thinking backward

It is said that as one ages the perception is that one is younger than is in fact the case. This is not really a surprising distortion. Much valuable science is performed around the obvious. By the same token, surely I am living about five years back in a self hallucinated past. By god, I'm enjoying it.

Today, scanning the articles at Energy Bulletin, one might think there is some risk in being that peak oil commentator who lives in the past. Not in terms of physical reality of the position, but in terms of cultural relevance.

Fundamentals are still valid. Oil is depleting. Natural gas is depleting. Fine, friend. The need for alternatives press in. So raise the alarm, bell the cat, and don't be scared. One shouldn't be scared. The cat is dead. There is no pressure at the top end for oil supplies, or need for greater production, at present. And as the economic collapse progresses, there is an outstanding possibility that while production declines literally, demand will drop, masking the shortfall.

The peak oil crisis: a turning point?
It does not take much excess supply to fill that 80 million barrels worth of floating storage that is bobbing around on the world's oceans right now. Less than three months during which oil exporters are pumping out a million b/d of excess supply will do it nicely. It has now been about five months since OPEC realized there was too much oil for the demand and began a series of production cuts now totaling 4.2 million b/d. [...] We know there was an oversupply of oil because of the price collapse, we just don't know how much. While the reporting agencies are circumspect as to the size of the drop, they seem to be suggesting 1 or 2 million b/d.

The slightly terrifying conclusion I draw is that it will be difficult for the reality based geology crowd to get anyone's attention for a while. Years.

Not just that, it will be hard for anyone to get a loan to invest in alternative energy, period. And I'm critical of about seventy-five percent of what passes for alternative energy, as a casual reading of this blog would reveal. The bad bets are giving the workable projects a bad name because the entire sector is seen as marginal.

"Urgency surrounds numerous clean tech companies, which saw a drying up of tax equity-structured financing in 2008," stalling solar, wind and biofuels programs and threatening some of the companies with bankruptcy, said the report obtained by The Associated Press.
Despite the overall growth in 2008, venture-backed investments in clean energy declined by 14 percent in the last three months of the year, reflecting the impact of tight credit markets, according to the report released Wednesday.

So I reckon some time around 2014, after the fiscal “swamps” have been drained, the globe will reformulate around a new system of bartering fresh water for oil, and discover that there is not much of either left.

It will never be 1939 again.



[Image sourced to http://www.philseed.com/]

such a winters day

No, this isn't a post about California, any more than anywhere else. Just a pause for reflection, after four December's of posting on the topic of peak energy - something I understand and mean to be peak usable energy in an industrial sense.

In other words, something which is rooted in and provides context for our present living arrangement. Our civilization.

There is another leg sprouting from our culture, and that is capital. Interesting to notice is the uneasy relationship between capital and energy.

Oil pricing on the markets has seen violent, volatile shifts this year - whipsawed by a rising and falling dollar, the inertia gathering behind the global depression and yet this is all against a backdrop of almost unabated consumption of energy. A few percentage points change at the top.

Depletion of those easy reservoirs of energy - - coal, oil, natural gas, continues. A steady drumbeat.

Commentators who don't understand how investments in renewable energy are ultimately indexed to non-renewable energy, are weaving the usual myths about how investments in renewables will be stalled because the price point of oil is too low.

So-called alternative energy is now, as it has been for some time, a necessary investment if our culture wishes to tramp a bit further along the path known.

Investment in alternative energy might also make obvious that other paths are possible, and even desirable.

But it is kind of moot, as capital shrivels, the bizarre effect may be that energy for change lies latent, or more likely misused for war and rumors of same. Just another night in Gaza. At the end of the day it is about trust.

The year ahead could illuminate our potential. Be hopeful that it will not show a gully carved down to hell.

We all know our vices too well. The untouched heights are what we seek.

Happy New Year,
jon / 2008

the day after - part three

The United States annual 700 hundred billion dollar Military budget has long been a cipher and a certainty. The U.S. manages to fund a space program on 2 percent of that. The dollars are real, and they are glazed over North America proper as evenly as possible to ensure every voter, in every district, has a stake in the continuation of this boon.

It is likely that in the coming years this budget will be cut back out of bankrupt necessity. One wonders if there is time to shift the focus of national defense in the short term. It is now apparent, as highlighted by both Obama and McCain, that energy independence is a national security issue.

