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Kunstler's premise is that ''cheap, plentiful'' [[oil]] is the foundation of industrial society and the pervasiveness of its effects is not widely appreciated. Through the 21st century, oil and [[natural gas]] will become increasingly difficult to obtain, making it increasingly expensive and ultimately unavailable. Scarcity of [[petroleum]] will cause problems not just for transportation and generation of electrical power. Shipping of food and manufactured items will become expensive, ultimately prohibitively so. In the industrialized West, most of the food is grown and most manufactured items are made far from the end user. Also, natural gas is vitally important to food production as it is the raw material for much of commercial crop [[fertilizers]].
Kunstler further argues that alternative sources of energy will be inadequate. As petroleum sources become scarce, environmentally harmful or risky technologies such as [[coal]] and [[nuclear power|nuclear]] will become necessary but not sufficient for our energy needs. Hydroelectric, solar, and wind power, even in combination with coal and nuclear, will also be far from adequate. (Kunstler does not consider hydrogen to be a true energy source as there is essentially no molecular hydrogen on earth.)
As energy becomes scarce, transportation will become difficult or impossible, which means that food and other necessary commodities will become unavailable in many communities. Local communities will need to become self-sufficient for food production but many communities, especially large cities, will be unable to do so. The result will be mass starvation, disease, and civil unrest. Governments are incompetent to manage these problems. This period of scarcity will last for at least hundreds of years, hence the "long" emergency of the book's title.
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