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Suburbia: Running on Empty?

By James Howard Kunstler, Salgamundi. Posted December 14, 2006.


Robert Bruegmann argues in his new book that urban sprawl will continue because people like it, but reviewer James Howard Kunstler counters that the petro-dependent suburban era is just about finished.
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Reviewed: Sprawl: A Compact History by Robert Bruegmann (University of Chicago Press, 2005).

There is a species of fatuous thinking these days in America which states, in so many words, that suburbia is fine and dandy because so many people like it. Variations on this theme range from the idea that suburbia is the highest expression of free markets, to the notion that it is the natural outcome of our democracy, to the belief that God has ordained it. This has been the reasoning of some public intellectuals such as New York Times columnist David Brooks, Joel Kotkin, of the New America Foundation, and the preposterous Peter Huber of Forbes Magazine and the Manhattan Institute. Now Robert Bruegmann, professor of art history, architecture, and urban planning at the University of Illinois, Chicago, weighs in from academia with essentially the same argument floated on barges of statistical analysis.

That so many editors, foundation board members, and deans of faculty allow this obvious casuistry to pass as thinking at all says a lot about what a nation of morons we have become, and how deep the intellectual rot runs. The various above-named characters may differ somewhat in style, but they all employ the same specious logic in support of the status quo. Brooks functions as a cheerleader for successful yuppies like himself wishing to justify the blandishments they enjoy in going along with the suburban program. Kotkin is a highly-paid consultant to municipal governments who use him to rationalize the pernicious effects of their engrained practices. Huber gives aid and comfort to those who regard the public interest in any form as an affront to private gain. And now along comes Bob Bruegmann seeking to lend the imprimatur of empiricism to these arguments, so as to valiantly prove wrong for once and for all the peevish critics of suburbia (including yours truly) by driving the wooden stake of science through our superstitious and sentimental hearts.

Despite his boatloads of statistics, Bruegmann is just flat-out wrong in many of his positions and virtually all of his conclusions. At the center of his thesis is the unquestioned assumption that the suburban project can continue indefinitely, that it is a good thing, that we will get more of it, and we ought to stop carping and enjoy it. His book fails entirely to acknowledge the fact that we are entering a permanent global energy crisis that will put an end to the drive-in utopia whether people like it or not. This singular harsh fact obviates all the rationalizations brought to the quixotic defense of suburbia. What Bruegmann and his homies overlook is that American-style suburbia, aka sprawl, was an emergent, self-organizing system made possible only by lavish and exorbitant supplies of cheap fossil fuels, and once those conditions no longer obtain, not only will there be no further elaboration of this development pattern, but all the existing stuff built according to that pattern -- which comprises more than eighty percent of everything ever built in America -- will drastically lose its usefulness and its relative "market" value. What's more, the discontinuities-to-come in the global energy picture will pose challenges so severe to industrial society that we will be lucky to salvage anything resembling civilized life altogether.

It is necessary to insert right here that, contrary to a lot of wishful thinking and techgnostic wool-gathering rampant these days, no combination of alternative fuels or systems for using them will allow us to run America the way we currently run it, or even a substantial fraction of it. We are not going to run Wal-Mart, Walt Disney World, and the interstate highway system on hydrogen, coal synfuels, tar sand or oil shale distillates, bio-diesel, ethanol, recycled french-fry oil, solar electricity, wind power, or nuclear fission. The stark truth of the situation is that we are simply going to have to make other arrangements -- and I'm sorry to have to repeat that this will be the case whether we like it or not. Suburbia will be coming off the menu. We will no longer be able to resort to the stupid argument that it is okay because we chose it.

Another very troubling aspect of Bruegmann's book is that his statistical salvos fail to address altogether the many questions of quality and character in our everyday environments. The sad truth is that most of America has come to be composed of places that are not worth caring about, and they may eventually (if not already) add up to a nation not worth defending, or a culture not worth carrying on. You can cite the population figures and density trend lines all day long and never come to the conclusion that Hackensack, New Jersey, has become a soul-sapping sinkhole of auto-centric crap with strikingly poor prospects for maintaining its value or utility in the not-too-distant future.


