The Long Emergency

I finally finished reading The Long Emergency and it was a very worthwhile read. It is a very detailed book, and blew my mind regularly.

The most important point (I thought) was that there is less than 40 years of oil left in the ground...that's the good news.

The bad news is that we have already passed the "peak"...meaning, that half the world's oil is already gone. At that point, I breathed a bit of a sigh of relief- yay- there's still plenty left. BUt actually, that was the half that was easy to get, cheap to remove, and the rest is not. There is plenty there that will never be recovered. This is because of the cost of recovering oil. As he described, if it costs a barrel to get a barrel, you engaged in futile activity...but if it costs 2 barrels to get one, you engaed in an act of madness.

He also describes the other "calamities of the 21st century", and they were alarming too...natural gas depletion, wars over oil, infectious diseases, and many more.

It's a very scary book (to quote Shrek), but an important one.

I would love all my fmaily and friends to start to really consider what our lives will be like when the oil runs out, and from now on- as it is running out (because it is already having a big impact...think about the price of cheese!). It's not just about how much petrol costs for zipping about in cars.



I was glad to finally get started on Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, but alas- it seems the world is against me reading that book, lol...my friend N from down south gave me another excellent book, which I think is more pertinent reading for me right now....The Gabriel Method.

I'm fairly sceptical about these sorts of things, but hey! I've tried everything else, so why not...and I love the basic premise...losing weight without dieting.