So its been a couple months plus now since I heard James Howard Kunstler speak at the conference in Saratoga. I bought and read "World Built by Hand" in a couple days, and I'm still slogging through "The Long Emergency" as well as watched the DVD "The End of Suburbia".
My first thoughts are who chose Kunstler as a keynote speaker and why? Joel, Will care to comment?
Second, is am I losing my optimism as I get older or am I an "actualist" as Kunstler claims? I have made some significant decisions regarding my future, my time, and my investments over the last couple months as a result of what I have heard and read since.
However, I don't think things will be as bad as he thinks or as soon as he suggests. For one thing, the concept of demand destruction, suggests that as the price of something in demand increases due to limited availability people cut back on use. The supply to demand ratio improves and the price decreases. We saw this in the 70's, 80's and last year with regard to energy.
I also give more credit to alternatives and conservation. I am concerned that our entitled, population of couch potatoes may not rise to the occasion and work harder, take on more agricultural work to make up for the lack of fossil fuels for fertilizer, weed killers, and robo-farming. And perhaps my greatest concern is that politcally we as a nation will deny reality, blame the problem of the shortages and inflation on the current administration and vote for promises of what we want to hear.
Should I buy guns, gold and ammunition while developing a standard stockade timber frame kit for our web site? Or more opimistically invest in photovoltaics, a hybrid, and initiate a big green marketing campaign?
I'd love to hear others' take on this, especially if you've read "The Long Emergency" and/or listened to Kunstlers presentation in Saratoga.
Paul, I have read it. World Built by Hand is on loan from the library and in the mail. I also read The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, just finished it and found it to be very similar but not as down.
I hold that if you are not a actualist you are going to miss something, so pay attention and don't let yourself be carried off by WalMart or Climate Change. Have you seen Avatar?
Who really knows how good or bad thing to come may be. Are we truly apprised of the resources out of sight? I hear both sides running away with fact, all I really know is today and somedays it isn't bright, an ever present conflict. The days are getting longer, that is a good thing.
I run an off grid system and it is not all peaches and cream. Kunstler put it right on that one. What will happen when we see the price of fuel to run our transportation system go only a little above where it is now? How long can we run with artificially priced fuel. Tarsands will run the cost of fuel out of reach for the common person.
Politics are a joke, both sides, We the People are run over. And it is our fault.
I bought 2 guns this fall and we almost had Ruffed Grouse for supper, a no go, the snow was crusty and loud. I wouldn't spend money on a hybrid, get a VW diesel. And the Green approach is a lure. Go after sensible solutions on your own, you know what is right. I can't afford gold.
This all sounds more than a little gloomy. We in Europe already pay about 2 x what you pay for diesel / gasoline and apart from grumbles this appears to be accepted by most as the price that we need to pay for burning fossil fuel. There is currently no real economic or practical alternative.
On a lighter note can I suggest that a low cost capital item that you should consider for your green investment portfolio is a bicycle and some spare parts for same. This item solves 2 problems - fossil fuel shortage and couch potato syndrome.
Ken, we also must consider that the US is a much larger country and to travel such larger distances we uses more fuel than you do in a typical day of running around. So we will see a greater impact in the fuel price for us as it goes up. If I am not mistaken the difference in price is in a large part is taxes? To more confound the issue we have more roads to keep up too with lesser tax? Where does your tax dollars on the fuel go? Where does ours go?
Ken, I am guessing you have not read The Long Emergency. For an over view you summed it up well with " There is currently no real economic or practical alternative." We as a people are addicted to oil and addicts do not come off a drug easily.
You could put your condensed tools in a little trailer to tow behind the bike, really, and hand tools at that. No 16" saws, couldn't power it anyway.
longer distance - part of this is choice. we want our cake and we want to eat it to. a cost of owning a home on the mountain or in the burbs is often that of a car or two in the drive, insurance, fuel, upkeep, and hours of life wasted in front of the windshield. not to mention increased costs in building, transportation of materials, burden on services, built in inefficiencies (how far did that wire have to carry that power? or that pipe with water?, etc.) oh, and throw in 40,000 deaths a year in auto related 'accidents'...
close in (for me) is a good thing. walk / bike to basic services. drive when needed with the little one, when the weather sucks, or when the load is too great - and even then - things are close relative to others i know. compared to my folks in suburban ohio - i'm 15 minutes by bike from 'downtown'. they are 15 minutes by car from decentralized suburban strip mall.
choices, most.
hard to make, for sure - esp. when influenced by $$$.
i'm drawn to a parcel in the woods, with a pond, and a small house. but everytime we debate it out - we realize that car time would go up - drop the little one at school, get to a yoga class, shop at the coop, meet friends, pick up milk, etc. etc. etc. we are not ready, nor willing at this point to make those sacrifices. yes - we could still ride many places, for sure, as i do that now - to far away destinations... but it complicates things for sure.
tim - i would think there is no real political value to dislodge the status quo. too much money at stake. too many people too comfortable. no one willing to make hard choices on a grand scale.
change is opportunity. but the opportunity needs to seep through the wall of our status quo first, then go through a few freeze thaw cycles, until bricks become dislodged, and eventually the wall breaks down and people start to pick up the bricks to make something new.
kunstler was way off on Y2K. but fun to read, in a downer fatalist sort of way. i'll have to check out world made by hand. but i try to avoid fiction.
Who chose Kunstler? I confess. I've read his books and "enjoyed" them. The Geography of Nowhere remains my favorite. I don't agree with all of his conclusions but believe he is thought provoking enough to make us look at what we are doing. He's had more coverage in these Forums than any other speaker we've had. I think his ideas for how villages should be designed to survive the future are right on. Jack Sobon is a big fan of his (he introduced him) and that was another reason since Jack was another major presence at Saratoga. Also, Kunstler lives in Saratoga and gave us a very good deal since he could walk to the Conference. It was an opportunity I felt we couldn't pass up.
I agree with Will in that Kunstler is thought provoking - a good quality in a speaker, whether one agrees with him or not. I read the book "Geography of Nowhere" during my 10-year tenure as a planner for the city of Burlington, Vermont. Kunstler is an irreverent sort with strongly held opinions, no doubt, but he makes some very valid points about the cluster f@#k (to use his words) we've created in our contemporary built environment. Having him on the agenda was a big reason why I almost (now wished I'd had) attended the conference.
Well, I just had to post this. Old cars, the housing boom and bust, farmland developement, and Michael Ruppert throws a few thought into it, as well as a few others, thinking on the same lines.
I was not able to attend the eastern conference but was especially disappointed to miss Kunstler. He was the keynote speaker several years ago at a conference I attended in Missoula and I found his books and speech relevant to the struggles we are dealing with in the new west. Kudos to Will for bringing him to the conference.