When it is convenient, Bruegmann claims that the statistical analysis of his opponents fails to tell the story correctly.

He writes:

We can use the Chicago area as a typical example. For years, sprawl opponents trumpeted the "fact" that between 1970 and 1990 the metropolitan area grew in population by only 4 percent, but grew in land by 46 percent. This kind of statistic, juxtaposed with a photograph of a new subdivision under construction in a cornfield conjures up images of a juggernaut moving inexorably across the countryside, flattening farms and forest, replacing country roads with highways lined with wall-to-wall strip centers and an endless sprawl of large lot subdivisions. ... Even if the figures were accurate, they would not necessarily represent a crisis. There is no shortage of land in Illinois.
All this promiscuous marshalling of statistics really demonstrates is that the story is hardly about statistics anymore than it is about the magical operations of markets or the wonders of democracy. The appropriate lesson of the sprawl era is that societies can make extremely unfortunate collective decisions, and the losses incurred are irreversible. This is really the central conflict between the sprawl champions and those of us who do not view sprawl as any kind of boon. Sprawl is, and always has been, to put it as plainly as possible, a living arrangement with no future -- and to regard it as anything else is a disservice to our fate.

It is self-evident that human beings enjoy living in settings of domesticated nature -- and no accident that the archetype for this is the Garden of Eden -- but note that there is no mention of parking lots in the standard accounts of it. The suburbia of our time, which even Bruegmann identifies as "sprawl," is something of a new and different order, not adequately described by sheer compilations of numbers. Because he is allergic to any consideration of the non-empirical, Bruegmann manages to misunderstand some important elements of the suburb in history.

Yes, it is true that ancient Rome had extensive suburbs. It was an urban organism of roughly a million people in the time of Trajan and a substantial elite occupied villas in its hinterlands. They did it because they could -- because this elite enjoyed fabulous imperial wealth, and because the enormous power of the empire allowed civil security to extend outside the city, indeed throughout Italy, where wealth enjoyed protection. Even the mild weather of the region favored these arrangements. But was life there comparable in quality and character to Hackensack? And what kind of empirical data might demonstrate the difference? You could say that suburban Romans owned fewer automobiles per capita as compared to the denizens of Hackensack, and that would be correct -- but would it be meaningful?

When Rome fell apart, nothing like it was seen again until the beginning of the early industrial age. The gothic, medieval, and even Renaissance cities were designed more or less as extensive fortifications because political security was so dicey, and to be outside the protective walls was not advantageous. The industrial age marked a sharp change in the organization of cities and their relations to their hinterlands. The differences in the development of the industrial cities themselves has a pertinence to the consequent development of suburbs that Bruegmann seems to misconstrue. He writes:

"In nineteenth century, London exploded outward as developers threw up mile upon miles of brick terrace houses. ... The resulting cityscape horrified highbrow British critics of the time, who considered the new districts to be vulgar, cheap, and monotonous. Nevertheless, the houses continued to be built because so many middle class inhabitants of central London saw them as a vast step upward for their families. In the second half of the twentieth century, highbrow opinion came around, and today they are widely considered to be the very model of compact urban life. Ironically, they are today often considered the antithesis of sprawl."

The redevelopment of Paris in the same period took a quite different form. The heroic renovation of the city by Louis Napoleon and George Eugene Haussmann, the prefect (i.e. mayor) of the city, was based typologically on the apartment building for the growing middle class rather than the private row house. These apartment buildings, generally seven stories and under, were zoned vertically by income, with the wealthy occupying the lower floors above the shop fronts and the less well-off above them, and finally servants and poor folk tucked under the mansard roofs. The result was a substantially different quality of city life, more compact and lively than London, with people of all social ranks thrown into proximity, and a rich mix of culture and commerce at street level.

