James Kunstler

About six months ago, James Howard Kunstler, the author of "The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century" was here in Spokane. He gave a lecture at Gonzaga University. The following is what I wrote after I had attended his lecture:

“It may be easy for people to misunderstand where I am coming from. I am certainly not a science writer per se. I’m a—really I consider myself a prose artist who went into journalism and then became a novel writer and then returned to journalism. My first eight books were novels, and then I re-embarked on a journalism career. And I wrote several books about the fiasco of suburbia, and where that came from was my experience as a young newspaper reporter in the ‘70s and I covered the OPEC oil embargo of 1973—right on the ground, and I watched the people fight on the gas lines while I was waiting on the lines. The whole spectacle made an impression on me, that this was a serious problem and probably a dress rehearsal for a much bigger problem later on. Although at the time I knew nothing about the scientific modeling that has come to be known by the name of its originator, Hubbert’s Peak. It was also obvious to me at the time that suburbia was a tremendous problem—an economic problem, an ecological problem, and a spiritual problem. And that it was connected, obviously, to the energy issue.” (From an interview with Robert Birnbaum on the online magazine, the Morning News[1], 24 August 2005)

American geophysicist King Hubbert predicted that the US oil production would peak between 1965 to 1970. U.S. oil production actually peaked in 1971. He also predicted that the global oil production would peak in the year 2000. This did not happen mainly due to the OPEC oil embargo of 1973, which led to a temporary but effective reduction of dependence on fossil energy in the few years that followed. However, "fossil fuels currently supply most of the world’s energy, and are expected to continue to do so for the foreseeable future. While supplies are currently abundant, they won’t last forever. Oil production is in decline in 33 of the 48 largest oil producing countries.” (The International Energy Agency's (IEA) World Energy Outlook 2004) This means that the global peak has already happened though not exactly in the year that Hubbert said it would.

It is based on these facts that Kunstler draws a grim perspective of the future that is awaiting the United States and the world. He predicts that unless a change in the way of life is attempted, Americans will not be able to sustain their present standard of living for much longer.

Although he had to leave his speech at SFCC rather incomplete due to time circumstances, he did make it clear that the current standard of life in the U.S. is not sustainable even if new sources of energy can be found before the world runs out of fossil energy. Oil is not only the source of the energy that is currently running our factories, lighting and warming our houses, and transporting merchandise and people from place to place, but it is also the basis of petrochemical industries without which industrial production, transportation, and construction of residential homes and businesses will be rendered impossible.

Solar energy, wind and tide wave energy, and even nuclear energy may be able to run our cars and light and warm our houses, but they will not give us the rubber that we use in our tires, or the plastic products that are used in almost everything that we find necessary for our way of life today.

Kunstler argues that either we have to urgently change our way of living by minimizing our dependency on oil and oil-based products, or soon witness the decline of our standard of living.

Kunstler’s seems to be strongly critical of the globalization process. He favors a trend towards localizing production and a belief that, with the gradual trend towards the scarcity of oil, it will be more and more difficult for communities to depend on merchandise that is imported from faraway places.

Kunstler blasts the urban structure of American communities and calls for the “deconstruction” of the suburbia. He argues that aside from being ugly and impractical, the suburbia puts a heavy strain on the community’s resources in terms of urban services such as utilities, waste management, transportation, etc. not to mention that this sort of urban sprawl forces the constant retreat of nature as people demand more and more residential space.

Kunstler strongly favors the introduction of public transportation – city and inter-city transportation - as a way of conserving in energy consumption and reducing pollution. In his SFCC speech, he compared public transportation in Europe to that of the U.S. He made the point that while Europeans have maintained and expanded their public transportation system, in the U.S. the trend has been the contrary: public transportation has systematically lost grounds to the ownership of automobiles.

Kunstler predicts that, at the present rate of fossil energy consumption, giant retailers such as Wal-Mart will not be able to remain in business much longer since it will become more and more costly to transport merchandise from remote places.

Deglobalization, localization, and deconstruction of the suburbia seem to be quite reasonable suggestions in the face of diminishing fossil energy reserves. What Kunstler seems to be leaving out of the argument is the type of political system that will be capable of putting these goals on its agenda. With the present political structure in the United States, I seriously doubt that Kunstler’s ideas can ever be systematically realized before a decline in the living standards actually demand them, although, as Marx would put it, economic realities will eventually determine political decisions.

[1] http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/birnbaum_v/james_howard_kunstler.php