James Howard Kunstler
writes: AS THE AMERICAN PUBLIC CONTINUES sleepwalking into a future of
energy scarcity, climate change, and geopolitical turmoil, we have also
continued dreaming. Our collective dream is one of those super-vivid
ones people have just before awakening. It is a particularly American
dream on a particularly American theme: how to keep all the cars
running by some other means than gasoline. We’ll
run them on ethanol! We’ll run them on biodiesel, on synthesized coal
liquids, on hydrogen, on methane gas, on electricity, on used
French-fry oil . . . ! The dream goes around in fevered circles
as each gasoline replacement is examined and found to be inadequate.
But the wish to keep the cars going is so powerful that round and round
the dream goes. Ethanol! Biodiesel! Coal liquids . . . …the
widespread wish persists that some combination of alternative fuels
will rescue us from this oil and gas predicament and allow us to
continue enjoying by some other means what Vice-President Cheney has
called the “non-negotiable” American way of life. The truth is that no
combination of alternative fuels or systems for using them will allow
us to continue running America, or even a substantial fraction of it,
the way we have been. We are not going to run Wal-Mart, Walt Disney
World, Monsanto, and the Interstate Highway System on any combination
of solar or wind energy, hydrogen, ethanol, tar sands, oil shale,
methane hydrates, nuclear power, thermal depolymerization, “zero-point”energy, or anything else you can name. We will desperately use many of
these things in many ways, but we are likely to be disappointed in what
they can actually do for us. The key to understanding the challenge we
face is admitting that we have to comprehensively make other arrangements for all the normal activities of everyday life. … We have to start right away making those other arrangements.
We have to begin the transition to some mode of living that will allow
us to carry on the project of civilization—and I would argue against
the notion advanced by Daniel Quinn and others that civilization itself
is our enemy and should not be continued. The agenda for facing our
problems squarely can, in fact, be described with some precision. We
have to make other arrangements for the basic activities of everyday
life. In general, the circumstances we face with energy and climate
change will require us to live much more locally, probably profoundly
and intensely so. We have to grow more of our food locally, on a
smaller scale than we do now, with fewer artificial “inputs,” and
probably with more human and animal labor. Farming may come closer to
the center of our national economic life than it has been within the
memory of anyone alive now. These changes are also likely to revive a
menu of social and class conflicts that we also thought we had left
behind. We’ll have to reorganize retail trade by rebuilding networks of
local economic interdependence. … We’ll have to make other
arrangements for transporting people and goods. Not only do we
desperately need to rebuild the railroad system, but electrifying it—as
virtually all other advanced nations have done—will bring added
advantages, since we will be able to run it on a range of things other
than fossil fuels. We should anticipate a revival of maritime trade on
the regional scale, with more use of boats on rivers, canals, and
waterways within the U.S. … We have to inhabit the terrain of North
America differently, meaning a return to traditional cities, towns,
neighborhoods, and a productive rural landscape that is more than just
strictly scenic or recreational. … It’s a daunting agenda, all right.
And some of you are probably wondering how you are supposed to remain
hopeful in the face of these enormous tasks. Here’s the plain truth,
folks: Hope is not a consumer product. You have to generate your own
hope. You do that by demonstrating to yourself that you are brave
enough to face reality and competent enough to deal with the
circumstances that it presents. How we will manage to uphold a decent
society in the face of extraordinary change will depend on our
creativity, our generosity, and our kindness, and I am confident that
we can find these resources within our own hearts, and collectively in
our communities. (12/31/06)
more…