Jim Kunstler on Oil Addiction

I like this site because it helps me think of steps I can take to soften my impact on the environment, not so I can read about some guy who once was convinced that Y2K was going to kill us all. Kunstler is not a tree hugger or an environmentalist by any means, just someone who incorporates our fears and concerns to make money and inflate his ego. He does more to hurt the environmental cause by making us all look like nuts then his current musings about the lack of sustainability concerning our car culture.

Kunstler has some radical ideas, many of which are likely to be wrong, and an even more radical, and often alienating, way of presenting them. But he's clearly an environmentalist, and he's made appreciable contributions to public awareness of the problems of sprawl and peak oil. And it's hardly as though the idea he's quoted with here is so unusual, or in any way wrong.

Frankly, some of us calling others of us nuts is at least as big a problem as some of us actually *being* nuts.

That's hilarious. Getting us to drop autos and start walking or biking is impossible. We're lazy, fat Americans, who demand what we want when we want it - delayed gratification be damned!

Anyone thinking that this will change anytime soon, is just plain loopy and dramatically naive. The tide of American spoiledness is not turning around at any rate of measure, and any steps to try to encourage it, are really wasted energy.

That's why economical alternatives - profitable ones - are the only solution to the problem over the long haul. Keep the mass consumption fueled, with profitable alternatives. But, as we all know, that kind of profitability on a large scale is still quite a few years away still, on every alternative fuel level (if it isn't as profitable or more than gas, then it will make NO dent).

Like the popular hybrids today that only get the same mileage as the original 1990 Geo Metro got - it will take more than poseurs to get the alternative ball rolling, it will take mass profitability, without the hocus-pocus of EPA mileage estimates. It will take innovation, and technological leaps.

One thing this website never preaches is that we must be patient, it is coming, just not as soon as our lack of gratification demands.

Kunstler may not be so great at forecasting the near future, but his commentary is a breath of fresh air.

He's not a nutball nor conspiracy theorist. Was he overly worried about Y2K? Yes. However, he is brilliant at articulating the frustration that people who are aware of the upcoming climate change/peak oil crunch feel when confronting the sheep-like behavior of our society.

We need to change, and no one is better at cussing out the prevailing idiocy that JHK.

My problem is the basic premise:

"...that we have adopted a living arrangement so hopelessly centered around cars and incessant motoring and one of the consequences is an addiction to oil, which we happen to have a declining supply of in our own land..."

Our living arrangements are the same as they were 100 years ago. Cities, towns, rural areas, connected by rail, road and water (and now air). Cars simply make the living arrangements we have always had more convenient.

He's almost on the right track. And when his baby steps turn into grown-up steps, he may see that the "reality based" concept extends beyond the immediate horizon and actaully reveals a different picture - one which includes his concept, but not centered around it.

You knwo I don't know much about wat this man has said in the past, but his idea in this article is a fairly simple and straightforward one.
You can't change other people's behavior you can only change your own.
Solving a cultural conundrum will take time, but labeling us "dependant" doesn't help with problem solving.
Currently we deepdn too much on foriegn oil. this occurs because people are obsessed with cars, and many are obesessed with huge gas guzzling cars which require ridiculous large amounts of oil.
There are a number of steps we can take to reduce are dependancy.
We're not going to go cold turkey on our oil addiciton, but cutting back, not so bad an idea.
And cutting back through implementation of better public transportation, and better efficiency standards for cars is practical.
It's not so much patience (which sounds like passively waiting) as implementing small changes regularly so that the larger change occurs over a longer time.

@Greg Porter

Is that REALLY true? Surely 100 years ago most homes were built close to the centres of towns, where it was practical to travel given the limited methods of transport available. Even in the USA the urban sprawl and shopping malls rather than high street stores only really kicked off after the car started to become available.

Thank you so much for posting this! I itch every week for his Monday morning blog. Also check out his speech featured on ted dot com. Really sheds light on our naivete and depression as a suburban commuting society.

100 years ago living arrangements were certainly not the same as they are today, and Kunstler's books on sprawl are as good an illustration of that as you'll find. You don't have to look too hard to find any number of sources on how our population density has declined since 1920, particularly since 1945, resulting in huge losses of valuable farmland, longer and more polluting commutes, social isolation, class segregation, and thousands of poorly built, energy-wasting buildings. You don't have to be any kind of radical to see most of that--just ask all the lawyers and brokers who live in my neighborhood in Brooklyn.