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September 15 2020
Review of: LIVING in the LONG EMERGENCY: Global Crisis, the Failure
of the Futurists, and the Early Adapters Who Are Showing
Us the Way Forward [0]

Actually ended up reading this twice, first time via the tiny screen
of an old phone. I like to be able to page around a book, especially
if there's an appendix, so I held off writing something up until
the library got their act together with respect to the corona-virus
thing and resumed checkouts of physical media.

Anyone familiar with Kunstler's previous books will likely glean
from the title that this is a followup on the author's 2005 book
'The Long Emergency' and to a lesser degree his 2012 book 'Too Much
Magic'; see my January 31, 2019 phlog post for a dual review of
those two books.

Kunstler's latest book is divided into 3 parts:
1) Where are we in the story? (updates since 2005)
2) Portraits of adapters (interviews)
3) Now what? (observations & opinions)

The book starts off with "What happened to Peak Oil?", not surprising
given that in many ways oil use and it finite nature is at the
heart of Kunstler's long emergency. Chapter 1 lays out the realities
surrounding the US "shale revolution", how essentially zero interest
rates post 2008 and a campaign of hype made it possible to actually
recover and even exceed for a time the world peak in conventional
oil that happened around 2005 (not so much a peak as a plateauing).
Kunstler goes on to point out the various shortcomings of shale
oil and to a lesser extent shale gas, the unfavorable EROI, the
rapid depletion rates of wells, the incomplete distillate profile
requiring blending before refining. Had the author waited another
year he could have incorporated some of the craziness that has spun
out of the COVID-19 pandemic, what petroleum analyst Art Berman
has deemed "Game Over" for much of the oil industry [1]. That may
seem premature but the lag in the system means the fallout from a
falling rig count is several months out; economic forecasts from
the US federal reserve have been fairly gloomy [2].

Part 1 rounds up with a chronicle of the usual laundry list of why
the so-called renewable energy technologies are not going to fill
the void left by a sustained fossil fuel shortfall. Kunstler
singles out electric vehicles (EVs) and their promoters for particular
derision, basically driving home the point that EVs still very much
have a tailpipe, it's just no longer on the vehicle. They also have
a comparable levels of embedded energy to their internal combustion
engine counterparts, the tires and brakes will still contribute to
micro particle pollution, the roads still in need of maintenance
and repair. EVs in large numbers would also put significant demands
on the aging power grid that has so far resisted becoming "smart".
Lastly, an ever-shrinking middle class makes for a diminishing
market; it's not clear longer lasting but rather expensive EVs
would even be a sufficiently profitable endeavor. For Kunstler
EVs are just a desperate attempt to keep the suburban life going
a bit longer.

Part 2 introduces the reader to various people supposedly already
living the long emergency. I found this section to be a mixed bag.
A few of the folks profiled seem genuinely engaged in adaptive
endeavors, mostly agricultural. Mark Shepard of New Forest Farms
was probably the most interesting as he has been developing perennial
systems using silviculture, sort of along the lines of The Land
Institute's perennial cereal crops [3]. Other "adapter portraits"
seemed more reactive than adaptive, though perhaps flexible reaction
is an adaptive approach to an unraveling system. The author chose
to include quite a bit of personal background information for
several of the interviewees even though it didn't actually seem to
add much to understanding their present circumstances. And then
there was the white supremacist who runs a taxi service and claims
to be a Buddhist who really didn't seem to exhibit any adaptive
qualities outside of what one would expect to need for a taxi
service. Seems most of those profiles were/are readers of Kunstler's
blog or personal acquaintances. KMO of the C-Realm podcast [4],
a Kunstler acquaintance, closes out part 2, held up as "the struggling
millennial" (see my July 03, 2019 phlog post for a review of
'Conversations on Collapse', a collection of interviews KMO had
published in book form).

Part 3 of the book -- what now? -- begins by surveying some of the
pools of deep concern that have clarified considerably since the
turn of the century. It's the usual Bad News -- pollution,
over-population, climate change, species extinction [5], water
shortages. The effect of all this on food production gets particular
focus as it's largely conducted by a handful of giant agri-businesses,
from the massive mono-culture crops to industrialized meat production
and global supply chains. There have been several studies predicting
that heat stress and changing rainfall patterns will exert a downward
force on cereal yields, approximately 10% for each degree C of
warming, a big deal considering cereals plus soy and corn provide
roughly 67% of the human diet. Given that so much of the corn and
soybean production is actually fed to livestock, it's fairly easy
to predict some problems with maintaining current levels of meat
consumption. Perhaps an early indicator is the seemingly over-night
appearance of Beyond Meat, Impossible Burgers, and other plant-based
"meats" on fast food menus and store shelves.

The book wraps with Kunstler opining on the financialization of
the economy and his social-political views on the times, pretty
much all he writes about on Clusterfuck Nation, his blog [5] and
largely why I've soured on the guy. While some of his observations,
particularly on what many call "late-stage Capitalism" are insightful,
mostly Kunstler comes across as a cranky old white dude with some
fairly retrograde views on race and gender issues, as well as a
strange obsession with "liberal elites in universities". Kunstler
often laments the supposed loss of an American "common culture"
and how that has led to identity politics and divisiveness. While
I can see some truth in that point of view I think it ignores quite
a lot of inconvenient history that has given rise to the "woke"
movements such as Black Lives Matter that he clearly detests, at
least the left-leaning ones.

For example, Kunstler postulates in chapter 13 that after WW-II
Americans awoke to the injustice of racial segregation, essentially
an American apartheid, and set about righting the wrong, culminating
in the civil rights laws of the 1960s, yet due to separatist
movements African-Americans opted not to integrate with the dominate
(white) culture thereby passing on a chance at the American Dream(tm).
Yeah.. While there certainly were black separatists questioning
the wisdom of integration, theirs was but one voice among many.
And obviously passing a few laws hardly changes a culture; I
seriously doubt those disinclined to having black neighbors underwent
a change of heart. In any event, newly "empowered" citizens would
have been late to the party; the 1970s saw the peak of US conventional
oil production, certainly contributing to the stagnation and steady
decline of lower and middle class incomes that has more or less
continued to the present.

It's rather perplexing that the Kunstler can see that the US has
been a "hustle" from day one, yet fails to see how that could
manifest a culture where those in power can subjugate one group
after another in pursuit of wealth and it's considered normal.

The author includes a personal coda where he elaborates on his own
adaptations. Despite his NYC roots he has found life in various
small towns in upstate New York more to his liking, doing the usual
homesteader things like a planting a garden, raising chickens,
implementing redundancies for heating, getting around, etc. He
also plays in a Jazz band and paints landscapes. He was married
but has been divorced since 2004. He has had several health issues
stemming from a bad hip replacement which caused cobalt poisoning;
he has since recovered. Kunstler will likely have more like-minded
neighbors as upstate NY seems to tick off many boxes on the checklists
of those seeking a more favorable locale for living out their lives
in the long emergency.

- -

For Kunstler fans wanting a more favorable take on this book please
check out Frank Kaminski's review on Mud City Press [7].

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[0] https://www.benbellabooks.com/shop/living-in-the-long-emergency/

[1] https://www.artberman.com/2020/04/27/game-over-for-oil-the-economy-is-next/

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/10/us-economy-federal-reserve-jobs-coronavirus

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Land_Institute

[4] https://c-realm.com/kmo/

[5] Wildlife in catastrophic decline
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-54091048

[6] https://kunstler.com

[7] https://www.mudcitypress.com/livingthele.php