@Hristo:
I have not yet read Kingsnorth (on my list), so I can't speak to his works. In simplest terms what I was trying to convey is that wanting to return to a historical past that was somehow better is a very common human longing or fantasy. It is also true that at all times in the past humans lived with lower average energy use per capita and lower average population density.
From the first United States censue (in 1790) to the most recent one (in 2000), enumerated population rose from 3.9 million to nearly 300 million. In 1790 for each American there were, on average, almost 7 hectares of national environment (roughly equivalent to 115 football fields) in which to live, from which to extract a living, and into which life's end-products could be deposited. By 2000, despite territorial expansion, this per capita share had shrunk to about one-fourteenth as much, or an average of a little over 3 hectares (between 6 and 7 football field equivalents) per person. However, unlike the tiger which is no larger today than its 1790 ancestor, industrial man is ecologically a "larger" animal than pre-industrial man, as data below will show. So 3- plus hectares per capita now has to provide far more and absorb far more than did each 57 hectares in 1790. It should be no surprise, then, that life in modern industrial America has to be more regulated (less free) than life in 1790 America."
- "Bottleneck: Humanity's Impending Impasse" - William Catton.
It is also true that the current human population on average is burning through resources at an unsustainable (barring technological miracles still to come) rate. Therefore, choosing to reduce average burn rate could be a solution AND not choosing to reduce average burn rate may hasten future collapse to lower average burn rate. So, the future, whether by choice or natural consequences, may very well be the like the past in that average human burn rate will be lower.
Therefore, an imaginative novel set in post-collapse world likely describe some ways in which the lower-energy future is like the lower-energy past. For instance, people are eating more turnips in isolated Britain or people are once again using draft horses and baking cornbread in the Midwest. Is is also true that in most any situation, human beings are going to experience their share of joys and sorrows. So, any attempting-to-be-realistic novel set in the low energy future would also illustrate this reality. The problem I was trying to describe, is when a novelist (consciously or unconsciously) crosses over the line to portraying the post-collapse, low-energy future as being better because it will be like some fantasy about the historical past. The reason why I think this might be a problem is because it lends fuel to the sort of arguments set forth in books like "Austerity Ecology and the Collapse-Porn Addicts: A Defense of Growth, Progress, Industry, and Stuff" by Leigh Phillips, especially if the reason why life is portrayed as better in an imagined post-collapse, low energy future is because a lot of humans have died, so average hectare territory per human, and thus freedom from regulation has increased. The post-apocalypse freeway may be full of potholes and rusting abandoned vehicles, but it's all mine!
Even those with much more gentle agrarian or living lightly in nature imaginative visions of the lower-energy future, often seem to be evading the required kill-off math. We are twenty years on from the above quote from " Bottleneck" and the U.S. obviously enjoys lower population density than most of the inhabitable planet. Give or take for productive shore and river areas, we are now down to around 1 inhabitable/arable/productive hectare (around 2.5 acres = around 2 football fields) of land per human globally. For most of human history, we subsisted as foragers. It is absolutely un-possible for humans to subsist as foragers at current average global population density. It's cool when a modern human demonstrates being able to live off of foraging in a moneyless experiment, but absolutely can't be expanded to 9 billion humans doing it. By 1790, England was already down to around 4 acres per human. The forests had been decimated and coal usage had become a necessity. So, the mixed agrarian model of 18th century England was unsustainable at population density that was half the current global density. IOW, there was no way to go back in time technologically without killing off or exporting some of the population. So, any novel that imagines a future with lower energy usage per capita and 8 to 10 billion humans living on the planet, can't simply imagine reversion to lower-tech agrarian past. Either some of the humans have to go or some of the technology must be retained or newly invented. And, it just bothers me when authors manage the "killing off" of the rest of the humans* who won't fit in back-to-low-tech-future in a cavalier manner.
*I am also bothered by not infrequent cavalier handling of "most of the women-folk back to baking cornbread."