The Indpendent
i-D
Arena
About the Author
Excerpted from The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century by James Howard Kunstler. Copyright © 2005. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
cannot stand too much reality." What you’re about to read may challenge
your assumptions about the kind of world we live in, and especially the
kind of world into which time and events are propelling us. We are in for
a rough ride through uncharted territory.
It has been very hard for us—lost in dark raptures of nonstop infotainment,
recreational shopping, and compulsive motoring—to make sense
of the gathering forces that will fundamentally alter the terms of everyday
life in technological society. Even after the terrorist attacks of September
11, 2001, that collapsed the twin towers of the World Trade Center and
sliced through the Pentagon, we are still sleepwalking into the future. We
have walked out of our burning house and we are now headed off the edge
of a cliff. Beyond that cliff is an abyss of economic and political disorder
on a scale that no one has ever seen before. I call this coming time the
Long Emergency.
What follows is a harsh view of the decades ahead and what will
happen, especially in the United States. Throughout this book I will concern
myself with what I believe is happening, what will happen, or what
is likely to happen, not what I hope or wish will happen. This is an important
distinction. It is my view, for instance, that in the decades to come
the national government will prove to be so impotent and ineffective in
managing the enormous vicissitudes we face that the United States may
not survive as a nation in any meaningful sense but rather will devolve
into a set of autonomous regions. I do not welcome a crack-up of our nation
but I think it is a plausible outcome that we ought to be prepared to face.
I have published several books critical of the suburban living arrangement,
which I regard as deeply pernicious to our society. While I believe we will
be better off living differently, I don’t welcome the tremendous personal
hardship that will result as the infrastructure of that life loses its value and
utility. I predict that we are entering an era of titanic international military
strife over resources, but I certainly don’t relish the prospect of war.
If I hope for anything in this book, it is that the public will wake up
from its sleepwalk and act to defend the project of civilization. Even in
the face of epochal discontinuity, there is a lot we can do to assure the
refashioning of daily life around authentic local communities based on
balanced local economies, purposeful activity, and a culture of ideas consistent
with reality. It is imperative for citizens to be able to imagine a
hopeful future, especially in times of maximum stress and change. I will
spell out these strategies later in this book.
Our war against militant Islamic fundamentalism is only one element
among an array of events already under way that will alter our relations with
the rest of the world, and compel us to live differently at home—sooner rather
than later—whether we like it or not. What’s more, these world-altering
forces, events, and changes will interact synergistically, mutually amplifying
each other to accelerate and exacerbate the emergence of meta-problems.
We are woefully unprepared for the Long Emergency.
Above all, and most immediately, we face the end of the cheap fossil fuel
era. It is no exaggeration to state that reliable supplies of cheap oil and
natural gas underlie everything we identify as a benefit of modern life. All
the necessities, comforts, luxuries, and miracles of our time—central
heating, air conditioning, cars, airplanes, electric lighting, cheap clothing,
recorded music, movies, supermarkets, power tools, hip replacement
surgery, the national defense, you name it—owe their origins or continued
existence in one way or another to cheap fossil fuel. Even our nuclear
power plants ultimately depend on cheap oil and gas for all the procedures
of construction, maintenance, and extracting and processing nuclear fuels.
The blandishments of cheap oil and gas were so seductive, and induced
such transports of mesmerizing contentment, that we ceased paying
Sleepwalking into the Future
attention to the essential nature of these miraculous gifts from the earth: that
they exist in finite, nonrenewable supplies, unevenly distributed around the
world. To aggravate matters, the wonders of steady technological progress
under the reign of oil have tricked us into a kind of "Jiminy Cricket syndrome,"
leading many to believe that anything we wish for hard enough can come
true. These days, even people in our culture who ought to know better are
wishing ardently that a smooth, seamless transition from fossil fuels to their
putative replacements—hydrogen, solar power, whatever—lies just a few years
ahead. I will try to demonstrate that this is a dangerous fantasy. The true bestcase
scenario may be that some of these technologies will take decades to
develop—meaning that we can expect an extremely turbulent interval between
the end of cheap oil and whatever comes next. A more likely scenario
is that new fuels and technologies may never replace fossil fuels at the scale,
rate, and manner at which the world currently consumes them.
What is generally not comprehended about this predicament is that
the developed world will begin to suffer long before the oil and gas actually
run out. The American way of life—which is now virtually synonymous
with suburbia—can run only on reliable supplies of dependably
cheap oil and gas. Even mild to moderate deviations in either price or
supply will crush our economy and make the logistics of daily life impossible.
Fossil fuel reserves are not scattered equitably around the world. They
tend to be concentrated in places where the native peoples don’t like the
West in general or America in particular, places physically very remote,
places where we realistically can exercise little control (even if we wish
to). For reasons I will spell out, we can be certain that the price and supplies
of fossil fuels will suffer oscillations and disruptions in the period
ahead that I am calling the Long Emergency.
--This text refers to an alternate
Hardcover
edition.
