Have you ever heard of Howard Kunstler-author of

[napi21]

The Long Emergency? (Sorry I mis-typed it!)

He was just on BookTv, and if there's any truth to what's in his book, the US is in much deeper shit than we all thought!

He's predicting the final relization that the World's oil supply really is running out, which will cause the colapse of the giant stores, a major reduction in suburban living and a move back to the cities where you don't need a car, lots of people will have to make a living in farming because globalization will die, and well have to go back to growing our own food.

Really scary stuff!

Is he a crackpot?

[Joebert]

1. Was it the Long Emergency?

I just hit Amazon, and no word of a Great Emergency by him.

But The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of the Oil Age, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century

Is listed, and is new as of 4/2005.


(And no, haven't heard of him, sorry)

[POAS]

2. You beat me to it, "The Long Emergency" is correct

[Joebert]

5. And if the Amazon quotes are real, he is a crackpot.

Asian pirates plundering California
Serfdom
Horsecarts
The governments of the world creating designer viruses to cull the population?

Um, no. Sounds like a wild read though.

[oasis]

3. self delete- wrong Kunstler.

[JohnyCanuck]

4. Check out DU's Peak Oil group

You'll find lots of DUers who know about Kunstler.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=266

[Dogmudgeon]

9. But Napi has no star

Anyway, most of the action happens on the Energy and Environment group.

Kunstler is excellent, but I am not personally quite so pessimistic. The danger is great, but not beyond our means to ameliorate the fall and rebuild.

--p!

[Warpy]

6. No, but it's going to be a slow motion crash

with the exurbs being the first to become uneconomical for working people. Unless they manage to tear down the kiddie stuff and the barbecue and turn their back yards into greenhouses to grow exotic plants that are in high demand (orchids, anyone?) they're going to have a very hard time finding work in that area and they won't be able to afford to commute to the places the jobs are. Food is going to become much more expensive as it becomes more labor intensive, and we're likely to see the type of inflation we've seen in housing and medicine.

Exorbitant energy prices will also mean exorbitant shipping, and the third world will no longer look quite as attractive as a place to manufacture goods sold in the US and Europe. Here again, it's going to be a slow crunch, so there probably won't be any relief for the US worker who is expected to compete not only against workers, but against their currencies in an unfair free trade world.

As for moving back to the cities, good luck. The old rooming houses in the cities have long since been converted back into mansions by yuppies. The housing they'll have to fight over will be in the inner suburbs, which will become a ring of poverty surrounding the prosperity of the inner city.

All this is just in case Stupid doesn't get us onto the losing side of a world war (and yes, we'll lose the next one). If there's another big war, all this stuff will happen overnight as the military grabs all the available fuel for itself.

[hippiechick]

7. I thought he died a few years back ...

:shrug: He was my Constitutional Law prof's idol ....

[Dogmudgeon]

11. I think you're talking about William Kunstler

He was a great 60s constitutional law expert and social progressive.

James Howard Kunstler started out as an art critic, and his foray into architectural criticism led him to the issues of sprawl, unsustainable development, and finally resource depletion.

--p!

[hippiechick]

15. Aaah, indeed.

Thank ya !! :thumbsup:

[Gormy Cuss]

8. Weird coincidence: Atrios has a new post re: Kunstler's early book

"Geography of Nowhere"

He is apparently viewed as somewhere between a visionary and an alarmist.

I love this quote from the Salon interview:

Question :If there is such a massive threat to the American way of life, why are our government and civic institutions unable to foresee it and make any changes to address it?

Answer: ... The dirty secret of the American economy for more than a decade now is that it is largely based on the continued creation of suburban sprawl and all its accessories and furnishings. And if you remove that from our economy there isn't a whole lot left besides hair cutting, Colonel Sanders' chicken, and open-heart surgery.

[SmokingJacket]

10. James Howard Kunstler?

He's a very well-known guy among town-planning, new-urbanist types. He has been predicting the end of cars for some time. I met him when he gave a lecture here. I love his books!

He has great ideas. I love what he says about what makes a good, livable town: tree-lined streets, walkable distances, etc.

As for his prognostication, I don't know!

[napi21]

13. Believe it or not, they're interviewing Kenstler on Ring of Fire! NOW!

Thanks for the info. I hadn't heard about him before. He does seem pretty radical, but he also makes a lot of sense!

[JohnyCanuck]

12. Kunstler's blog The Clusterfuck Nation Chronicle

He seems to update it about once a week.

http://www.kunstler.com/mags_diary13.html

[finecraft]

14. I am reading "The Geography of Nowhere" now

and just finished reading "Home from Nowhere". I found them both excellent reads. "The Long Emergency" is sitting on my shelf waiting for me to finish reading my current book. Based on what I have read so far, he makes excellent points about the devastating effects (both physical and mental) of urban sprawl on our country.

[Telly Savalas]

17. Kunstler's stuff on sprawl and urban design is great.

It's kind of disappointing that the progressive movement doesn't push this agenda harder.

[depakid]

16. He's no crackpot

What he's talking about is common knowledge in many circles. It's the big white elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about.

Ask any honest scientist who's looked at the issues and see what they say. Try Professor Emeritus of geology Kenneth Deffeyes, for starters:

http://www.princeton.edu/hubbert/

[JohnyCanuck]

18. Article on "The Long Emergency' in the Santa Cruz Sentinel

The end of oil

Kunstler — former editor at Rolling Stone magazine and author of three books about suburban sprawl as well as numerous novels — has a theory about why most Americans don’t believe their current way of life is in jeopardy.

It’s not that we haven’t heard the world is running out of oil — we have.

But, he said, we can’t disbelieve in the economic growth we’ve gotten accustomed to in the 20th century — all those cheap, readily available consumer goods.

<snip>

"We are living in the highest times of all, the absolute final fiesta of cheap energy, and our expectations of what’s normal are rather distorted," the author said by phone from his home in upstate New York.

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