Kunstler is saying aloud, as have others, what my sisters and various friends and I have been discussing: what happens when oil becomes less and less in quantity and grows more and more expensive. One obvious outcome is war: which is really why Dick Cheney and the gang of the Project for the New American Century want to beat Iraq into an American satellite.
Who (or what) becomes obsolete without golden gallons of cheap fuel to run it? One of Kunstler's answers is …ta-da…Wal-Mart. "All large-scale enterprises, including many types of corporations and governments will function very poorly in the post-cheap oil world. Do not make assumptions based on things like national chain retail continuing to exist as it has."
Wal-Mart's obvious weak link is the fuel it takes to transports billions of pounds of goods from China to the United States. The increasing cost of that fuel will take the "low" out of their advertised "low prices."
For the last fifty years, many Americans have believed and acted as if they could have, and were entitled to, anything and everything. The comparative few who have been national criers of concern about the uncounted costs of the many goods and services Americans demand have seen their voices discounted and shouted down in many instances. Many have seen their reputations and their livelihoods damaged by unscrupulous corporate and governmental actions.
As my mother would say, the chickens are coming home to roost. Unfortunately, the far-sighted folks, who have been declaiming this "throw it away and buy a new one" consumerism and pointing out the real costs, will be as caught in the resulting maelstrom as will the clueless ones. The folks who have made millions and billions from their earth-destructive practices will more than likely escape the worst, at least for a while.
In The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight Thom Hartmann wrote that conservation of petroleum and using it wisely to find ways to convert our society so that it does not need to use it should be our operating mantra. And Natural Capitalism, the book by Hunter and Amory Lovins and Paul Hawkens makes the same point.
Does our leadership listen? No. Our leadership prefers to spend the petroleum we acquire to go to war to try to control major oil fields for American use. Our leadership prefers to live as if tomorrow will be the same as today while lining their pockets well on the way and destroying the earth's environment, for which our grandchildren will not thank us. Our leadership does not give a rat's you know what for the average folks in this country and less than that for those who are poor and have no hope of ever having more. They have effected a great con and too many American has bought it.
When oil wells began to be developed in the United States, oil was called "black gold." But we didn't treat it as gold. We have never used it wisely and prudently. And the last ten years has seen profligate squandering of the earth's resources on useless "stuff."
Kunstler believes that when it comes down to electronics or eating, the growing of food will win out and the information age will devolve and the consumer age will take a header. The age of interdependence within community will return. Unfortunately, he doesn't remark on what could easily become the evolvement into Mad Maxism. It isn't hard to see that people who, right now, have no problems making death threats against people with whom they disagree will rapidly pull out their guns when it comes to getting something they want.
And this is what we're developing for our grandchildren to inherit? That is, if the earth doesn't totally throw us off her back with major climatic and geophysical shifts in short periods of time.
Is there hope? You tell me.
Link to James Howard Kunstler's website where "Speech in Hudson, New York on The Long Emergency" has the text of the speech I read.
and Rocky Mountain Institute, the website of Hunter and Amory Lovins with much alternative energy information
and Thom Hartmann's website with links to The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight and his weekday radio call-in program on progressive issues