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The Long Emergency
Book

The Long Emergency

Surviving the End of the Oil Age, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century

James Howard Kunstler
Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005

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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Applicable

Recommendation

Books with disturbing, unconventional ideas are invariably controversial and James Howard Kunstler’s dire treatise falls into this category. He presents global warming and the impending oil crisis as a simultaneous set of calamities, and contends that the U.S. faces economic, political and social crises as a result of the looming fuel shortage and climate change. This is not an upbeat prediction, but it packs a shocking punch that could alter your point of view. Certainly, his central theme – the demise of cheap oil colliding with the impact of global warming – rings true, but since no one has an accurate estimate on when the flow of oil will end or how climate change will unfold, his predictions warrant more investigation. Kunstler relates drought, famine, upheaval and disease to oil shortages and climate change. Despite some repetition, his arguments, especially regarding globalism, provide a needed, mind-changing perspective. Kunstler raises interesting questions. The challenge will be finding out if any of them have answers. getAbstract thinks this provocative book could stir widespread debate, especially in business circles.

Take-Aways

  • America depends on cheap oil and is ill-prepared for it to become unavailable.
  • The lack of easy oil will produce a series of rolling crises that will disrupt U.S. society.
  • The phrase “long emergency” refers to various dire circumstances that will culminate in the 21st century.

About the Author

James Howard Kunstler has written three other nonfiction books, The Geography of Nowhere, Home from Nowhere and The City in Mind, and nine novels. He has been an editor with Rolling Stone, and his articles have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly and The New York Times Magazine.

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