Consider a shift in manufacturing from missiles to wind turbines. At roughly 1000 dollars per Kilowatt, what would we get for 100 billion of national security investment in wind? Approximately one hundred million kilowatt hours of electricity. This is just napkin math, change the numbers and change the outcome. Certainly, these same dollars could be directed to build ten nuclear plants. But if this national security wind manufacturing was sustained year by year, at the level noted above, eventually the entire 2.3 trillion kilowatts of North American electricity production could be replaced – in this case over twenty years.

Had we started 8 years ago, we’d be half way to clean energy and energy independence.

This is really a thought experiment, but it is a major concern that as liquidity has been sucked out of the market, the possibility for new ideas and new directions is heavily constrained, making it vastly easier to “predict” the future. Less scenarios to account for. The scenario being run – where taxpayers bail out banks – is one of real cash vanishing from the economy.

The return (it is hoped) are dribbles of credit. Well, hooray. Peak oil is unfolding, folks, and the U.S. (one of many countries now with a similar plan) just spent 700 billion + 250 billion so that banks can continue to extend credit.

Current United States investment in alternative energy is the period at the end of this sentence, and investment in the military is everything else on this page.

So Americans, call your senator, congress critter, and presidential candidate of choice and let them know that energy independence is a national security issue and we have the technology.

the day after - part two

Surveying the wreckage, with martini in hand, or better yet, a slice of apple pie, one might be inclined to flip out.

A fair response, but it is time to change ones mind. Turn it, twist it, and then re-program. This might involve hitting a television in the face with a sledgehammer. Many of the constrained energy scenarios – and responses to same – are the identical response needed for a depression. This upcoming depression will segue directly into a constrained energy environment.

The crisis demands an industry to engage in on a national scale, a hoover dam, something to turn the focus of the age from money to people. More on this – much more – tomorrow.

For now, food for thought.

Where will one get your consumables, if there is limited supply at the grocery store at the grocery store, or the bread line?
Grow as much of your own as possible, and chicken eggs are an excellent source of protein.

Where will one live if jobless?
Planning now might keep you out of a tent. Pooling resources with other humans is always a good bet.

If the whole world is going bankrupt, why not me?
Take this idea with a grain of salt: The common refrain one sees on the media to “pay down your credit card” is absolutely correct in normal times. These are not normal times and paying banks with interest might not be the best use of your cash RIGHT NOW. Let's watch how the emergency develops.

Neighbors never moved in, the pool next door is fetid – can one grow food over there?
Move out of Arizona and California exurbia while it is still possible. Get to water.

the day after - part one

The financial conflagration gathers strength – touched off by the mortgage crisis as a dynamite primer, but exploding on account of unsupportable shady investment practices. Lacking steady dribbles of cash to cover the heavily leveraged, endless trillions of speculative credit/money, the game ends. Various billion dollar bailouts are a drop in the bucket – not even addressing mortgages that have already failed. Much less all the tea in Iceland.

The big tent of speculation is in greater part hot air, and removing a few supports of real cash here and there has started the whole bit of tatty cloth fluttering towards the ground. The carnival is defunct.

This crisis follows fast on the heels of record high oil prices, which have then been hammered back down by the economic conditions. This has long been predicted by peak oil analysts, although usually as a progression of high oil prices directly causing the economic downturn. While oil prices are a contributor to the recessionary economy, the financial crisis is not directly rooted in oil prices, but the effect will be the same.

Tom Whipple and Steve Andrews comment:
In recent months US and world oil consumption have been dropping due to high prices and the worsening economic funk. Whereas in recent years worldwide demand for oil increased by about 1.5 million b/d every year, that number will shrink to a few hundred thousand b/d annual increase for 2008. If the economic situation gets much worse, demand for oil probably will go into actual decline.
If, as seems likely, the omnibus financial bailout does little good and the world goes into a prolonged recession, then we probably are on the peak/plateau of world oil production right now. Demand will drop, production will be slowed, and new multi-billion dollar oil projects that are not already well underway will be delayed or cancelled due to lack of demand or capital to pay for them.

The stock market had been resonating on the border of non linear for a while now, swinging back and forth with a marked lack of rhythm or reason, preparing for the now apparent state shift. But the market is just a sick canary, and there is no reason to expect the financial system will be stitched back together barring perhaps one possible "fix" – global, concerted inflation to spread the capital shortfall around and get things moving for the big boys. Of course, this "fix" would turn the middle class standard of living into a Zimbabwean delight.

