Days are numbered for ‘cheap oil fiesta’

Diminishing fuel supplies will change the face of the world, and we’re not ready for it, author says

James Howard Kunstler is surprisingly cheerful for a man who has predicted the future and knows it will not be pretty.

“I certainly sleep well at night,” Kunstler quipped in an interview from his home in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

That’s more than you can say for those of us who have read his latest book, The Long Emergency – Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century (Grove Press, 2005). Clearly, this is not a comforting tome to read at bedtime if you’re hoping for a restful sleep.

The book’s thesis is this: The world – particularly the industrialized world – has been enjoying a period of unprecedented comfort and wealth for the past 150 years, thanks to the availability of cheap oil, which supports every sector of the economy.

Montreal Gazette