💾 Archived View for sdf.org › mmeta4 › Phlog › phlog-2019-01-31.txt captured on 2021-12-03 at 14:04:38.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
January 31 2019 A review of two non-fiction books by James Howard Kunstler: The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century (c) 2005 Grove Press, New York Too Much Magic: wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation (c) 2012 Grove/Atlantic Press, New York - - Some time ago I picked up a used copy of The Long Emergency which I finally got around to recently. Because the book is now over 14 years old I was curious whether Kunstler had changed his mind on anything given the central role Peak Oil plays in his take on the state of the world; in 2005 US shale oil was still largely not on the public's radar and the 2008 financial meltdown had yet to materialize. My recollection of this period was that of what then Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan would call "irrational exuberance"; people were making money flipping real estate, buying Hummers and generally tricking their lives out in all the ways American consumerism makes possible. Kunstler's 2012 followup book, Too Much Magic, was at the library so I checked it out and continued reading. By this time the "shale revolution" was making headlines and the country was still early in recovery from 2008 meltdown. My recollection of this period was a sense that things had fundamentally shifted to something less optimistic. The period gave rise to both the Occupy and Tea Party movements and there was a general sense of the larger public having been betrayed by those in power, both government and corporate, particularly those associated with the banking and finance sectors. Despite Obama's "Change you can Believe In" messaging people were struggling with reduced hours, high mortgages and expensive gas. Hummer folded and Wall Street got bail outs. I don't recall anyone in finance going to jail other than Bernie Madoff. Anyway, on to the review. The Long Emergency was somewhat of a mixed bag, though that's by design. The view it lays out is US-centric but that's okay, Kunstler largely seems to stick to writing what he knows about. Essentially the book moves methodically through the various challenges likely to confront Americans in the coming decades: energy and resource scarcity, food and water insecurity, climate weirding, pandemics of various origins, financial crisis, political unrest. Kunstler accurately called the 2008 crash and the lesser noticed peaking of conventional oil production which produced an oil spike to $150/barrel before the shale oil started flowing. For those already versed in Peak Oil theory and Climate Change and the myriad of ways each could influence food production, the economy, and overall standard of living large, much of the book's message will not be particularly shocking. Most Americans however aren't particularly aware of these emerging threats. If they've heard of Peak Oil they often assume that shale oil nullified it and Climate Change simply means shorter Winters and longer Summers - what so bad about that? The full spectrum of what awaits is well out of view in the public's Overton window. The Long Emergency does a pretty good job explaining the hows and whys of the role fossil fuels currently play in our global industrial civilization, how many of the proposed de-carbonization schemes are not likely to be drop-in replacements for fossil fuels, and the likely fallout of these inconvenient facts. Similarly for Climate Change, it lays out how rising sea levels, reduced crop production, migration of tropical diseases northward, along with climate refugees could become ever-growing stresses on life in the US. Kunstler introduces the thermodynamic concept on Entropy to illustrate how energy flows through our civilization and how as the process is maximized, overall complexity is increased, requiring ever-increasing energy and resource inputs, essentially the economic growth paradigm that defines the modern age. Where The Long Emergency shines a bit less is in its geopolitical analysis. Kunstler comes off sounding like so many Republican fear-mongers as he shares his take on the rise of Islamic Fundamentalism across the Atlantic and Mexican Nationalists along the southern border. His motivation seems to be to illustrate how culture clash exasperates attempts to cope with the other emerging threats discussed. After reading the followup book I think Kunstler was trying to show how multiculturalism in the US has been taken too far, essentially displacing the historic notion of the American "melting pot", a common culture that all citizens buy into. Certainly a case can be made for that but Kunstler somewhat fails to do so. Another shortcoming of the book, both books actually, is the lack of both an index and end notes. Kunstler does include several footnotes throughout both books but clearly there was much more referenced in the research process; it would be nice to be able to check them given the weight of the topics covered. Moving on, Too Much Magic was Kunstler's followup to The Long Emergency which apparently sold pretty well (6 printings). Kunstler shifts his focus to the various forms of magical thinking that appear to be on the increase as we collectively approach the end of the growth, both economically and in shear population numbers. The hyper-complexity of modern life seems to exasperate the situation, sort of the existential uncertainty that the late Zygmunt Bauman often wrote about. For me, these techno-optimists are the worst. Over-application of technology in service to the ever-growing consumption of the planet's resources is largely what has gotten us into this mess. In fact, overshoot of one's resource base, whether it's food, water, or plundered goods from elsewhere, is generally what has done in most civilizations in the past. All of these fallen civilizations had "technology"; what they ran low of was what fuels it. Where Too Much Magic really shines: The unpacking of the various sci-fi futuristic fantasies, starting with some of the early 1900s "City of the future of 1950" predictions and culminating with Ray Kurzweil's Singularity. These are shown to have largely been more about the present than the future. The notion that somehow humans are going to cheat death by baking our minds into silicon and replacing our bodies with robotic facsimiles, bootstrapped by a benign AI that just wants the best for us is the epitome of techno-fantasy. If AI ever does reach some sort of sentient state it'll more probably conclude humans are a plague and promptly eradicate us. Dissection of the financial system, which is largely all that is keeping GDP in positive territory. Kunstler traces it from it's humble beginnings as simply a facilitator of normal business activities, the real economy, through the various stages of deregulation, to the hyper-complex behemoth of today where debt is channeled through various abstractions to make money from nothing much beyond churn. It's no wonder that the rich are so wealthy, even if much of that wealth is a bit surreal. Where Too Much Magic fails a bit: Near-term predictions. Best not to make them but I guess the temptation is there, especially if you had a few successes in the past. Kunstler erroneously predicts Mexico would be out of the oil business by 2015. Oops. He also assumed that housing would never recover in valuation, whereas it has actually surpassed the 2008 highs. Oops again. How many more "recoveries" we have left is a good question though. Kunstler spends a bit too much time taking about architecture (he was active in the New Urbanists movement) which, while somewhat interesting is a bit outside the stated scope of the book. That said, His points about suburban life not having much of a future is apt; notions that the era of "happy motoring" will somehow continue once the cheap oil is gone is more magical thinking. Kunstler is overly harsh in his criticism of young people, seeing tattoos and and other fashion choices as a refection of some sort of emotional stunting. While a case can likely be made for a general lack of maturity in many young people today, one can just as easily extend that assessment to their parents and beyond. Indeed, consumerism seems to result in an arrested development of the intellect. In any event, Kunstler seemingly ignores the long history of tattoos, which pre-date modernity, and discounts the timeless reality of older generations disdain for their offspring's fashion choices. In general, dispite its flaws, I found Too Much Magic the more interesting read as I'm constantly coming across essentially ungrounded polemics for rosy transitions to "green" energy, growth-centric climatic techno-fixes, and assorted nonsense on the feasibility of feeding and watering 9 billion humans in the not too distant future. It's as if the reality of our predicament is so unfathomable that it has to simply be ignored and discounted for something that fits our notion of forever forward progress, culminating someplace in the stars. The reality is most of us that survive the initial "corrections" may well find ourselves back in the fields scratching out a much more modest living.