Someday, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday, the world is going to run low on fossil fuel. And when that happens, what will that mean for our country, our economy, and our very society?
In its October issue, the Sun magazine has a rather lengthy interview with James Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century and a foremost writer on the unsustainability of suburban sprawl.
In the interview, Kunstler talks about the new subplots in the oil story: major oil-exporting nations holding onto their supplies for their own use, or entering into favored-customer agreements with other nations, as well as how declining oil supplies would impact transportation, agriculture, and even Wal-mart:
“It’s no exaggeration to say that every benefit of modern life — from airplanes and air conditioning to supermarkets and hip-replacement surgery — owes its existence in one way or another to cheap fossil fuel. In particular, the American way of life, which is virtually synonymous with suburbia, can run only on reliable supplies of cheap oil and gas. Even moderate deviations in price or supply will make the logistics of daily life difficult.”
You can read a selection of the interview here. For the full article, you’ll have to get the print edition.
[And yes, SG, I may have snagged your magazine. Are you really surprised? But I promise you’ll get it back.]