Tomorrow, how to change your life.

victory garden of the week - July 14

making my little piece of the world just a little greener (post gazette)
(T)his year, something inside went "click." All those articles about decreasing one's carbon footprint by using locally grown food finally sank in. And what could be more local than the plot of crabgrass right outside the door, which thus far has existed for the sole purpose of being mowed? Couldn't it be put to better use?
...
Now I find myself coming home from work each night and marveling at how fast the stalks and leaves have shot up and proliferated with basically no effort on our part. Mother Nature helped too, providing so much rain in the early weeks that we didn't have to water.

The banks will never foreclose on your fresh tomatoes. Watch for slugs.

Las Vegas in winter

Down and out in Las Vegas The Independent
With Americans cutting back on luxuries, and the price of transport rocketing, the so-called "Vegas vacation" is facing the axe. This week, as the nation celebrated Independence Day, major hotels were taking stock of a fall in all-important room occupancy rates from their usually impressive 95 per cent levels to nearer 80 per cent.
...
Local bankruptcies have quadrupled. The property market, which rode the wave of a boom for most of the past decade is now below its peak by anything from a quarter to a third (depending on whose figures you believe), while Nevada now boasts, if that is the right word, the nation's highest foreclosure rate. The number of empty homes has caused a health scare after it emerged that mosquitoes – possibly carrying the killer West Nile virus – are breeding in abandoned swimming pools.

Even as the air wheezes out of the bag, one wonders how mindful Americans are of the permanently changing landscape. High gas prices, recessions, and even depressions are not new to North America. Everyone wants this whole mess to turn the corner - sweep out out the rats, bring on the new President, a new day, and perhaps falling gasoline prices after the coast is drilled for sweet black gold. Smart cars will be docked into Hummers instead of replacing them.

America is a population that is among the least equipped in history to handle a systemic collapse. People died slowly on live TV during the Katrina disaster. Americans love their media, not their neighbors. Those who are planning their next gambling run down in the casinos just as soon as ticket prices come down and the card gets paid off have no idea at present that this day will likely never come.

The primary hubris of the energized civilization is the power switch. It is such a casual weakness. Nothing happens without it. We're not built to do without it, and most of us don't even know how it works.

It is a strange feeling of unease as an individual, to finally face these weaknesses in our culture for real. The real news is still ignored, while many are ready to start dreaming of the housing collapse turning around, or what have you.

Imagining a herd of robot consumer narcissists when they begin to feel peckish is a nightmare scenario. We've all built our cocoons, our personal worlds, each of us a perverse cockroach in our own right, ready to come boiling out into the streets as soon as the system changes.

Perhaps I should grow a really long beard.

victory garden(s) of the week - July 8

Growing front-yard food can rile neighbors (ap/cnn)
Some of the neighbors are less than thrilled. Some municipal codes limit the percentage of a yard that can be planted with anything other than trees and grass.
"Especially in the first three years, I got a lot of code violations," said Bob Waldrop of Oklahoma City. He planted his corner lot almost entirely with fruit trees, berry bushes and vegetables.
...
An anonymous complaint about Karen Baumann's front-yard garden in Sacramento, California led to a fight by local gardeners against the city's landscaping code, which stated that gardens could take up no more than 30 percent of the front yard.
After a public hearing where Baumann's 11-year-old twin sons testified, dressed as a carrot and a tomato, the city changed the law.

When the neighbors complain about front yard vegetables, defacing their John McCain for President lawn signs (as inedible as the chem grown grass they extrude from) probably won't help change any opinions.

And the sqawking of pigs and chickens may not win over hearts and minds in the short term. I do find it interesting that in my burb this summer, a cock crows a-morn, apparently a new arrival from last year, although I haven't located his habitat nor harem yet.

Have patience with ignorant grass-centric neighbors. Before long, they'll be seeking guidance.

a cult of finitism and other futures

Back when this blog began, I knew things. I knew them confidently. As time went on, the more I learned, the less I knew. Yet there is a value in knowing something confidently.

You've got something jingling in your pocket right now. The petro dollar. Right now you can literally use it to buy things of lasting value. This icon won't hold value forever. A penny saved is a penny burned. Buy real things. Swords and plows. Seed corn.
Oil itself is not part of the living Earth. Buying a cell phone or a new TV is like planting a dollar bill in the ground. It will not grow, it will not bear fruit.

- - -

So, how long can it go on? Hold up one hand and count some fingers. There you go. That is a good estimate, in years, for how long we have before peak oil hits.

