(2005-04-16) Kunstler Long Emergency

Excerpt of James Howard Kunstler's The Long Emergency. To aggravate matters, American Natural Gas production is also declining, at five percent a year, despite frenetic new drilling, and with the potential of much steeper declines ahead... And then there is the issue of China, which, in 2004, became the world's second-greatest consumer of oil, surpassing Japan. China's surging industrial growth has made it increasingly dependent on the imports we are counting on. If China wanted to, it could easily walk into some of these places - the Middle East, former Soviet republics in central Asia - and extend its hegemony by force. Is America prepared to contest for this oil in an Asian land war with the Chinese army?

Bruce Sterling comments heavily, including There were no mass migrations during the Cheap Oil-deprived Dark Ages, unless you count Huns, Mongols, Vandals, Celts, Langobards, Avars, Angles, Saxons, Vikings, anyone who believed in Mohammed, and practically everybody else... World War II was a "military contest over oil" and the disorders led to centralized rationing, not a wild feudal famine... Even the Rail Road Infrastructure of the 19th century was enough to maintain flourishing, nation-wide mail-order consumer catalogs... Chicago and New York City are major rail centers. Wouldn't they bloom instantly?