May 08, 2007

The End of the World as We Know It, Coming Soon!

by William J. Cobb

So I’ve just read these two books about “the coming oil crisis” – Powerdown and The Long Emergency. They both predict a running-on-empty apocalypse, a future right around the corner in which cheap oil will dry up and we’ll return to a neofeudal society in which the most of us will become farmers, if we’re lucky, hoeing gardens peacefully until the food runs out and we descend into mud-wrestling over turnips. I don’t quite buy it . . . yet. While the oil crisis may or may not happen, you can bet that we’re going to pay more. Meanwhile I reviewed a memoir titled The End of the World As We Know It (April 15, Dallas Morning News) which has nothing to do with the coming energy apocalypse, but is a particularly sordid child molestation tale. All this follows Cormac McCarthy’s apocalyptic The Road winning the Pulitzer Prize. It deserves it—at once scary, horrible, visionary, and beautiful. McCarthy has been one of my favorites for years, and I’m glad to see this recognition for him. Plus when he presents an apocalyptic vision of the future, I listen.

A day after I finish the second of these oil crisis books I turn on my satellite TV to the Science Channel, and there it is: The Coming Oil Crisis. It features reenactments of angry Americans fighting in gas lines while they try to fill up their SUVs. Again, my wife and I pshaw at all this. The next day—I’m not kidding here—there’s a Shell Oil commercial that looks remarkably similar to one plotline of The Coming Oil Crisis, decidedly more upbeat, of course, that shows the struggles of an oilrig in a stormy sea trying to suck the last drops from an oil field—word is the North Sea’s oil field is in steep decline.

Then I read in the NY Times the following: “There’s an apocalyptic vibe in the zeitgeist, and it’s not hard to imagine how the technological sophistication that got us to the brink of global civilization could be our undoing” (Robert Wright, 28 April 2007).

So I’m not looking forward to when the time comes to build that bomb shelter, hoard that fuel, buy a case of canned peaches and creamed corn for the survivalist stash, learn some archery skills. A good friend of mine recently said, after reading The Road, “It made me want to buy a case of ammo.” And contrary to European notions of all Americans being gun-toting and trigger-happy, I don’t own a firearm.

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May 08, 2007

The End of the World as We Know It, Coming Soon!

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