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First book I've read by a druid... and a very interesting book it is. Greer is an out-of-the-box thinker: faced with a choice between two alternatives, he automatically looks for a third. And into the critical debate over how industrial civilization will respond to ecological overshoot (peak oil, peak soil, resource shortages, overpopulation, and so on), which is dominated by a vigorously contested struggle between Cornucopians, who think that science and technology will find a way for economic growth and progress to continue ad infinitum, and Doomers who think that Cormac McCarthy's "Road" is perhaps optimistic, he injects a very plausible third alternative: gradual stepwise decline.

Intellectually his forefathers are the historians of civilizations (such as Spengler, Toynbee, Tainter, and Diamond), whose primary interest has been to explain why civilizations rise and fall. What Greer adds to the picture is his assertion that despite our wonderful science and technology our modern industrial civilization will be no different, because it has an Achilles heel: the continued availability of adequate supplies of cheap fossil fuels... and this is coming to an end (if you don't believe this, you haven't been paying attention).

Greer does a good job of explaining such key concepts as net energy, overshoot, problems vs predicaments, and the roles of myth and political interest in our collective inability to see and respond to our Achilles heel, while pointing out the implausibilities of the arguments of both the Cornucopians and the Doomers. He is less good on explaining the role that global warming will play, but since it basically reinforces his other arguments this is not a major flaw. He has certainly convinced me that a gradual decline punctuated by crises is the most likely scenario (although I remain more optimistic about the ability of science and technology to arrest and then reverse this decline at some point prior to a reversion to a medieval pastoral lifestyle). But in his prescriptions as to what we should do to prepare for gradual decline he goes astray.

His problems, I believe, are twofold. First, I think that he has spent too much time around Doomers -- despite his explicit rejection of their theses, his thinking has become coloured by their worldview -- and as a result he loses sight of the implications of his own ideas. Second, despite advocating a focus on preparing to survive the intermittent periods of crisis during the decline, his own focus is too long term. Both of these problems are visible in his recommendation that we should learn basic skills such as soap-making and herbal medicine as a way to prepare for the decline. While we may eventually get to the point where every community will be more or less self-sufficient, Greer's own timeline of 150 years or so of decline means that none of us alive today will see the endpoint. In the interim global supply chains will almost certainly break down, but regional integration and consequent advantages of specialization and economies of scale will still apply: there will continue to be soap factories and medical clinics for a long time yet. Learning how to make soap in your kitchen and to perform simple surgery in your woodshed will not be particularly useful in this case.

Still, the book is very well worth reading. Greer is an excellent writer and a first-rate analyst -- he cuts through to the heart of very complex issues and creates clarity and understanding with a modicum of fuss. But at the end of the book, although you'll understand the problems our civilization faces well, you won't have a clear and useful plan for what to do about them, or what you can personally do to prepare for the Long Descent.