Returning to compare them today, in the 21st century, one could easily conclude that the seemingly endless, sprawling, row house neighborhoods of London are indeed monotonous to an extreme, tending to be income-segregated ghettos, with retail services and cultural amenity deployed often at an inconvenient remove.

In American cities, you got a mix of both patterns. New York went crazy for Paris-style apartment living and eventually elaborated it into the skyscraper, while other places like Philadelphia, Boston, and Baltimore stuck almost exclusively to the row house. In Chicago and San Francisco, you got some of both. In any case, the industrial growth of American cities was furious and resulted in an urban ecology with the ambience of a gigantic machine. Little of the pre industrial scale survived, and once you got west of Chicago, it barely existed in the first place. The ensuing discomfort and revulsion inspired an intense nostalgia for the non-city, for country living, for the garden. Rural land outside these American cities was plentiful, cheap, and unencumbered by entailments beyond fee-simple ownership. So as the Civil War concluded, the new railroads facilitated a ready escape from the awful industrial city into the hinterlands and the American suburbs were born.

The suburban evolutionary sequence moved quickly from the railroad through the brief but exuberant streetcar phase to the drive-in utopia based on universal democratic car ownership, and the development pattern changed with it. Eventually, it resolved into the dendritic roadway system we see today, of cul-de-sac income-segregated housing tracts, commercial collector boulevards with the familiar chain retail, and the activity pods of the mall and the office park, tied together by limited access freeways -- all of it predicated on the rationalized insanity of single-use zoning.

The automobile and all of its requisite infrastructure, of course, would not have developed the way it did without ready supplies of cheap oil, and America coincidentally had vast supplies easily obtainable inside our own borders. Europe had to rely on much more distant supplies of oil. Meanwhile, their societies were savagely disrupted by two world wars, with after-effects lasting for decades. On top of that, they had age-old land-tenure laws that did not favor real estate subdivisions. So, it was not so easy for them to suburbanize. They got into the game late, never enjoyed cheap gasoline, and did not sprawl even close to the extent that we did, or the way we did -- a point that Bruegmann obscures with a blizzard of statistics about relative city densities in late 20th century Europe that would have the reader think that the Ile de France today is not substantially different from Nassau County, Long Island.

Something strange happened to American suburbia as it went through its phases of development. It started out as country living, the sovereign antidote to the industrial city. Then it became a rigorously domesticated variant of country living. Then, after World War Two it mutated into something insidiously different: a cartoon of country living in a cartoon of the country (in a cartoon of a country house). This sad fact explains why the chronic disappointment of suburbia inspires ridicule even among those who live in it. It hasn't delivered very well on its promises for a long time now. In its florid, climactic incarnation today -- the McMansion precincts of Dallas, Atlanta, or Northern Virginia -- it presents the worst elements of urban and rural life in the same package, with few of the benefits of either. The megaburbs have all the congestion of a city and none of the human contact. They have all of the isolation of the country, but no real connection to nature. The issue at the heart of Bruegmann's book is whether this is, after all, a good thing. He writes:
...[S]prawl has been beneficial for many people. ... Even where sprawl has created negative consequences, moreover, there seems to be very little evidence that for most people sprawl itself has precipitated any kind of crisis. The vast majority of Americans have responded to a whole battery of polls year after year saying that they are quite happy with where they live. ...I would argue that worries about sprawl have become so important not because conditions are really bad, as critics suggest, but precisely because conditions are so good.
What Bruegmann leaves out of the picture is the same thing that the mandarins of American municipal planning have left out for half a century: any consideration of quality and character of place, and the means for achieving it. This is evinced most dramatically in the issue of the public realm, the part of our everyday world that belongs to everybody and that everyone ought to have access to most of the time. In postwar America, the public realm was trashed, relegated purely to the needs of the automobile until America became a nearly uniform automobile slum from sea to shining sea. It didn't even matter whether you were in a rich place or a poor place anymore -- the parking lots of Beverly Hills weren't any more rewarding to the human spirit than the parking lots of Hackensack. More to the point perhaps, the very methods of the municipal planners, which produced the ghastly sprawl environments of our time, are based on exactly the same kind of statistical methods employed by Bruegmann, instead of the one thing that might have mitigated or constrained the mess, namely artistry in design.

