We will run out of cheap oil, either now or later. The most pessimistic disciples of the late geologist M. King Hubbert believe that production will peak somewhere between 2000 and 2010. Others suggest that produc- tion may top out a few decades after that. What will happen next is unknown, but an increasing number of the peak-oil handicap-pers share the dark beliefs of James Howard Kunstler, who predicts that alternative energy sources will never meet our needs and that we are in for a "rough ride through uncharted territory," which will take us "off the edge of a cliff" and thence into "an abyss of economic and political disorder on a scale that no one has ever seen before." The sprawl of metaphors is characteristic of Kunstler, who in The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century adds a relentless, scary, and entertaining voice to the rising alarm about life after the cheap oil is gone.
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机译：现在或以后，我们将耗尽廉价的石油。已故地质学家M.金·哈伯特（M. King Hubbert）最悲观的信徒认为，产量将在2000年至2010年间达到顶峰。其他人则认为，产量可能在此后几十年达到顶峰。接下来会发生什么情况尚不得而知，但是越来越多的峰值石油残障人士怀有詹姆斯·霍华德·昆斯特勒的黑暗信念，他预测替代能源将永远无法满足我们的需求，而且我们正处于“艰难的境地”未知的领域”，它将使我们“脱离悬崖的边缘”，并因此而陷入“前所未有的规模的经济和政治混乱深渊”。隐喻的泛滥是Kunstler的特征，他在《漫长的紧急状况：幸存于二十一世纪的大灾难》中为廉价石油消失后不断上升的生命警报增添了无情，恐怖和令人愉悦的声音。
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