In some sense, any projection into the future is a form of fiction, so this book seems like a useful exercise and one that could be usefully replicated by others.

We need to imagine a future without oil or at least one with considerably less oil so that we can also imagine a way to construct a viable world that is beset by scarcity.

Instead, most of us, including our politicians, are imagining, if they imagine at all, a world unconstrained by what will actually occur. Imagining this future that does not require real change will significantly increase the probability of disaster, hardship,misery, and pain. It is that shock, that unexpected blow to the head, coming out of left field, that will kill you.

While imaginings of a future world are useful, Kunstler's dark jeremiad is too pessimistic to help the cause of changing minds. People are repulsed at his insistence that we shall all be forced back into a world where central governments do not function at all, skyscrapers are abandoned, people flee cities and suburbs become derelict wastelands. Kunstler is a misanthropic curmudgeon whose bile has colored everything he writes. His education extends to an Arts degree in Drama, and boy, does he know how to be melodramatic! I've communicated privately with him about various issues, but stopped when he had a knee-jerk negative reaction to any possibility that technology would survive "the change" and that humanity would retain some post-medieval advantages. In many circles he is simply a laughing stock. Even his wife left him.

If an accurately imagined future is sought, the book "When Technology fails" (reviewed here by Richard Heinberg recently) is the book you want:

Thanks for the reference, Mamba.

It's been mentioned here before, but I'll mention it again: World Without Oil is a near-future look at the first shock of the arriving future. Eerily plausible...