In for a Crude Awakening

Conventional wisdom, of course, says that the magic of the market will solve the problem: Higher prices will call forth more supply. In particular, Saudi Arabia is assumed to hold virtually inexhaustible reserves -- enough, the Saudis say, to continue the current production rates (8 to 9 million barrels per day) for another 90 years. Simmons demolishes these rosy assumptions.

He begins by pointing out that there are virtually no independently verifiable data to support the Saudis' claims; essentially, outsiders have been taking their word for it. In a remarkable feat of investigation, Simmons has pieced together his own portrait of the productivity of Saudi oil fields by combing through more than 200 technical papers that engineers from Aramco, the Saudi national oil company, have published over the last 40 years in the journal of the Society of Petroleum Engineers. These papers, Simmons notes, were vetted in advance by Saudi authorities, who presumably assumed that candor was acceptable within such an obscure context.

The resulting book is a page-turner, in both the positive and negative senses of the term. Like a Tom Clancy novel, "Twilight in the Desert" contains vast stretches of impenetrable technical writing that many readers will skip over. The drama that unfolds along the way, however, will keep them reading to the end. Simmons has assembled a devastatingly convincing case that Saudi Arabia is at or beyond peak. As he points out, Saudi production relies on a few gigantic oil fields; after decades of high production, these fields are exhibiting the normal signs of advanced aging (particularly the need for injections of enormous flows of water to force the remaining oil to the surface); and no new major fields have been found, despite intensive searching. It is therefore unrealistic to expect the Saudi oil miracle to continue even "for another decade or two."

Simmons doesn't predict exactly when Saudi oil production will decline. But he clearly fears that the world is heading for a crash and implores leaders in government and elsewhere to fast-track the development of a new energy foundation. In fact, he is so worried that, despite being a long-standing Republican, he raises the idea of redistributing revenues of future oil production from corporate to public treasuries to finance the transition. (Note to Simmons: Tell President Bush, please.)

But it's already too late for such measures, James Howard Kunstler argues in "The Long Emergency." America's dependence on oil is too pervasive to undo quickly, he warns; besides, none of the alternatives (except perhaps nuclear energy) can provide the concentrated amounts of energy required to run our high-tech society, especially when billions of Chinese and other formerly impoverished people are eager to join the party.

We face the end not only of cheap oil but of cheap fossil fuels in general, asserts Kunstler, a novelist and critic best known for his lacerating attacks on the social and environmental costs of suburbia. Even if we do decide to chart a new course, it is "a dangerous fantasy" to believe that "a smooth, seamless transition from fossil fuels to their putative replacements -- hydrogen, solar power, whatever -- lies just a few years ahead." At best, the shift will take decades. What's more, deploying new energy sources, even green ones, still requires a platform of fossil fuel: To manufacture wind turbines or solar panels takes lots of metal and electricity. In the meantime, we'll have our hands full dealing with another unwelcome consequence of fossil-fuel dependence: the soaring temperatures, rising sea levels and mega-droughts brought by global climate change (a complication all but unmentioned by Simmons).

Kunstler takes a curmudgeon's delight in ticking off the many extravagances humanity will have to do without in the years ahead. Say goodbye to suburbia, air travel, industrial agriculture (with its reliance on fossil fuels, from planting to harvesting to shipping) and globalization; after all, without fuel, "the cost of transport will no longer be negligible." The future won't be all gloomy, though: "Life will become intensely and increasingly local," he writes, as humans relocate to "towns and small cities surrounded by intensively cultivated agricultural hinterlands."

Not long ago, a Jeremiah like Kunstler would have been dismissed as a kook. Even now, his unrelenting pessimism about the viability of alternative energy sources and the resourcefulness of the human animal will strike many as extreme. But his book is, alas, as brilliant as it is baleful, and given the revelations of Simmons's detective work, we disregard it at our peril.

Together, these two books cast a particularly harsh light on the current energy debate in Washington, where lawmakers fulminate against exorbitant gasoline prices and pledge an end to U.S. dependence on foreign oil. If the peak-oil prophets are right, $3 for a gallon of gas will soon sound cheap, and the real imperative is to end our dependence on oil altogether.