Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation
James Howard KunstlerWe’ve blown past the defining mileposts for global peak oil—2005 for conventional crude and 2008 if you include natural gas liquids, tar sand by-products, coal-based distillates, esoteric syncrudes, and other such stuff. In 2008 we had a nice demonstration of extreme volatility in the oil markets (predicted in The Long Emergency) with the price of crude zooming up to $147 a barrel and then crashing a few months later near $32. We’re not so sure of ourselves these days. The British Petroleum company’s 2010 Macondo well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico tempered the public’s zest for risky deepwater drilling projects. Oil is back in the $100 range. The Fukushima nuclear meltdown in the following year sobered up many nations about the prospects for the only well-developed alternative energy method capable of powering whole cities. Whether you believe in climate change or not, or contest that it’s man-made or is not, the weather is looking a little strange. In 2011 tornados of colossal scale tore through the American South, hurricane-induced five-hundred-year floods shredded Vermont, and Texas was so drought-stricken that Texans wondered if ranching there would even be possible in the years ahead. People have begun to notice a number of signals that reality is beaming out.
Whenever I venture out to the campuses and professional conferences people ask me, What’s your time frame for this long emergency? I tell them we’ve entered the zone. It amazes me that that there is any question. Who can fail to notice all...