Book Review
Living in the Long Emergency By Jon N. Hall If Americans are concerned about energy prices and shortages, not to mention the end of civilization as we know it, then they might want to read James Howard Kunstler’s 2020 essay collection Living in the Long Emergency . In “Hey, What Happened to Peak Oil?” and “The Alt-Energy Freak Show” and “Money, Oil, and Their By-Products” (chapters 1, 2, and 13), Kunstler gives us his take on fossil fuels and their supposed replacements: renewables, i.e. wind and solar. He also analyzes the financial industry’s role in energy. Here’s a bit: The shale oil “miracle,” therefore, was a very impressive financial and technological stunt. In practical terms, it provided a means to pull forward from the future the last dregs of recoverable oil, so the US could live large for a few years longer. As independent oil analyst Arthur Berman put it: “Shale is a retirement party for the oil industry.” Kunstler contends that shale oil, which has recently accounte