The Long Emergency - the world to come.

[midnight armadillo]

If everyone could tear themselves away from the Terri Schiavo fiasco for a minute, check out this modest-length book excerpt:

http://earthship.org/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1112024051&archive=&start_from=&ucat=&

The Long Emergency
...
It has been very hard for Americans -- 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 our technological society. Even after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, America is still sleepwalking into the future. I call this coming time the Long Emergency.

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 the necessities of modern life -- not to
mention all of its comforts and luxuries: central heating, air conditioning, cars, airplanes, electric lights, inexpensive clothing, recorded music, movies, hip-replacement surgery, national defense -- you name it.

....

Adapted from The Long Emergency, 2005, by James Howard Kunstler, and reprinted
with permission of the publisher, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.


This is a must read excerpt from this forthcoming book. It summarizes the potential consequences of peak oil and what the future brings for our children and grandchildren. I was going to write something similar, as I've been digesting these facts for a while, but this is much more complete and informed than I could manage.

I've just finished reading Jared Diamond's book Collapse which discusses the history of societies that collapsed and failed. Combined with the recent Millenium Assessment that found 2/3 of the earth's resources are essentially used up, I have come to the conclusion that American society is fucked. FUCKED. All Americans seem to know how to do is shop, and consume, and when that is no longer possible we're in big trouble. This is not a Republican problem, it is not a Democratic problem, it is a problem with the core of our entire society.

I worry for my 18-month old son and the world he will grow to inherit.

[spooked911]

1. I too worry for my children very much.

and having a responsible leader in the white house would make such an incredible differfence to the coming post-peak challenges.

[megatherium]

2. I just saw our new congressman on campus here

(9th district of Indiana). I asked him about CAFE standards, and he started to say how farmers need their SUVs, and people can't get anywhere in the winter here without their SUVs. Clueless.

[CrispyQ]

3. The bigger you are, the harder you fall.

Yep, there are going to be many Americans waking up from their sleep wondering how the hell we ended up where we're going.

Have you read the book "Affluenza"? It's a quick read & very good. He says that a society decides how it defines 'affluence' and shortly after WWII, in America, we decided that affluence means material/monetary wealth instead of more leisure time with friends & family. He said at the time we made that decision as a society, we became consumers instead of citizens. As television became more & more prominent in our lives, marketing really took off & following that, the race for each of us to keep up with the 'Joneses.'

So the corporations & the government they own are very happy with the current condition of the masses; they are addicted to TV & shopping & the corporate government controls them through the media. Also, the masses have no free time or are so exhaused when they finally do have a few moments that they don't bother to investigate the truth for themselves. It's a win-win situation for our corporate government.

Until, of course, the environmental catastrophe that is sure to come, crashes around them. We live in interesting times. Scary, too. I don't have children, but I worry for the future of our species. Will we ever learn?

[midnight armadillo]

4. Excellent post

So the corporations & the government they own are very happy with the
current condition of the masses; they are addicted to TV & shopping & the
corporate government controls them through the media.

This is truly the crux of the issue. Since we are also apparently going to simultaneously have a financial crisis (i.e. broke government, falling dollar) and possibly a crisis of government (GOP lawlessness, Dem lack of spine) to go along with our energy crisis, I repeat - we're screwed.

I think it's a good idea to take up gardening. Organic gardening, that is :-)

[info being]

5. Only the Green Party has ANY answers politically

And most of their answers aren't palatable to most 'mericans.

[Speck Tater]

6. Very interesting article.

It promepted me to pre-order the book from Amazon. I look forward to reading it.