A Grim Future for the Planet

Paper Summary:

The paper discusses James Howard Kunstler's belief that because the world will run out of cheap oil in the foreseeable future, wars will be inevitable. The paper looks at his terribly gloomy predictions of social chaos and planetary catastrophe. The paper points out, however, that Kunstler does offer some compelling scientific facts about the upcoming end of cheap oil and of global warming issues that pose serious danger to the welfare of people and wildlife.

From the Paper:

"Kunstler's critics accuse him of being an alarmist, and he certainly is one; that's his whole point, that the alarm needs to be sounded, and since nobody else is doing it, he may as well grab the microphone. He is basically saying, brace yourselves citizens, our society will fall, each component of it, one by one, like dominos, and there is little that we can do about it. He rails over and over about the "prodigious, unparalleled misallocation of resources" that is today's city suburbs. Without cheap oil, the suburb dynamic "simply won't work," and cannot be replaced because it is "unreformable and does not lend itself to being retrofitted... [and] as the suburbs disintegrate, we will be lucky if we can reconstitute our existing traditional towns and cities brick by brick and street by street.""

Sample of Sources Used:

• American Petroleum Institute. "When Will World Oil Production Peak?" 10th Annual Asia OilAnd Gas Conference, June 13, 2005, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Retrieved 18 Nov. 2006 fromhttp://www.api.org/aboutoilgas/security/upload/caruso2005.pdf.
• Kluger, Jeffrey. "The Tipping Point." Time, April 6, 2006.
• Kunstler, James Howard. The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, andOther Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century. New York: Grove Press, 2005.
• Utah Oil and Gas. "Oil And Gas Facts." Retrieved 17 Nov. 2006 from http://www.ogm.utah.gov/oilgas/FACTS/facts_list.htm.

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