A land full of places that are not worth caring about may soon be a nation and a way of life that is not worth defending.

We will have to make new arrangements, or revive bygone ones. We may, for another example, see the return of the boarding house.

No amount or combination of alternative fuels is going to allow us to continue running what we're running, the way we're running it.

Government at all levels in the USA right now is engaged in a quixotic campaign to sustain the unsustainable. We're determined to run WalMart, Disney World, the Interstate Highways, suburbia, and an imperial military by other means than oil. We'll squander a lot of dwindling resources in the process.

[Suburbia] represents, after all, the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world. We built it during our most affluent period of history, and in the decades to come we will be comparatively destitute collectively. In short, we will not have the resources to retrofit most of suburbia.

The Long Emergency will be chiefly characterized as a "time out" from technology. It could plunge us into a dark age of superstition. My guess is that we will lose a lot of knowledge and skill. But I also believe the human race desperately needs this "time out."

Ridicule is the unfortunate destiny of the ridiculous.