Part of my detachment from this space is peak ennui. Things haven’t changed much in the last few years. Yes, the supposedly predictive became reality, the peak is effectively in. Yet rank and file North American are content to debate pepsi coke and “opening up” coastal areas to drilling. And the throttle has stuck on the dollar printing machine. Quick, what is that word, the one that describes a person who feels gravity does not apply to them?

Ok.

This a transitional age. Our energized civilization is in a liminal state. From here on, the strange unknowns rule, Britney Spears is in a haired / hairless state until observed. Everyone at General Motors scratches their heads and wonders how small next years Hummer might be made, and if it perhaps may qualify for a carbon credit if the dashboard is carved out of California charcoal. Call it the Hummer: Gore Edition and hedge some bets.

So out of all this uncertainty, there are yet things I know confidently. Much of it refernced elsewhere, notably the Energy Bulletin.


Oil – the top isn’t in.
Production hovers like a flying saucer between 80 and 90 million barrels a day. There is will stay, until it breaks south forever, probably around 2010 all else being equal. So c’mon – a little relief at the pump? I mean, sixty dollars to fill twelve gallons, that isn’t the way Eisenhower drew it up!
Go ahead, waste air and blame investor speculation. All the countries with dollar reserves and large economies are content to bid up the price of oil, knowing it is one of the few ways to get value out of the increasingly pathetic petro dollar. Then they turn around and subsidize domestic supplies. China does this. And why not. What else can they use their dollars for, other than cleaning algae out of their pond for the Olympics?
The interesting thing here is that the losers are ostensibly Americans, because no one in America has any dollar reserves. (Never mind Zimbabweans.) Less trips! Shorter distances! This is not my beautiful non-negotiable lifestyle.
As the economy deteriorates, demand destruction will NOT take place immediately. There are too many dollars sloshing about. Look for oil to settle between $175 and $200 a barrel by the end of the year as a best case.


Will the last person out of town turn off the lights.
Even as the Department of Homeland Security spends billions on police state gadgets to “secure” the airlines, the airlines are teetering. This is not a surprise to anyone who thinks about energy. But what happens the day half the airlines go out of business, and the remaining airlines index prices right to fuel costs instead of trying to undercut each other?

On that day, with a glut of serviceable planes grounded by fuel prices, all pending orders to Boeing and Airbus will be canceled for the next ten years. Boeing, within spitting distance of where I live, is no small part of the local economy in Washington State. In fact, this will be devastating to the local economy, and will probably be the signal of real demand destruction. Skilled union members will be left to poach rabbits down by the freeway and cultivate taters. (Where are these people going to go – Arizona? Water falls out of the sky in Washington State.)

The sad subtext to this story is Boeing is developing a fuel efficient plane known as the “Dreamliner”, supposedly in part because some manager at Boeing read Deffeyes “Hubbert’s Peak”, yet this plane has not yet been delivered and looks to miss the sweet part of the market, the one where planes are acquired new.


Beef – it is what was for dinner
When deciding where to lay our corn bets, one must figure on heavily subsidized bio-fuel distilleries surviving to produce a welfare fuel which provides 15 percent less energy by volume than gasoline. (I wish I could get a piece of that action, but I have no ties to organized crime.) Meanwhile, unable to afford feed, ranchers will continue to thin down their herds of steak racks, keeping prices low today, and raising the price of meat through the roof next year after the full weight of the Midwest floods ripples through the commodities market.

original chart

victory garden of the week - July 1

opec signals heavy sour

OPEC signals reluctance to lift oil output (Bloomberg, Reuters)
The Qatar oil minister Abdullah al-Attiyah said there was no need to raise oil supplies to global markets. "The market doesn't need more oil," he said, pointing to a cut in forecast oil demand growth by the International Energy Agency.
"There is more oil in the market than consumers want," said the Iraqi oil minister Hussain al-Shahristani.

Not everyone has gotten the point yet, so below is a reprint of a satirical piece done in 2006. No guesses will be provided today about 2010, or even October of this year. Always in motion is the future - difficult to see.

---

Oil stuck below $159, traders question OPEC resolve

SINGAPORE (Reuteres) Oil deepened losses below $159 a barrel on Tuesday as traders waited for evidence that other OPEC members would follow Saudi Arabia's lead in cutting output.

