The Long Emergency/Maya Collapses

In the Book The Long Emergency:"Sleep walking into the future" by James Howard Kunstler and the text Maya collapses by Jared Diamond both authors discuss the fall in oil in a different matter. Diamond defines Maya collapses as particular cites becoming powerful, loosing that power and then regaining that power without any significant change. Where as Kunstler says America is sleep walking into political disorder that they do not seem to realize. Diamond believes that problems around the world are based more on greed and power then actual change. Kunstler goes against this because to him America is running on cheap oil, which is natural supplies that underlie everything people identify in modern life, the denial of Americans and The long emergency which is a harsh view of the decades ahead and what will happen in the U.S and people cannot stand too much reality.

In Maya collapses Diamond goes through the text explaining how people in the world aren’t in a collapse consuming everybody, he mentions how the people who are in a collapse can just get out of it and put other people in one. He goes on talking about how even with different places being in collapse it is not causing a real significant change in the world (meaning different places may gain more power, but every one is still on their feet just a step lower then others). Power is also a part of this version of collapse that Diamond discusses. When a place has more power then the other place with power it is not in a collapse and the one without power is. Diamond believes that there is a problem with the world, but he doesn’t believe it is fully falling a part; where as Kunstler who wrote The Long Emergency disagrees.

In The Long Emergency:Sleep Walking into the Future, Kunstler goes through this explaining how people in America are sleep walking into the future, meaning they are walking into a dangerous area and still taking those extra steps without realizing it or accepting it (denial). Along with walking blindly into the future, they are relying on cheap oil, and falling into the Long Emergency ahead. Kunstler believes that America is falling into Long Emergency which means a harsh time that will occur decades ahead from now and if America doesn’t stop wasting cheap oil and accepting this crises then they will never get out of it.