This (2005) book was written by the geographer and novelist James Howard Kuntsler. I've read this over the last week, and wether we wanna admit (any) moral or ethical weaknesses in the gay march of capitalism, the book rocks ones socks. Consensus on climate change is a done deal. Scary, intelligent and sobering, this book. How much is fiction? Be here now, indeed.
http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/21737/
Fun Excerpts from the book!!
"What one ..saw in the 1980's and 1990's was the commoditization..of public goods into private luxuries, the impoverishment of the civic realm, and, to put it bluntly, the rape of the landscape--a vast entropic enterprise that was the culminating phase of suburbia. The dirty secret of the American economy in the 1990's was the that it was no longer about anything except the creation of suburban sprawl and the furnishing, accessorizing and financing of it. It resembled the efficiency of cancer.....Americans didn't question the validity of the suburban sprawl economy. They accepted it at face value as the obvious logical outcome of their hopes and dreams and defended it viciously against criticism. They steadfastly ignored its salient characteristic; that it had no future either as an economy or as a living arrangement."
"A hundred years ago , just before the introduction of fossil-fuel based technologies, more than 30 percent of the American population was engaged in farming. Now that figure is 1.6 percent. The issue is not moral, academic, or aesthetic. Rather it's a matter of those ratios being made possible only because cheap oil and automation made up for so much human labor."
"To put it simply, Americans have been eating oil and natural gas for the past century, at an ever-accelerating pace. Without the massive "inputs" of cheap gasoline and diesel fuel for machines, irrigation, and trucking, or petroleum-based herbicides and pesticides, or fertilzers made out of natural gas, Americans will be compelled to radically reoganize the way food is produced , or starve."
"(The result) could be years of collective paralysis, indecision, and cognitive dissonance, culminating in social upheaval."
and in support:
http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=mj05cavallo
http://www.grist.org/advice/books/2005/06/07/weeks-beyondoil/index.html?source=weekly
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050627/reaching_the_saudi_peak.php
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