Life after oil

Oil has now climbed past $100 a barrel for the first time in US history. Some folks believe this is merely the result of market speculators driving up the price so that they can cash in on some serious profits. But for James Howard Kunstler, the astronomical prices are just one more sign that oil, the liquid foundation of techno-industrial civilization, is entering into a long state of emergency.

Kunstler’s 2006 book, The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century, argues that we have been running on nature's credit, and the bill is long overdue. With a diminishing supply of oil, Kunstler argues that the byproducts of an oil economy—global warming, terrorism, and a rash of diseases spread quickly through global commerce—will coalesce to bring civilization as we know it to a crippling end.

In Kunstler’s new novel, World Made by Hand, he provides a fictional story of what might happen after oil’s collapse. In Union Grove, NY, the book’s setting, epic disasters have already happened. Oil is gone, as is long distance transportation and the goods it once brought, everything from wheat to pharmaceuticals. Islamic terrorists have destroyed Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. with nuclear weapons. Pandemic flu and encephalitis have ravaged the population, leaving no family untouched. There may be a government, but its reach is limited and its existence matters little to the residents of Union Grove. Kunstler paints a picture of a world not unlike Rome after its fall or Europe in the time of the bubonic plague.

The novel is narrated by Robert Earle, a former marketing executive who lost most of his family to disease, with his only living son traversing the country like a depression-era hobo. His former job lost, Robert "was fortunate to have carpentry skills to fall back on and to have a decent collection of hand tools." His best friend is Loren, the town's minister, and together they work through the depression that has fallen over everyone, attempting to bring some civic life and responsibility back to the town as they rebuild from the ashes.

At the center of the novel is a group of religious fundamentalists, the New Faith Brotherhood, who move to the town and take over the abandoned school. The group is lead by Brother Jobe, named presumably after the Biblical Job, who believes he suffered personal disaster as a test of his faith. These fundamentalists wear all black, sing in minor keys, and seem not unlike the flagellists who populated Medieval landscapes during the plague.

The town's store, the "General," is located by the city dump where motorcycle gangs raid the town's landfill for goods that were once tossed out in better times. The Wal-Mart and K-Mart have been gutted for scraps and sit abandoned on the outskirts of the town. The car lots now hold only an "inventory of sumac bushes where Land Cruisers and Priuses used to sit parked in enticing ranks."

The only person well off in this world is a wealthy farmer, Stephen Bullock, who valued self-sufficiency before it became a necessity. His farm produces most of what it needs to support itself and enough extra to trade for what it can’t produce itself. Former executives and college professors now work for him as semi-serfs on this apocalyptic plantation.

World Made by Hand is a powerful novel, a warning from a future we must escape. It shows the strength of a community coming together out of need, but it also shows us a lawless world of suffering. Kunstler is both a prophet and a curmudgeon, and as such he lacks the subtlety to be a fine novelist, often too ready to tell rather than show us the effects of the Long Emergency. But his vision is sharp, and whether it is told well or badly, he illuminates the world to come if we don't change our ways now.

World Made by Hand, by James Howard Kunstler, Atlantic, 317 pages, $24.00.

Posted on Mar 7, 2008 at 8:54 AM
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Comments

Very good and insightful review, Ragan. One of the most important books of our era, and if Hollywood is watching, this book will become a very good movie in the year 2015 or so. It takes that long to find financing, stars and a director. But I feel this could be even better than the Day After Tomorrow in alerting the general public (by the way, I always wondered: who is "General Public", a military man or just a commoner?) and can't wait to see in a darkened theater and watch it screen.

Kunstler is an important prophet of our times. More people should be listening to him. And less people should be listening to clowns like Vaclav Klaus who needs to have some his statements fact-czeched.... see this blog for info on the new awards program named after him:

http://climatejokeawards.blogspot.com/

Posted by:danny |March 7, 2008 8:04 PM

I'm not sure whether the book is widely available, but "Kokopu Dreams", by Chris Baker is a great post-apocolyptic book set in New Zealand. It eschews the car culture and embraces how communities can work together, especially in adverse circumstances. It is a frightening, but inspiring read in our times.

Posted by:Alex |March 7, 2008 10:58 PM

Anyone interested in Kunstler's work ought to visit his web site www.kunstler.com There's a lot information there, and links, for those who want to survive a post-oil future. Plus, he's humorous as well as right on the money (or lack of it). In particular, see his continuing series "Clusterfuck Nation Chronicles"...which epxlains just how fucked we are.

We've bought it and, sooner than later, we'll pay for it. Kunstler tells us how....in spades. I dare you to defy his insight and wisdom.

For those interested, read "Black Monday" by R Scott Reiss. Another post-oil novel which might open a few eyes. Think you trust the government now?...just wait 'til you read this one!

At any rate, Kunstler is the man right now. I wish Hillary and Barak (McCain...forget him) could speak the truth to this situation. The Empire is finished....kapoot...a thing of the past. We just need to recognize and live up to this truth.

Posted by:emaho |March 9, 2008 8:00 PM

Alew and Emhaho and Ragan, are readers we cannot see:

If things get so bad as JHK predicts, and I am listening to him loud and clear ... then we might need to relocate in far distant future to more northern climes than Lower 48 of USA. Do you agree or disagree? I think Jim's book is important at helping to set the stage, the table, mentally, spiritually, for what might very well happen, but I feel it does not go far enough. A future novel titled "POLAR CITY RED" will detail what life in a polar city might be like in the year 2500. Is anybody ready for this? See below notes: and comment pro or con. Or email me offline at danbloom in the GMAIL arena

Green blogger uses "polar cities" as educational tool
to raise public awareness about global warming issues

-- A lone blogger in Taiwan is using the Internet in a novel
way to help raise awareness about global warming.

Green media activist Danny Bloom doesn't believe humans will ever have
to live in so-called "polar cities" (a term he coined in 2006), but he
is using a series of computer-generated blueprints of a polar city as
an educational tool to help raise help public awareness about the
climate crisis.

Created by Taiwanese artist Cheng-hong Deng, the polar city images
have appeared on hundreds of websites and blogs around the world -- in
English, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, French and Chinese, Bloom, a 1971
gradute of Tufts University in Boston, says.

The 58-year-old green activist says he is using the Internet in a
novel way to get his message across.

The message? "If we don't actively tackle the very serious problems
that confront the world now, in terms of global warming, then there is
a possibility that future generations might have to take refuge in
such polar cities. I never want to see these polar cities become
reality. So the images Deng has created for my project are meant to be
a warning about global warming."

Bloom says he has shown the images to internationally-acclaimed
climate scientist James Lovelock in Britain, who is known for his
pessimism and doomsaying about global warming. Lovelock told Bloom by
email: "It may very well happen and soon."

"I hope polar cities are never needed for survivors of global warming
in the far distant future," Bloom says. "These images are meant to be
a wake-up call for those who are still sleepwalking through the
climate crisis."

Bloom emphasizes that he has no agenda, political or scientific, in
terms of solutions to global warming, and says that he just wants to
participate in the global discussion about climate change in his own
personal way. "I am just using Deng's images to sound the alarm, a
visual alarm."

He says that his Internet campaign, which began a year ago with a
letter to the editor of several newspapers in North America and
Europe, has had the result he is looking for.

A young blogger in Tahiti saw the images, blogged about them in
French, and said that while he found the polar city blueprints to be
fascinating, they made him just want to work harder in his daily life
"to help fight the climate crisis so that the worst case scenarios
never happen."

POLAR CITIES BLUEPRINT:
http://pcillu101.blogspot.com

Posted by:danny |March 10, 2008 8:36 PM