One of my favorite blogs doesn’t have snazzy CSS or RSS feeds,* doesn’t share out-of-print records or PDFs of old comics. It doesn’t keep me abreast of the current state of my online rights and it doesn’t offer handy lifehacking tips. It doesn’t even link back to this site. All it does is sound a weekly deathknell for our “non-negotiable” way of life.
James Howard Kunstler is the author of “The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of the Oil Age, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century“
He’s like an after-dinner game: give him any topic and he’ll bring it back around to his key theme in a couple of sentences. And he’s right: our culture is so wrapped up in the availability of cheap oil that the transformative effects of it’s imminent removal from the scene will be incalculable. But I’m not here to debate nor endorse his points; I’m neither a geologist nor a geopoliticist. I am one, however, who derives great pleasure from the lather Kunstler works himself into, week after week.
I can particularly recommend the January 2nd column, where he makes his predicitions for 2006:
The suburban housing bubble and its related activities were predicated on the idea that we could continue building out a living arrangement dependent on cheap oil and methane gas, and that all the subdivisions and strip malls would retain value for decades to come. Of course, this was the central delusion of the suburban sprawl economy, because it was obvious to anyone who gave the situation more than a cursory glance that cheap oil and gas were the things we were least likely to have in the decades to come.
High gasoline, heating oil, and methane gas prices will absolutely kill the housing bubble for reasons I’ve already outlined. The production home builders will be idle, stuck with huge inventories in places that never should have been suburbanized in the first place. A lot of Americans holding “creative” mortgages — no money down, interest only, adjustable rate, what-have-you — will be crushed by the expense of their obligations. Many of them will go bankrupt under new bankruptcy laws that leave no wiggle room for escaping partial repayment. Their houses will flood the real estate markets in an orgy of distress selling.
With the cratering of the housing bubble, the US economy has to fall on its ass.
By the time Kunster is finished, the Dow is down below 4000 and the world is poised for global war with China in the lead spot. And, oh yeah, the Democrats continue to not offer an alternative, for they too subscribe to Dick Cheney’s “non-negotiable” American way of life. (Well, they do.)
I’d love to go on and on about it, but better you go visit:
Clusterfuck Nation by James Howard Kunstler
Just be sure you turn the lights out when you leave.
Two Movie recomendations if you havent yet seen them ,1. “The Corporation” A very disturbing and visualy captivating documentary about how corporations are getting away with crimes against nature it’s self.
2.” Wal-mart ;the high cost of low prices”
It’s all about Wal-Mart and what a curse it is for them to move into your town.
I want to make a film called ” A world with out Cars”
I actualy hate the effects cars have had on the Earth.I don’t even drive, but I ride in them as a passenger.
Corporations are running the government.That’s the problem.
In 50 years our children will be ordering Exxon Hempoline for the tanks of their hoover crafts.
Solar crafts will be unavailable because of Exxon’s powerful lobying holding it back, Dick Cheney will be cloned and he will still be the dark cheesey lord.
Half man Half machine……running on Exxon Hempoline!
“The High Cost Of Low Prices” I’ve seen. Certainly galling in spots, especially the part about the ways they manage to get the government to subsidise them.
Fans of this sort of fare should also check out “The Future Of Food.” This is a documentary about GMOs in general and Monsanto specifically. From their Web site (thefutureoffood.com, natch):
“THE FUTURE OF FOOD offers an in-depth investigation into the disturbing truth behind the unlabeled, patented, genetically engineered foods that have quietly filled U.S. grocery store shelves for the past decade.
“From the prairies of Saskatchewan, Canada to the fields of Oaxaca, Mexico, this film gives a voice to farmers whose lives and livelihoods have been negatively impacted by this new technology. The health implications, government policies and push towards globalization are all part of the reason why many people are alarmed by the introduction of genetically altered crops into our food supply.
“Shot on location in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, THE FUTURE OF FOOD examines the complex web of market and political forces that are changing what we eat as huge multinational corporations seek to control the world’s food system. The film also explores alternatives to large-scale industrial agriculture, placing organic and sustainable agriculture as real solutions to the farm crisis today.”
i’ve always liked discussing topics like these with my buddies. Sometimes on weekends far into the night, we’d just sit around and just talk away about phylosophycal, political, and personal stuff, we would get real deep into discussion. This little blog has given me that same kind of deep thinking feeling i love. Thanks for posting this, it sure was an entertaining read, and now i have a new discussion to bring up to my buddies! Thanks again Derrick. PS: The way you write your liturature is is great, i really wish i had your writing skills.
Thanks Kirk! I appreciate the affirmation!
Kunstler blew off a lot of credibility by trying to time the catastrophe. (”It will happen this winter.”) But he has a lot of insight into the big picture and he basically predicted August 2007, in that post, before it hit. If Paul Graham is the visionary of West Coast optimism; Kunstler is the guru of East Coast pessimism. He disappoints on some technical details, but gets the big picture right, which so few people do.
I work on Wall Street and spend a significant amount of time off-hours reading the financial press. It’s amazing to me how many of the mainstream columnists have their heads in the sand. We’ve gone from a 10 percent chance of recession (Aug 07) to a 50 percent chance of one (Nov 07) with periodic revisions of how bad things can get because people simply refuse to accept reality. (”Property values will *never* go down on the island.”) Clinging to mathematical abstractions like Efficient Market Hypothesis, as if it were a referendum on what will actually happen rather than merely what bets are reasonable for short-term-oriented traders to make, they tend to assume the continuation of status quo to the extreme. Therefore, if peak oil were a real problem, it’d be reflected in the far-out futures prices, but the currently high prices are purely a result of “peak oil speculators” rather than actual scarcity.
Extreme uncertainty calls for an agnostic stance. Thus, imminent peak oil and global warming should be seen as severe and probable risks rather than certain predictable catastrophes. But you can’t blame Kunstler for ringing the alarm bells in an eerily quiet world.
I agree Mike! I enjoy Kunstler not so much for the utility of his predictions, rather for the pleasingly shrill tone of his alarms.