A rural view of "The Long Emergency"
By Linda Cree
Green Party of Michigan

What happens when industrial societies run out of the fossil fuels they depend on? James Kunstler seeks to answer this question in his widely read book and article "The Long Emergency."

Kunstler's conclusions are grim. Americans are "sleepwalking" into "a permanent energy crisis" that will irrevocably change our way of life and lead to "a historical period of potentially great instability, turbulence and hardship." Kunstler warns that "no combination of alternative fuels will allow us to run American life the way we have been used to running it," and he mourns the loss of "steady technological progress."

Perhaps the most striking aspect of "The Long Emergency" is the assumption that our high-consumption society could continue successfully if only we had the energy source to keep it going. The facts speak otherwise. In truth, our industrialized lifestyle already has us in what could be called a Dire Emergency.

The Dire Emergency is the rapid deterioration of the biosphere we depend on. All of the handwritings on the wall--extinctions, freshwater depletion, cancers, desertification, even the thinning of the atmosphere's protective ozone layer--have not stopped industrial cultures from tearing up, cutting down, using up, poisoning, blowing up, and desecrating the earth.

Most Americans are still in denial about the seriousness of our multiple environmental crises, but Greens have been willing to face the Dire Emergency and have struggled for decades to come up with better ways of living on the earth. Greens already have an alternative vision that not only addresses the Dire Emergency but also speaks to Kunstler's Long Emergency.

Both the Dire and the Long emergencies call on us to decentralize and become more regionally self-sufficient. Although Kunstler takes a dim view of having to scale back production/consumption and live more locally, Greens advocate the many advantages of bioregional living. 

The first steps will be to develop a profound understanding of our unique bioregions and to cultivate a strong sense of place. (That this reconnecting can lead to deep satisfaction and joy in itself is only one of the pleasant surprises Green living contains.) Out of that knowledge of place will come the answers to how a particular region can feed, clothe, and shelter its people and what will work best as its economic basis. Our priority must be to use means that are earth-gentle and sustainable as well as nurturing of the weakest and most vulnerable members of society.

We are talking about the entire transformation of our culture of waste and destruction. As Kunstler states, "The circumstances of the Long Emergency will require us to downscale and rescale virtually everything we do and how we do it." Thoreau put it more succinctly: "Simplify. Simplify."

It will take the best energies of our most creative minds to effect such a transformation in our urbanized, overindustrialized world. Simpler living need not be a deprivation, however. I grew up about as poor as it was possible to be in most material ways. We didn't have indoor plumbing, a phone or the ubiquitous one-eyed conditioner, but we were rich in family and the ever-changing beauty of the surrounding woods and meadows. And life was magical.

The great danger we now face is not in having to rethink our values and way of living--that is our great opportunity. The danger is that policymakers will ignore the Dire Emergency and thus respond to the Long Emergency in ways that exacerbate the even more urgent environmental crises. Powerful forces have a vested interest in doing that, but if this is the path we take, we will learn the lessons of ecology the hard way. We will bequeath to the future an earth so poisoned that its carrying capacity for human (and most mammalian) life will be blighted for millennia.

Times of crisis, however, can be times of opportunity. Although Greens are often described as "progressives" or "liberals," at our best we are "radicals," meaning we are willing to get to the root of problems, not just address symptoms. We know our culture needs fundamental change and that humankind's future depends on finding wise answers now. If Greens can put our vision of sustainable bioregional living before the American people as we all struggle to deal with the energy crisis, we may find that the Long Emergency becomes the spur our nation needs to begin adequately addressing the Dire Emergency.

Linda Cree is a member of the Michigan Green Party and of the Rural Caucus Organizing Committee of the GP-US.

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