This book is subtitled: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century. These catastrophes include: the world's oil supplies being tapped out (which leads to famine, lack of transportation, and tons more bad stuff), climate changes, natural disasters, disease, the collapse of financial markets... all of which will lead to vast social and community changes which some may survive, but many won't.
Whew! According to Kunstler, every single thing that we consider "progress", especially "technological progress" is entopic and subject to vastly diminishing returns, i.e. it will kill us in the end.
This may be true. Or not. Who can say with any certainty?
The big missing figure in his equations is always the will of God, which of course he has totally discounted as "mythological" and which any sane person must seek or be as doomsday minded as Kunstler is.
It's a depressing book filled with history (always fictional because it's so dependent on perspective and interpretation, right?), "scientific" studies, facts and figures...
Can you tell that I really didn't like this book? It's an interesting perspective on our world. It may be true. One of the things I most dislike about apocalyptic-type books (like this one) is their absence of hope or solutions. I see no purpose in tearing things down if one can't suggest a way to rebuild. It's just an invitation to be ignored--no one can swallow a dark prognostication with no hope for redemption. And that's just what this book is. A very interesting, well-researched, intelligently expressed placard reading: The end is coming!!
Read it if you like. I preferred "Ere His Floods of Anger Flow"
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