Summary Of James Howard Kunstler's The Long Emergency

James Howard Kunstler’s The Long Emergency is the stuff of suburban nightmare. As someone who has lived her entire life in the comforts and trappings of suburbia, the events that have been laid out in this text have raised several levels of alarm inside myself. Many suburbanites schlep their reusable bags into their hybrid or flex-fuel vehicles and regularly run their several mile journey to the grocery store multiple times a week. In the absence of fossil fuels, not only would this trip for one’s chief resource for continued survival be impossible from every angle, but additionally the idea of having electricity, heat, water, and all of the other basic “necessities” would fall completely flat. While I considered myself someone who was …show more content…
I gather that the S&L and mortgage lending companies were in operation simultaneously at one time, however the fact that the complete failure of the S&L sector didn’t make Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac a little more discerning in their lending efforts is totally outrageous. “The Hallucinated Economy” as Kunstler puts it, is definitely the right way to describe this phenomenon. To place value in what the author describes as, “... stapled-together boxes made of particleboard and plastic cladding that require continual reinvestment in petty cash and labor for upkeep…” seems absurd when one takes a step back and truly thinks about the true value of something like a McMansion (229). Why are Americans placing value on symbols of opulence rather than the supplies needed to keep our families fed, clothed, and safe from the elements? For someone to work in theoretical money to have stockpiles of theoretical money makes no sense when one cannot eat it, put it on their body, or shield themselves from the elements with it. Yet it seems that’s what the vast majority of people are