MungBeing — James
Howard Kunstler has written four books on Urban Design and Suburbia
including the ground-breaking “Geography of Nowhere” in 1993. He has
also written nine novels, the newest of which is entitled “Maggie
Darling” and it’s a doozy. He is a passionate author, a painter, an
insightful social critic, and a sharp-witted observer. His latest book
is called “The Long Emergency” and it talks about life after “peak oil”- or, as he describes it in this interview, “the cheap oil fiesta of
the late 20th century”. His “Clusterfuck Nation” is loaded with his
commentary on our social condition and his “Eyesore of the Month”serves to remind us, with wit and sincerity, of the horrible things
we’re doing to our surroundings. But most of all, James Howard Kunstler
gives voice to the uneasy feelings that bubble up within us, from the
discomfort and confusion regarding our current urban environment to the
uncertainty regarding our future post-cheap oil. … MB:
You’ve predicted that in the next 10 years we’ll see the beginning of a
major collapse of suburbia. What do you see occupying the space
currently filled with suburban neighborhoods? How does “infill” fit
into this discussion? JHK: They obviously have an “iffy”destiny. I believe they will certainly lose value, both monetary and
utilitarian. I imagine they will eventually “be” one of three things –
ruins, materials salvage sites, or slums. In my view, very few of them
will be “retrofitted” or infilled or fixed. We are going to be a far
less affluent society coming out of this era than we were going in.
MB: One of the main themes that runs through discussions of suburbia is
that it is automobile-centric at the expense of pedestrian. Your new
book “The Long Emergency” examines our society after the oil runs out
(among other things). How did the writing of this book differ from your
previous books (or did it)? JHK: It didn’t differ. It was a
natural outgrowth of what I was saying as far back as “The Geography of
Nowhere.” You could go even further back to my out-of-print novel, “The
Halloween Ball” which has themes and plot devices based on suburban
development. In the last chapter of “Geography of Nowhere” I wrote
explicitly about the end of the cheap oil fiesta — though at that
point the ideas of the leading oil geologists like Hubbert, Deffeyes
and Campbell had not made it into the public arena. … MB: How do you think our cities will be organized in the future? When does that future start?
JHK: I believe we will see an emphatic reversal of the 200-year-long
demographic trend of people moving from the rural places and small
towns to the mega-cities. I’m convinced that our big cities will
contract substantially, even as they densify around their centers and
waterfronts — and I also believe that maritime transport is in for a
big revival in the post-cheap-energy era. I think agriculture will come
much closer back to the center of our economic life. I think our
smaller towns and smaller cities will do better than the big ones. The
process is liable to be rather disorderly and tumultuous. (12/12/06)
more…

Dmitry Orlov
writes: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I am not an expert or a
scholar or an activist. I am more of an eye-witness. I watched the
Soviet Union collapse, and I have tried to put my observations into a
concise message. I will leave it up to you to decide just how urgent a
message it is. My talk tonight is about the lack of
collapse-preparedness here in the United States. I will compare it with
the situation in the Soviet Union, prior to its collapse. The
rhetorical device I am going to use is the “Collapse Gap” – to go along
with the Nuclear Gap, and the Space Gap, and various other superpower
gaps that were fashionable during the Cold War. The subject of economic
collapse is generally a sad one. But I am an optimistic, cheerful sort
of person, and I believe that, with a bit of preparation, such events
can be taken in stride. As you can probably surmise, I am actually
rather keen on observing economic collapses. Perhaps when I am really
old, all collapses will start looking the same to me, but I am not at
that point yet. And this next one certainly has me intrigued. From what
I’ve seen and read, it seems that there is a fair chance that the U.S.
economy will collapse sometime within the foreseeable future. It also
would seem that we won’t be particularly well-prepared for it. As
things stand, the U.S. economy is poised to perform something like a
disappearing act. And so I am eager to put my observations of the
Soviet collapse to good use. I anticipate that some people will react
rather badly to having their country compared to the USSR. I would like
to assure you that the Soviet people would have reacted similarly, had
the United States collapsed first. Feelings aside, here are two 20th
century superpowers, who wanted more or less the same things – things
like technological progress, economic growth, full employment, and
world domination – but they disagreed about the methods. And they
obtained similar results – each had a good run, intimidated the whole
planet, and kept the other scared. Each eventually went bankrupt. The
USA and the USSR were evenly matched in many categories, but let me
just mention four. The Soviet manned space program is alive and well
under Russian
management, and now offers first-ever space charters. The Americans
have been hitching rides on the Soyuz while their remaining spaceships
sit in the shop. The arms race has not produced a clear winner, and
that is excellent
news, because Mutual Assured Destruction remains in effect. Russia
still has more nuclear warheads than the US, and has supersonic cruise
missile technology that can penetrate any missile shield, especially a
nonexistent one. The Jails Race once showed the Soviets with a decisive
lead,
thanks to their innovative GULAG program. But they gradually fell
behind, and in the end the Jails Race has been won by the Americans,
with the highest percentage of people in jail ever. The Hated Evil
Empire Race is also finally being won by the Americans.
It’s easy now that they don’t have anyone to compete against. (12/12/06)
more…