U.S. light, sweet crude dipped 12 cents to $158.69 a barrel by 0148 GMT, extending a 52-cent fall on Monday . Prices hit a 2008 low of $156.55 a barrel last week and stand 25 percent below a record-high traded in July. London Brent fell 26 cents to $158.95 a barrel.

Top global exporter Saudi Arabia told its customers at the weekend that it would give them less crude in November, making good on its part in an OPEC deal last week to cut production by 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd) to try to stem falling prices.

The kingdom told Asian refiners that it would cut their sales by up to 8 percent versus October's levels and told oil majors that it would deepen earlier curbs by another 5 percent, but most others members have yet to show evidence of reducing output.

With oil prices still high by historical measures, analysts have questioned whether the full cuts OPEC agreed to will be implemented, and oil traders appear to be waiting for the proof.

"Until another third world country starves to death following the cut on stockpile levels we don’t expect a response" from prices, said Blonkles Gurb, a commodities analyst at National Paraguay Bank. "It may be a few weeks before anything happens (to stocks)."

Some OPEC ministers said another 500,000 bpd reduction could follow when the group meets in Abuja in December as they fear a supply glut could develop in the second quarter if peak winter demand fails to draw down toppy stockpiles.

Meanwhile, in the face of oil production cuts, construction of the huge asphalt pyramid commemorating the American-Iran conflict continues unabated in Saudi Arabia.

“It is a stupid and useless war to, thus it is fitting that we celebrate it with our excess stupid and unrefinable heavy crude,” stated Abdullahi Jones, a spokesperson for the United States of Arabia.

another skeletor type

Attorney General says mobsters pose new global threat
Also alarming is growing evidence of what Mukasey described as mobsters infiltrating and corrupting global gas and energy markets — potentially destabilizing parts of the U.S. economy. He cited cases of organized criminals increasingly smuggling immigrants and contraband — such as counterfeit money and drugs — into the United States.

Here we have in Mukasey another skeletor type, yet freshly presented. Untainted in the public mind by the scorch marks and glub glub of Abu Graib.

The storyline is new, even though the package is shopworn propaganda. Misdirection, fear, perfect to be sopped up by the media.

The storyline du jour externalizes oil prices on somebody - anybody - except those who are running the United States into the ground.

Filling your hummer got you down? Blame mobsters.
Cost of milk making you cringe? International rings of criminals.
Natural Gas bill more than you can afford? Viktor Bout! Rockets and AK-47s!

Can't blame Osama - need him for weekly radio addresses.
Can't blame Saddam - hung by the neck until dead.
Can't blame ourselves -

buttered regrets

Japan's hunger becomes a dire warning for other nations
Japan's acute butter shortage, which has confounded bakeries, restaurants and now families across the country, is the latest unforeseen result of the global agricultural commodities crisis.
…
While soaring food prices have triggered rioting among the starving millions of the third world, in wealthy Japan they have forced a pampered population to contemplate the shocking possibility of a long-term — perhaps permanent — reduction in the quality and quantity of its food.

Those pampered Japanese. Not that the rest of the western world is any different. There exists everywhere a lust for buttered goods. Why buy a cow? When the milk isn’t cheap. I’m no prognosticator, but I sense trouble on the horizon.

Short on butter, but not guns, the Japanese might choose to go to war to secure a supply. Recent history tells us this isn’t totally out of the question. And, butter is a vital part of any future fuel - - green wash the biodiesel, use food renewably squirted from a land whale and add a fatty richness to ones exhaust.

Anyone driving in the wake of such exhaust will become envious and hungry.

First, the Japanese hordes will come marching off their shores for the butter, then clotted cream. This will be followed by a quest for pure maple syrup, on account of the high sugar content which makes for a great ethanol blend. And you guessed it - - a pleasing aroma.

If one were a Japanese warm-monger in this thought experiment, one might really brighten the day of someone in Haiti, just by driving past them.

“What’s that delightful smell?” A Haitian child will ask, wiping the dirt off her lips as a Japanese convoy drives up.

Not comprehending the language, but graciously understanding, a Japanese soldier then gestures towards the back of his vehicle.

“Corn – Butter – Maple Syrup – Sugar Cane – French fry Grease – Grass. Why, we’ve got a little slice of God's green earth in our fuel tanks! Now which way are the Blue Mountains – we must secure a supply of coffee to keep our cows producing...”

the economist

Ok, so I've got to borrow a story from Big Gav because it is so grand. I've got a few essays of my own chillin' on ice, and there they will stay for a few more days while I attempt to intersect time and effort.

