One more thing on the book

I have at least one other thing to say about the book. I say "at least", because I'm sure I'll have more to say about it in the weeks to come. It's really changed my outlook. It's not a book you want to read before bedtime, I can tell you that much. Anyway, there was another conception of mine that was blown out of the water while reading this book. Up to this point, I thought of our soaring gas prices in the typical way: "pain at the pump", it increases the prices of everything and hurts the economy, etc. But this book helped me realize that these effects of our passing Peak Oil just barely scratch the surface of what could happen.

I'm astonished that more people cannot see the contradiction of our system, which I can see more clearly than ever. We are living in a system that promotes and advocates constant consumption and growth, and the engine that fuels that system, that is making that system possible, is built upon a natural substance that is in limited numbers and is already showing serious signs of decreasing. I find the willful ignorance of the average person even more scary than the ramifications of passing Peak Oil itself. I'm scared about the possible scenarios that I read about in this book occuring, but I really feel that Kunstler wildly underestimated the average American's connection to our way of life. I do hope that he is wrong, for all our sakes.