Social critic warns, offers hope

WILKES-BARRE – Oil has fueled the engine driving America’s growth, but James Howard Kunstler warned it’s also greasing the nation’s slide down the slippery slope to trouble.

In a wide-ranging hour-long talk Friday morning, the social critic and author of “The Long Emergency” predicted regional fuel shortages, forecasted the end of suburbia, championed a return to railroad travel and held out hope for change.

Kunstler was the inaugural speaker in the “Futures Forum” sponsored by King’s College and the Greater Wilkes-Barre Chamber of Business and Industry.

“Circumstance are coming down at us that are going to require us to behave differently, that are going to compel us to behave differently whether we like it or not,” Kunstler told more than 50 people during a breakfast meeting in the school’s Sheehy-Farmer Campus Center.

At the bottom of much of the trouble is oil that’s growing shorter in supply as developed and developing nations demand their share of the natural resource.

“It’s not about running out of oil,” he stressed. “It’s about what happens on the slippery slope down (to) depletion.”

The complex systems that connect economies and industries such as agriculture, transportation, manufacturing and finance are affected and showing signs of stress as a result.

Much is being written and said about the financial crisis, rising oil prices and alternative energy, but not to Kunstler’s satisfaction.

“We are not having a coherent national conversation throughout our country about what our problems are, and they are severe problems,” he said.

Kunstler called it “delusional” to think that we can continue to live as we do with the expectation that wind farms, ethanol plants or biodiesel will provide the power to heat and cool our homes, fuel our cars and trucks and airplanes and run the equipment in factories and offices.

Cities will have to be planned differently. Projects will have to be built on a more modest scale. Travel, agriculture and housing will have to adapt as the nation energy diet changes.

“It’s not the end of American life, and it’s not the end of the world,” he assured the audience. “What it is is the end of America’s suburban phase of history, and we have to make other arrangements now for living.”

People will migrate to the smaller cities and towns from the bigger giant metroplexes. Cars will play a diminished role in everyday life. The rail system must be fixed.

“No other project that we could do right away would have a greater impact on our oil use,” Kunstler said of rebuilding the nation’s railroads.

Cities, too, need attention to make them attractive and public realms that play roles in people’s lives.

“People are very dissatisfied with the everyday environment,” he said. “It’s made them feel uncomfortable. It’s made them not want to go to their downtowns, and we really have to do a better job in the heart of the cities.”

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James Howard Kunstler, speaking at King’s, tells of changes America must make as oil supplies decrease.

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