Frankly, I remember rolling my eyes when I read his technological arguments about alternative energies in the Long Emergency... sounded like an undergraduate term paper. My copy is long gone by now. I remember him lumping his dismissal of completely loony ideas together with his dismissal of techno-solutions upon which reasonable people still disagree (with no sense that he understood the difference), and having a sense that he was parroting opinions, not analyzing options. Scientifically informed friends of mine rejected his good arguments about human society in the present because of his amateurish discussion of energy alternatives... and I remember having to agree with them that his discussion was pretty weak.

Kunstler is not in a position to speak intelligently about alternative energy options. The best he can do is report other people's opinions.

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I think his critique of the contemporary social and political blindness is spot on. His "greatest misallocation of resources in human history" argument hardly seems disputable. His "they still want to make the world safe for cars" is the bomb. He's a prophet.

Nobody knows however how fast things will fall apart, how quickly and to what extent we'll organize alternatives (in energy and in ways of life). But a great deal depends on technological unknowables that people other than Kunstler have a better basis to speculate on than does he.

The best argument that civilization can survive peak oil comes from Cuba, in my opinion. The American southwest is of course doomed. Huge areas of the world are overpopulated for a non-petro-agricultural food economy. We're heading for a big mess. But even as we descend, I'm a techno-optimist in the sense that I think islands of humanity will devise clever and violent ways of surviving.

I don't know how big those geo-political islands will be... I just think that the general downward trend will be resisted in some places.

I'm betting that we're screwed, but not doomed.