BBC Humanity & Environment –
Even a small-scale nuclear war would have far-reaching consequences for
the global climate, say scientists. A US team has modelled the effects
of a limited conflict in the light of new concerns over weapons
proliferation. Its study, reported at an American Geophysical Union
meeting, employed the very latest computer simulations. For an exchange
of 100 Hiroshima-sized bombs, the modelling suggested there would be
millions of deaths, as well as climate cooling and ozone damage. The
team said increasing urbanisation and the centralisation of economies
in megacities had made modern society more vulnerable to the
destabilising effects of war. “We saw what happened on 9/11: 3,000
people died and the world economy staggered,” said Professor Richard
Turco from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). “One can
only imagine the implications if Hiroshima-scale detonations occurred
in one or more major cities around the world today.” It was Professor
Turco who first coined the phrase “nuclear winter” back in the 1980s to
describe the climate shift that would result from a war using atomic
weapons. … The new simulations, run on a Nasa supercomputer, show
that for five million tonnes of black smoke sent skyward, the result
would be a global cooling of 1.25C, as the material spread out and
blocked light from reaching the ground. A reduction in precipitation
levels of 10% and a shortening of growing seasons by up to 30 days was
also forecast. The impact on global food supplies would be
catastrophic, the group said. The researchers warned that the
impoverished conditions would last longer than previous studies had
indicated because older climate models did not adequately represent the
mechanisms that took material high into the stratosphere. “If you look
at the change in solar radiation from, say, the Mount Pinatubo volcanic
eruption (1991), it goes away after about a year, but the black smoke
is lofted into the stratosphere and it lasts for a decade,” explained
Professor Alan Robock from Rutgers. (12/12/06)
more…

BBC Environment — The
Arctic may be close to a tipping point that sees all-year-round ice
disappear very rapidly in the next few decades, US scientists have
warned. The latest data presented at the American Geophysical Union
Fall Meeting suggests the ice is no longer showing a robust recovery
from the summer melt. Last month, the sea that was frozen covered an
area that was two million sq km less than the historical average.
“That’s an area the size of Alaska,” said leading ice expert Mark
Serreze. “We’re no longer recovering well in autumn anymore. The ice
pack may now be starting to get preconditioned, perhaps to show very
rapid losses in the near future,” the University of Colorado researcher
added. The sea ice reached its minimum extent this year on 14
September, making 2006 the fourth lowest on record in 29 years of
satellite record-keeping and just shy of the all time minimum of 2005.
Dr Serreze’s concern was underlined by new computer modelling which
concludes that the Arctic may be free of all summer ice by as early as
2040. The new study, by a team of scientists from the National Center
for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the University of Washington, and
McGill University, found that the ice system could be being weakened to
such a degree by global warming that it soon accelerates its own
decline. “As the ice retreats, the ocean transports more heat to the
Arctic and the open water absorbs more sunlight, further accelerating
the rate of warming and leading to the loss of more ice,” explained Dr
Marika Holland. “This is a positive feedback loop with dramatic
implications for the entire Arctic region.” Eventually, she said, the
system would be “kicked over the edge”, probably not even by a dramatic
event but by one year slightly warmer than normal. Very rapid retreat
would then follow. (12/12/06)
more…

Reuters AlertNet –
Most people think of Moscow as cloaked in snow from late autumn but
this winter daisies are blossoming by the Kremlin and fresh buds are
growing on trees in some of the warmest December temperatures on
record. On Dec. 7, Moscow basked in plus 7.7 degrees Celsius (45.9
Fahrenheit), beating the previous record of 6.6C set on Dec. 7, 1898, a
spokesman for the state weather monitoring unit said on Tuesday. “In
the European part of Russia, we can clearly see an anomaly, a big
positive anomaly,” Mark Naishuller said. “Temperatures are positive
even beyond the Arctic Circle.” Four days this December were warmer
than any of their counterparts in the period since records began in
1879. Instead of trademark snow, green grass adorns some parts of
Moscow. Purple violets and yellow coltsfoots — flowers that usually
blossom between spring and autumn — have been spotted in the capital
and the surrounding area, media have reported. Some types of mushrooms
have also ignored the calendar month, when the average temperature for
Moscow is around minus 4C (minus 25F), and grown afresh on tree trunks.
… “Muscovites are smiling: they don’t have to wear hats and the grass
is green like in some kind of England,” wrote popular daily Moskovsky
Komsomolets, adding Russia could only gain from a warmer global
climate. “Siberia in that case will become the world’s granary and
Russia will be a clear winner.” (12/12/06)