George W Bush with then Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia - now the king - in 2002 at the Bush Ranch in Crawford Texas

What do we do when the oil runs out?

The Long Emergency
by James Howard Kunstler
Atlantic Books, £8.99 order this book

THERE are three possible courses of action open to you after reading this the third book in James Kunstler’s unsettling view of society that he considers to be in the future. One, buy a suicide pill. Two, go out and spend your cash on the world, the flesh and the devil, or three, start listening to Mother Nature.
“What,” Kunstler asks, “happens when the oil runs out?” Or, more precisely, when the age of fossil fuel is about to end. Extraction of oil supplies will peak before 2010 and the suggested alternatives, according to him, will not close the energy gap.
His hero is former US president Jimmy Carter, who in 1975 warned gas-guzzling Americans to cut back on consumption. The voters replaced him with laid-back Ronald Reagan.
A glut of oil and a long period of peace brought forth Reagan-omics. A flow of North Sea oil contemporaneously fed the mythology of the miracle of Thatcherism.
His grim scenario predicts a planned apocalyptic change in society, an end to car dependence and the contraction of suburbia. Smaller communities will live nearer the food production areas, dramatic re-adjustments of state funding, even the prospect of the north-east states of America being raided by heavily armed piratical murderers. A soaring world population is according to him not containable. In 1960 there were three-and-a-half billion of us.
Now we are at the six-and-a-half billion mark. But three-and-a-half billion of this live in towns. Of the world’s ten million species three hundred thousand have disappeared in the last 50 years.
In 2004 some 40 million people were diagnosed with the HIV virus. Its origins are still not clear.
If you are still with me, pause and look at the politics. Remember George Soros who single handedly caused the de-valuation of the pound. So much for financial and political stability. Look at the Saudi royal family. It could be a long job. This mega-rich oil dynasty has 30,000 members. Every month they draw allowances varying between $10,000 and $200,000 each.
Iran, the world’s fourth largest oil producer talks of a supremacy of Shariah law, a mullah-ocracy. Meanwhile Israel is reported to have two nuclear warheads pointed at the capital cities of its enemies.
To the east of these oil rich lands Pakistan has at least 20 nuclear weapons. Literally an explosive situation.
Our prophet of doom is more gloomy as he foretells The Dim Ages. And he offers some cold comfort but no instant fix, pausing to remind us that the world bank has predicted that the wars of the 21st century will be fought over water.
His ideal are the Amish people of new England, who have been self sufficient for more than 300 years, his cry is: “Bring back the horse. Re-open the railways. Re-vitalise our rivers and canals. No more high-rise buildings. Grow your own apples. Why import them from far way Chile?”.
As Jimmy Carter is his hero the Wal-Mart organisation is his enemy. He says that the growth in fundamentalist religion is exemplified in what he characterises as massive Wal-Mart churches of spirit where people like George Bush shop for souls. To confront a world only a neo-con God can save.
Me, I’ve lost confidence in Louis Armstrong when he sings the words “And I think to myself: What a wonderful world.”