James Howard Kunstler
"The Long Emergency"
a wise guy's look at the future
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Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century According to social critic James Howard Kunstler, the author of “The Long Emergency,” Americans are woefully unprepared for the end of the cheap oil era. Kunstler observes the American way of life—now virtually synonymous with suburbia---runs only on reliably cheap oil and gas. As oil gets more expensive Kunstler thinks we’re going to have to make other arrangements. Nick Vander Puy from the Superior Broadcast Network caught up with James Howard Kunstler, near Stevens Point, Wisconsin after his keynote address at late June’s Midwest Renewable Energy and Sustainable Living Fair.
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James Howard Kunstler speaks at Renewable Energy Fair
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On National Public Radio’s MORNING EDITION, a few weeks ago, the head of British Petroleum Lord John Browne scoffed at anxiety about the end of cheap oil.
The oil executive said, “The world is very well provided with both inventories of oil and gas, growth in oil and gas, and increasing surplus production capacity.”
James Howard Kunstler scoffs right back.
“Well, as I’m fond of saying if we could harness the energy produced by guys like that blowing smoke up the public’s rear end than we could probably run the interstate high systems, and Wal Mart and Walt Disney World.”
James Howard Kunstler is fifty eight years old. He’s Manhattan born, but he’s now living in upstate New York. He’s been an editor for Rolling Stone Magazine. His articles have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly and the New York Times. He wrote the book “The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil.” Kunstler has written incisively about building the suburbs, you know the single family detached homes a long drive from work. Kunstler calls building the suburbs, “the greatest misallocation of resources the world has ever known.”
“Well, it’s not that difficult to understand. You know in America we had this fantastic endowment of petroleum which was easy to get. We knocked ourselves out in a couple of wars and a depression and after that we decided to give ourselves a present and we gave ourselves an easy motoring utopia which we commenced to spend the second half of the twentieth century building it. And that’s what we did. The problem was we didn’t figure on how it was going to run when we had trouble with our oil supply.”
The first Arab oil embargo in 1973 sent shock waves through the United States. Remember the gas lines, followed by extremely high interest rates and a recession?
Some Americans began to think about the end of cheap oil
“And we started to in 1973 with OPEC embargo. At that time the American oil production had peaked and we were able to sort of muddle thorough by importing a lot of oil from other countries.”
How much oil does the world’s largest producer Saudi Arabia still have? For proof Kunstler asked America’s leading energy investment banker Matt Simmons. The Houston banker Simmons studied more than two hundred hard to access technical papers about Saudi Arabian oil reserves. Simmons came away so concerned about diminishing Saudi oil reserves he wrote the book, “Twilight in the Desert.”
“But now the world is reaching it’s oil production peak and we’re not going to be able to go to another planet to import oil. So that’s sort of the nature of the problem.”
Strolling around the Midwest Renewable Energy and Sustainable living Fair near Stevens Point Wisconsin Kunstler observes displays for solar and wind power, bee keeping, spinning wool, identifying medicine plants, and construction techniques for small, energy efficient homes.
“What I learned today is oh gosh there’s an awful lot of earnest people working on interesting alternative technologies. They have a lot of knowledge. We haven’t applied it a whole lot out there in America land. But the time is coming along when we’re going to have to .And they’re going to be out to do when the time comes.”
Despite this creativity and resilience in the renewable energy industry Kunstler thinks, once the cheap oil platform disappears, there won’t be enough energy to keep running the theme parks, the twelve thousand mile long Wal- Mart supply lines, or even the high tech American military.
Kunstler thinks most Americans are in a “collective trance” or “denial” about our dismal energy future. He thinks we suffer from the Walt Disney, Jiminy Cricket syndrome. In other words, just because we wish upon a star in reality things don’t always work out.
The great twentieth century composer George Gershwin understood this.
Gershwin wrote.
The radio and the telephone and the movies that
we know
May just be passing fancies and in time may go.
“Oh that was from “Our Love is Here to Stay” by George Gershwin. You know Someday the Rockies may tumble, Gibraltar may crumble but our love is here to stay.
Gershwin was writing kind of a tragic lyric there, you know, recognizing that nothing lasts forever, that there’s a beginning and end to most mortal things, including these big mountains we see. But actually the idea that our love is here to stay is very profound because I don’t know whether the human race is going to be around forever, probably not. But something was here and we were here and a lot about us was really great. And our love is here to stay in a way. It’s there for eternity.”
I’m Nick Vander Puy for the Superior Broadcast Network.
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