"The strategy the economists used was as simple as it was absurd—they substituted economic variables for physical ones. Utility (a measure of economic well-being) took the place of energy; the sum of utility and expenditure replaced potential and kinetic energy. A number of well-known mathematicians and physicists told the economists that there was absolutely no basis for making these substitutions. But the economists ignored such criticisms and proceeded to claim that they had transformed their field of study into a rigorously mathematical scientific discipline.
...
The external resources of nature are largely inexhaustible, and those that are not can be replaced by other resources or by technologies that minimize the use of the exhaustible resources or that rely on other resources [...] If the environmental crisis did not exist, the fact that neoclassical economic theory provides a coherent basis for managing economic activities in market systems could be viewed as sufficient justification for its widespread applications.

This model of economists, that is, the one where their model sucks, resonates. The biggest, most painful lie that western civilization has been living with, the BIG LIE, is the lie wherein the world systems are boundless. Delivered to your door as a Pop Tart forever.

A cornucopia of uranium, diamonds, bananas for ethanol, forests for wood or rubber, and mucho third world types to exploit. An ocean-all to flush our plastic, carbonic acid and phosphorus. Forever and ever, a perpetual motion economy, with the cash flying out of your town into someone's grey pocketss, yessss...

But now the trash has piled up so high we can smell it everywhere. And money can't buy as many grits of rice or corn - - much less happiness.

It figures.

Stupidityness is the only human endeavor that can be effectively modeled as a closed system.

Stupidityness is the only human endeavor that can be effectively modeled as a closed system. -monkeygrinder

a horse and some pepper would be nice

James Kunstler’s new novel “World Made By Hand” is an excellent, brisk read which I recommend. This novel, along with the nonfiction “… Geography of Nowhere” are two essential works by the author. The novel certainly may be safely passed along to a reader who normally lacks interest in the topics which define it.

Many people hear the word oil as “blah blah blah.” Times are changing, though.

The narrative speed accompanied with the first person perspective of the “World Made By Hand“ seem quite by design, reflective of an era in which there is no survival value in morose reflection, navel gazing or irony. Strong emotions and shock are expressed to the reader as a series of thunder shakes and tornados on an already stormy day.

Injecting a bit of commentary, which I intend to approach delicately to avoid giving away the plot, relates to the supposed “science fiction” elements of the novel. In fact I presumed this myself last year, a reaction of humor because here is someone in Kunstler who “reads next to zero science fiction” writing a novel with some of the standard trappings of a work in the same genre.

A particular section of the novel seems intended as magical realism. It certainly describes magical thinking and creation of a local legend, right at ground level. Tracking this idea throughout the entire work, I have the opinion the Kunstler is expressing a view that science and hyper-technology will no longer be an organizing principle for humans in his imagined future, and the paranormal experience of the protoganist symbolize this, rather than being some some sort of sci-fi sprinkle. Unfortunately, the intended effect is apt to be confusing for those who have actually read widely in the genre.

Kunstler implies that a regression to a prior pattern of living will turn out to be ultimately more successful than our techno-blip century in oil. The trickster will trump science and tribalism will trump secular humanism.

It is quite directly anti-science fiction, but is a bold enough statement to be ambiguously shelved next to “Lucifer’s Hammer” without raising any eyebrows. If it were science fiction, it would be of a sort written in the fifties, a brand orphaned by Ellison and everything after. Thus the author seems to inhabit the same bubble that his protagonist lives in, where all the news from the outside, larger world is second hand.

And for all that, the town described in the novel, upstate New York twenty years in the future, is perfectly plausible. It is just one little place that may come into existence, in a world of many small places.

I imagine a raggedy view of the future, and certainly this possibility is not precluded in Kunstler’s novel. One where existing technology fails to pop like a soap bubble a few seconds after the oil and gas deliveries stop. And that time could be soon. Certainly it will be a big world after all, and the steady hum of hydroelectric in the Pacific Northwest won’t help millions of people walk out of the desert Southwest if there is no gas at the gas stations one fine day. Terroir. The shape of possible outcomes is defined by essence of territory, region by region, river to valley.

The novel “World Made By Hand” allows a reader the chance to internalize these possibilities for themselves, a valuable service. One cannot read the book without looking around their neighborhood. Bravo.

I think our future perception of all this will be as a kind of reverse science fiction - - in the sense that (science fiction) has until now always been presumed to take place in the future.