This interview with author James Howard Kunstler discusses his new book, The Long Emergency, which argues that the U.S. (and the world) are slowly heading toward a future in which the economic boom fueled (pun intended) by oil will ultimately end. The biggest casualty in the U.S. will be the suburbs, where one is able to live an urban life in a rural setting only because of one’s use of and dependence on oil. It’s a scary scenario not because I may live to see it (though I may) but because my children will live to see it. Kunstler sees little to no possibility of a new, cheap, energy source anytime in the near future, and it’s entirely possible that being able to shoe horses may be a more valuable skill than being able to set up a wireless network.
Also of interest in the interview is the discussion of the real estate boom and coming bust. Kunstler says that the real estate bubble is “a consequence of capital desperately seeking a way to increase in an industrial economy that has ceased to grow. America is no longer producing wealth in the conventional sense. And so the housing bubble is a way for residual capital to produce wealth. But like all bubbles, it's a delusional thing that will probably end in tears.”
It’s a disturbing view of the future: it rejects unfounded optimism, technology, and globalism. I won’t miss suburbia; in fact, I hate it with a passion. The identi-houses, ever-increasing traffic problems, new subdivisions being built on top of farms and fields with histories going back thousands of years, all fill me with dread and a desire to wipe the map clean. However, I’ve also always been a fan of technology and have been optimistic about the prospects for the future, no matter how bad the present gets.
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