The Long Emergency

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been reading The Long Emergency, by James Howard Kunstler, which has given me a darkly colored lens by which I now see our dependence on oil, our planet’s changing climate, and the heavy psychological and infrastructural investment we, humans, have made in our modern way of life. The point is, as the title of the book suggests, we’re already in a prolonged decline that the pubic doesn’t much appreciate, nor does it have the benefit of visionary leadership to confront head-on the steep challenge before us.

At any rate, thanks to Mr. Kunstler’s book I can now read something like this, and read in between the lines:

CIVITAVECCHIA, Italy — At a time when the world’s top climate experts agree that carbon emissions must be rapidly reduced to hold down global warming, Italy’s major electricity producer, Enel, is converting its massive power plant here from oil to coal, generally the dirtiest fuel on earth.

Over the next five years, Italy will increase its reliance on coal to 33 percent from 14 percent. Power generated by Enel from coal will rise to 50 percent.

And Italy is not alone in its return to coal. Driven by rising demand, record high oil and natural gas prices, concerns over energy security and an aversion to nuclear energy, European countries are expected to put into operation about 50 coal-fired plants over the next five years, plants that will be in use for the next five decades.

Read through lens by which I now digest items like the one quoted above, the matter of energy extraction becomes a lot more layered; and, in fact, the fundamental question becomes more pronounced, that is, How will we power the cities of tomorrow as we deplete our planet of the one reliable source of energy we’ve counted on for the past one hundred or so years?

The short-hand for summarizing the question, and the many challenging implications packed in it, is by labeling the problem simply “Peak Oil.” As I previously wrote, this is a subject that I’ve recently become interested in; which, I think, will serve me to digest the bits of information that chronicle our search for the next reliable energy source.

Moreover, as The Long Emergency details, the challenges will be enormous, especially given our heavy investment in our petroleum based infrastructure, which has allowed for “just in time supply chains,” for example, and the many comforts of modern living that we take for granted.

Clearly, I’m recommending that you read The Long Emergency. However, if you’d like to get a taste of the author and his material before adding the book to your Amazon shopping cart, here’s an interview with Mr. Kunstler: