James Kunstler's Imperfect Future

Monday Productions
June 11, 2006

It's odd, but strangely plausible, that a man who isn't an architect, doesn't have any training in urban planning, and has no real background in geology would become the unofficial spokesperson for a new movement towards global sustainability. Perhaps it's unlikely, or perhaps it's a sign that people in North America are increasingly looking to someone for leadership, ideas, solutions-and in the absence of political leaders who acknowledge the importance of sustainable development, economics and communities, someone had to fill that place.

Enter James Kunstler, a journalist and author whose role has become that of a pubic intellectual, his message centred on the growing concern of peak oil, and what that will mean for our lives as we know them. Call him a Renaissance man for a new renaissance-one that rethinks the way we've done things thus far in North America, and looks for solutions to make life on this planet a little bit more sustainable.

Kunstler, who's written nine novels and a handful of nonfiction books, is also a trained artist, painting evocative landscapes of parts of America that are-or could be-vanishing. One haunting one, called "Spiritual Night Landscape," shows a K-mart parking lot at sunset, its cars huddled as though against a coming storm or as though praying to a glowing red and blue neon god. And another of a highway service station, the cars travelling on and off the freeway, busily travelling somewhere. And yet another of a McDonald's parking lot, its golden arches lit against a darkening sky. That one is provocatively entitled, "The Rapture."

"I'm just trying to depict the landsapes of our time," he says.

He includes the paintings on his website (www.kunstler.com), which also contains his blog, the "Daily Grunt" and occasional longer articles under the heading of "Clusterfuck Nation."

While he's clearly multi-talented, Kunstler came to greater reknown with his examinations of the North American suburb at a time when the suburbs were, largely, going unexamined. His argument, eloquently put forward in his 1993 book, The Geography of Nowhere: The rise and decline of America's man-made landscape, was, essentially, that we're mucking up our continent with strip malls, fast-food drive-throughs and ever-growing suburban sprawl.

Now, a decade and a half later, it's becoming apparent to some that the kind of growth that created the suburbs can't continue-at least, not for long, not if our global supply of cheap oil is ever in jeopardy. In The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the 21st Century-his most recent book and one for which he has received a significant amount of attention-Kunstler looks at how our lives could be irreparably changed in light of the world running out of oil (or at least cheap, accessible oil), and running into the global energy shortage that could immediately follow.

Kunstler speaks passionately on this topic in The End of Suburbia, a Canadian documentary that examines similar topics, but he's even more vehement when you speak with him live. I caught up with him at the end of a long day that saw him moving from one house to another. Through bites of spaghetti, he explained that there was simply no way the world was going to be able to continue with our current levels of consumption. "We're sleepwalking into the future," he says, "and it's a very dangerous, very perilous course that we're on."

Oil and vinegar

You've probably heard by now of the 3,000-mile Caesar salad. It's become an emblem of our times, this simple meal assembled from California lettuce, croutons made with Saskatchewan wheat, parmesan shipped from Italy. The idea is that even the simplest things we regularly enjoy are brought to us from distant places, shipped by truck or jet, all propelled by oil or natural gas. We're accustomed to an economy that imports and exports, and one that depends on mobility-even between far-distant places-to carry on. Take away one crucial element from that equation-the fuel to transport products and people-and the whole house of cards is in jeopardy.

As the apocryphal saying goes, we're living in interesting times, and we're cursed to be the ones facing what Kunstler predicts will be a tremendous change in our economy, our daily lives, and our entire way of thinking about our place in the world in a post-carbon era.

The term "peak oil" gets tossed around now as something many scientists acknowledge is a distinct, and looming, inevitability. In the mid-90s, many of the geologists working with major oil and gas companies-the people responsible for determining where in the earth more oil could be found-began retiring and speaking their minds about what the future looked like. They didn't see a pretty picture. For example, former oil company geologist Colin J. Campbell, who now works for the Oil Depletion Analysis Centre in London, England, published an influential book called The Coming Oil Crisis, that detailed what he had discovered during his years as a researcher. It was, in effect, a vindication of the phenomenon called Hubbert's peak, in which geophysicist M. King Hubbert predicted-back in 1956-a growth in oil extraction to a certain point, after which all oil extraction would decline. Hubbert thought that point would be reached in the early 1970s or thereabouts, which turned out, pretty much, to be close to the truth. Geologists disagree as to where we're at on the predicted peak-how close to a massive decline we are-but they acknowledge that it's happening.

"This view of the oil situation since that time has only proven to be absolutely on target," says Kunstler, noting that world wide, oil is being used up at "alarming rates."

And what it's being used for is the question of no insignificant debate.

Suburbs and shopping

Not to place sole blame on those who dwell in the suburbs-they're just part of a large, complex web of development, urban growth, consumer spending and corporate expansion-but the suburbs are certainly a realm that plays a part in, and will be deeply affected by, a global oil crisis.

The suburbs-outlying areas surrounding virtually every large city, where people live but don't generally work-developed in part because people had access to automobiles. It was possible to drive newly paved freeways to homes on larger lots, away from the hustle and pollution of the cities. It was a kind of utopia, one where every family could have its own home, its own patch of lawn, its own place in the world.

It was, as Kunstler puts it, "the greatest misallocation of resources in the developed world."

By building ever-larger homes and developments on land that was once agricultural, forest or field, we've created a situation where we both lack the original natural elements, and will, in future, find it hard to access the places where we once carried out our lives. "It has no future as a living arrangement," Kunstler says. "We've squandered our collective wealth on it."

Some proponents of suburbia assure us that the suburbs will continue on, despite any future oil and gas shortages, because people like living there and will find a way to do so. Whatever, says Kunstler. "It'll be beside the point whether people have enjoyed it or not."

Another thing people enjoy tremendously is shopping-which is also bound to change. Companies like Wal-Mart, which depend on a ready supply of cheap oil to manufacture and transport goods around the world, will likely no longer be able to afford to operate.

"The whole model of national chain retail is not going to survive," predicts Kunstler. "Wal-Mart is going to run its warehouse on wheels or it's not going to run."

Perhaps we imagine that the gurus of Wal-Mart will figure out a way to keep their stores running (and doubtless, they're asking that question already), and we'll be able to buy our home power-generating wind turbines there for less than we'll pay anywhere else. Not gonna happen, Kunstler says. "One of the perils we face is that a lot of people childishly assume we're going to go through a smooth transition, that there'll be some kind of rescue remedy."

But the transition won't be smooth, he says. "That's going to be shocking to the public. A lot of people assume it's just going to carry on, but their financial equation has no resilience."

Oh, and speaking of Wal-Mart, Kunstler doesn't buy the mega-retailer's claims to "greeniosity"-its attempts, as a caring global corporate citizen, to go green. "They're just blowing smoke up the nation's ass. It's public relations bullshit. I wouldn't believe a word of it . . . They've demonstrated repeatedly that they're nothing but a predatory corporation."

But Wal-Mart isn't the only company that depends on cheap fuel. Think back to that 3,000-mile Caesar salad. How much does it cost now? How much will it cost in the future?

"Imagine what's going to happen when gas is the equivalent of $6 to $8 a gallon," Kunstler says. "It's a little staggering."

Making other arrangements

It seems clear we're entering a time of transition.

"We're going to have to make other arrangements for the way we live in this country," Kunstler says, speaking of Canada as much as America. For example, we're going to have to start growing our own Caesar salads, if we want them. "Anyplace that doesn't have a direct link with local agriculture will be in big trouble."

Yes, food will be a major concern, as will be heating our homes, having access to clean water, and navigating a rapidly changing economy.

Doubtless, it won't be easy. Just like withdrawing from cigarettes (oh, there's another thing that won't be easy to get anymore), we'll find ourselves craving the conveniences we've grown used to.

"We're going to see generally a very big hangover from the customs and practices of the last 30 years. . . . there'll be a lot of wishful thinking around the whole idea that we're entitled to be living this way. We're going to have to rethink the whole thing."

And will we? Certainly there's no reason to doubt that we will, indeed, find ourselves living differently. "Human societies are self-organizing," Kunstler points out. "We will be compelled to behave differently whether we like it or not."

It'll be an easier transition, though, if we're aware of what's happening to begin with. "Right now the public discussion about these problems is incredibly lame. Certainly there's a growing awareness that we're entering an oil predicament, but the only thing we're talking about is keeping our cars running, by any other means at all."

But that's just sustaining the unsustainable, he suggests. "We're stuck in a kind of psychology of previous investment, that militates against us thinking about doing things differently."

So who's responsible? In a way, we all are, both for our individual actions and for those we elect. "For all the cluelessness and denial and silliness, there's a sincere desire for people to understand what they're facing," Kunstler says.

If that cluelessness could be located, it might be found in the offices of Ottawa and Washington, in the places where public policy is made-and where efforts to negate global warming come about (or don't) through efforts like the Kyoto Accord.

"I think these people will be discredited eventually," he says, speaking of the elected representatives of Canada and the U.S.. "All of these assholes represent the mainstream beliefs . . . most Americans don't really think we face an oil problem, that it's just a shuck and jive on behalf of large oil corporations."

But don't believe that, he insists. "U.S. and Canadian governments have been impressively irresponsible and we're going to pay the price."

Big changes down the road

So how do we individually pay that price? We start to make changes now, however small. Switching to bicycles, moving to smaller communities. Kunstler already lives in a smaller community (Saratoga Springs, in New York state), where he moved years ago, though for reasons not connected with peak oil.

"I grew up in New York City," he says. "The scale of it disturbed me. I wanted something different. I wanted a scale of community I could play a part in, and not just be a tiny cog."

Nor does he drive much. "I don't have to-I work at home, but that's me being personally fortunate to be able to do that," he says, acknowledging that such is not the case for millions of others.

But he believes he's at the centre of where the action will be. Small towns, with their walkable cores and residential areas close to the centre, will likely fare better in the future than large urban centres, or suburban strips. "It'll be a reversal of a 200-year trend of people leaving the countryside for the cities."

That doesn't mean big cities won't exist anymore. "Some kind of human settlement will be there," he says. But skyscrapers, or 50-storey condo buildings, will likely be a thing of a brief and extravagant past. "We have no idea if we can run these things outside of a fossil fuel economy." Heating and cooling such structures takes such a tremendous amount of energy-let alone lighting them, providing power for the elevators, providing all the fuel needed to transport food for all the residents-that it may not be possible to operate on such a scale.

"There will be unanticipated problems with megastructures," Kunstler says. "The scale of virtually everything in our lives is going to have to change downward."

If that means creating more walkable communities, investing in public transit, and turning those vast suburban lawns into small-scale agriculture, so be it. "I think this period will be characterized by a lot of disorder, turbulence, difficulty in adjusting to reality," Kunstler says. You can rest assured he'll be there, documenting it as it comes about.