The Long Descent is a Short Ascent

For several years, I have been seeking a guidebook to our immanent future of less oil and therefore less wealth. Of the over one dozen books that I've studied, Greer's is the clearest.

His synthesis of peak oil, the demise of previous empires and the mythological narratives that shape our thoughts succeeds because he gets past simple linear extrapolations from the present into the future. The Long Descent ascends out of the morass of narratives that either promise a glorious future or, a looming apocalypse.

This less a practical guide to the future than an illumination of a path through a potentially darker age ahead. Occasionally, I have been so impressed by a book that I buy a second copy to give away. This time I have ordered four copies of the Long Descent.

While John Michael Greer's "The Long Descent" does indeed do an excellent job of explaining the concept of peak oil, i.e. that the world's production of fossil fuels has, or is about to begin declining, Greer goes far beyond the usual, mostly technological and scientific approaches. In fact, Greer clearly and convincingly explains that peak oil and the dependence on cheap fossils fuels is not a problem, ie, there is no "solution", but rather a predicament that simply must be accepted and dealt with.

Greer brilliantly exposes the true roots of the dilemma of modern industrial civilization which lie in culture and social organization. Greer is even able to step back from the modern materialistic/scientific world view in order to understand the deep historical dynamics that now bedevil contemporary civilization.

Greer's writing is always logical, clear and straightforward, giving a very lucid explanation of an area that is often difficult to think about due to our shared and usually unconscious cultural assumptions. Through the use of concrete data, historical analogies and simple logic, Greer's exposition of the causes, results and subsequent effects of the combination of the materialistic worldview of the Enlightenment and cheap fossil fuels is coherent and compelling.

Greer's views have had both an intellectual and practical effect on me personally. He has changed my thinking on likely course of the future for contemporary civilization. I even moved to a small city in the Midwest from a huge Eastern conurbation based on his writings! While I agree that the end of industrial civilization cannot be solved, Greer does offer extremely useful guidance for personal and community action to assist in ameliorating the inevitable difficulties of "the Long Descent"

John Michael Greer has a very broad perspective that seems to stretch far past the horizon of current events. This book is very well thought out and tempered with a refreshing dose of reason. Greer takes us through the history of how our culture came to thrive on oil and then fills us in on the most likely things to happen as we run out. This is a book everyone should read.

Greer makes a convincing (and unemotional) case that peak oil will lead to a phased industrial decline rather than a sudden "fall off a cliff". His orientation is one of getting his readers to face the facts that 21st century life will have its peak oil-based challenges, and to engage in behavior that is constructive and adaptive to this new reality.

This is a welcome correction to the "sudden apocalypse" view that other peak oil literature has espoused for some time now. It forces readers to take responsibility for fashioning their lives as best they can under the circumstances instead of throwing up their hands in despair. The book also puts our current dilemma in perspective by citing a few highly relevant facts and statistics rather than a deluge of less incisive ones. And it makes the ultracritical point that Americans have apparently chosen empire over democracy, so will end up with neither. All to the good -- in evaluating the book, that is.

What the book does not do is live up to its billing as a "user's guide to the end of the industrial age". The text is much more philosophical and historical than practical, and practical advice given does not extend very far. Also missing are frank treatment, or even much mention, of potential calamities such as oil wars among nuclear powers, global warming's coming phases, and human die-off as food demand exceeds supply. The more definitive literature covering those topics comes from Klare, Kunstler and Gelbspan.

This book has some interesting parts, but, like Kunstler's Long Emergency (which is racist, histrionic junk), it also contains some major logical inconsistencies. The key point is one of efficiency. That is to say, both authors assume that industrial civilization can only be sustained with the current level of energy and material consumption, and this is patently untrue. The citizens of the E.U. have most of the modern conveniences but use only half the resources that we do, and the Japanese do the same on a quarter of our level. Moreover, there are good reasons to think that most of the things we really care about can be managed on no more than a tenth of the resources we currently use.

Both authors also seem to assume that the average person will be totally sheep-like in response to a change in circumstances. Again, patently untrue. Just ask the big auto companies how much money they are making selling SUV's with gas near $4.00 a gallon. And consider the food situation in Shanghai, where 85% of the vegetables are grown right inside the city. I say again, this is happening today, and with little trouble. Same in Havana, Cuba. When the Russians cut off the oil subsidy to Cuba after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuban agriculture ground to a halt in a single season, but in a couple of years they had gone back to plowing with oxen, and growing kitchen gardens in every back yard. Consider in particular that they had no real warning, while we are getting years to think about the problem. Quite a few of us may move back to the farm, but that's just an adjustment, not a catastrophe, much less the end of civilization.

Civilization, in any case, is not a matter of material consumption, but rather is based on low-tech, inexpensive institutions like libraries. The ancient libraries in places like Alexandria, Baghdad, Cordoba and many others were not as convenient as the Web, but they successfully sustained sophisticated civilizations for millenia, and there is no reason we cannot depend on such systems again, if we have to.

I would also point out that I have managed on a personal level to cut my own energy and resource consumption by a factor of three (compared to the average for all Americans) without even breaking a sweat. Nor is it obvious that this is the case unless I point it out to people. The only difference between me and the rest of the citizens of the industrial world is that I'm more proactive about the problem, and I'm also thrifty, which helps. With a little more effort I expect to get down to about a tenth of the average by doing things anyone can do quite easily and inexpensively.

Consider also that my life is far from deprived or unpleasant. Even at ten dollars an hour, I only need to work a day or two a week to cover my expenses, my job has almost no stress, and I have most of the week for the civilized pleasures of life: reading, music, some travel, friends, family, enjoying the outdoors, and much more.

In other words, a lot of us have already solved the so-called "problem" of peak oil quite handily, and we're just waiting for the rest of the industrial world to notice. It would be funny to watch if it weren't so pathetic.