Want to freak yourself out while on the L? Read this book
"The developed world will begin to suffer long before the oil and gas actually run out. The American way of life -- which is now virtually synonymous with suburbia -- can run only on reliable supplies of dependably cheap oil and gas. Even mild to moderate deviations in either price or supply will crush our economy and make the logistics of daily life impossible. Fossil fuel reserves are not scattered equitably around the world. They tend to be concentrated in places where the native peoples don't like the West in general or America in particular, places physically very remote, places where we realistically can exercise little control (even if we wish to). For reasons I will spell out, we can be certain that the price and supplies of fossil fuels will suffer oscillations and disruptions in the period ahead that I am calling the Long Emergency."- from The Long Emergency by James Howard Kuntsler
Comments
Debra,
Put down the Kuntsler book immediately. From the short excerpt you provide I can guarantee you it is another in a long line of doomsday scenario books that have been coming out since in the early 70s "Club of Rome" reports. Everyone who adopts these doom and gloom scenarios (with respect to natural resources and modern capitalistic economies) fails to account for innovation and adaptation. The most famous doomsday author is Paul Ehrlich who was finally challenged by the late economist Julian Simon to put his money where his mouth is. They famously bet that the price of five different precious metals would go up or down based on their scarcity (Simon said they would go down because the market was constantly figuring out how to find/extract more of the metals in a more efficient way). Guess who won the bet?
I would make the same wager with Kuntsler.
Posted by: Jeff Singer | January 25, 2006 10:48 AM