergency

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The Long Emergency

Surviving the End of the Oil Age, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century

Atlantic Monthly Press,

15 min read
10 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

What will happen when America no longer has access to cheap oil? Bad news – amid lots of other bad news.

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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Applicable

Recommendation

Books with disturbing, unconventional ideas are invariably controversial and James Howard Kunstler’s dire treatise falls into this category. He presents global warming and the impending oil crisis as a simultaneous set of calamities, and contends that the U.S. faces economic, political and social crises as a result of the looming fuel shortage and climate change. This is not an upbeat prediction, but it packs a shocking punch that could alter your point of view. Certainly, his central theme – the demise of cheap oil colliding with the impact of global warming – rings true, but since no one has an accurate estimate on when the flow of oil will end or how climate change will unfold, his predictions warrant more investigation. Kunstler relates drought, famine, upheaval and disease to oil shortages and climate change. Despite some repetition, his arguments, especially regarding globalism, provide a needed, mind-changing perspective. Kunstler raises interesting questions. The challenge will be finding out if any of them have answers. getAbstract thinks this provocative book could stir widespread debate, especially in business circles.

Summary

Sleepwalking into Oblivion

Americans need a reality check. Although they should focus on terrorism and the war in Iraq, they face an even larger looming problem: the end of cheap oil and the impending energy crisis. The lack of oil will disrupt the suburban way of life and generate frequent wars over territories. All this will occur in an environment strained by global warming, growing populations and new outbreaks of disease. Imagine what will happen to American cities and suburbs when cheap oil is gone? This crisis will end the high standard of living that people in the West have enjoyed for years, and it will launch a depressing scenario of unfolding catastrophes: the “Long Emergency.”

Even though the oil crisis will lead to new wars, tensions, societal dislocations and conflicts, Americans have failed to grasp its true meaning. This blindness goes beyond denial. These complex problems create too much stress. People cannot comprehend conflicting ideas when they try to make sense of the world. They can’t take the “cognitive dissonance” (to borrow a term from developmental psychology). But recognizing this underlying psychological phenomenon does not eliminate the...

About the Author

James Howard Kunstler has written three other nonfiction books, The Geography of Nowhere, Home from Nowhere and The City in Mind, and nine novels. He has been an editor with Rolling Stone, and his articles have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly and The New York Times Magazine.

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