The public realm has two crucial roles in our collective existence. First, it is the physical manifestation of the common good. Second, is literally the dwelling place of civic life. And so if you fail to design the public realm with deliberate artistry, and by so doing degrade and dishonor the public realm by turning it into a uniform automobile slum simply to accommodate x-number of cars, you will automatically degrade the quality of civic life and the public's collective ability to conceive of a common good beyond incessant motoring. These are issues which do not yield to strict empiricism and cannot be comprehended by it. The result in American suburbia today is a set of places where private luxury is exalted and public space is grievously dishonored, damaged, and diminished, places where there are more bathrooms per inhabitant than any other society on earth, but where public space is so debased that the only place children can find to play beyond their back yards is the berm between the WalMart and the Winn Dixie.

We flatter ourselves to think that the shopping malls are an adequate substitute for real main streets. We saw an interesting case locally here a couple of years ago, in Albany, New York's Crossgates Mall, where a man bought a T-shirt in one of the mall's shops with an anti-war slogan printed on it, and was then arrested for wearing it in the mall corridor when security guards hassled him and called the police.

Because Bruegmann's analysis omits entirely the issues of physical form and its quality, it cannot comprehend the additional problem with suburbia today: that it is a development pattern with no future because of the looming global energy crisis. All matters pertaining to physical form Bruegmann wrongly identifies (and denigrates) as "aesthetic" issues. This allows him to argue that physical form (including development patterns) are simply differences in taste, which takes us back to the fallacy that an appraisal of suburbia is simply a sum of opinions, or a set of poll numbers, or the mere fact that at a given time in history, any number of people chose tragically to invest their life savings in a particular kind of house because they mistakenly believed that current conditions would continue forever.

We're about to find out the hard way that life is tragic and history is merciless and that reality doesn't care what we like or don't like. The suburban system we have come to think of as "sprawl" is going to fail spectacularly. We will be desperate to make other arrangements, and all the statistical bullshit in the world will not avail us to bargain our way around it.

The global oil crisis we face, in combination with climate change, is about to bring on perhaps the greatest discontinuity that the human race has ever faced. If there are any historians left to unearth this book centuries from now, they will marvel that anyone ever thought that simply liking something was enough to guarantee its existence.

Reprinted with permission of the author.

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James Howard Kunstler is author of The Long Emergency. Visit his site at Kunstler.com.

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morons
Posted by: rsaxto on Dec 14, 2006 1:20 AM   
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Yes, we have become a nation of morons and we are also becoming a nation of poor-ons because morons can't help but become poor in the end from all the shitty propaganda they believe. And even the creators of poor-ons, the super rich-ons will suffer in depth the inexerable workings of global warming, overpopulation, destructive greed and the blind belief in the validity of ancient tribal misunderstandings.

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» RE: morons Posted by: willymack
» poorons and richons. I like it. Posted by: thistleblower
Jobs stranded in suburbs?
Posted by: edith on Dec 14, 2006 2:19 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I'll be interested to see if this book deals with the millions of jobs created and/or moved from cities to suburbs. The corporate giants often now have corporate HQ or large regional divisions off expressways 20 or more miles from city cores. What will happen if their employees can't drive to work? Telecommuting by the millions? Back to cities?(doubtful). Export more jobs(sure why not?)

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» RE: Jobs stranded in suburbs? Posted by: karma_ran_over_dogma
» Bring on the cheap labor! Posted by: vangogh69
All Too True
Posted by: bttl on Dec 14, 2006 3:45 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
This reminds me of the saying that it is hard to get a man to recognize the truth when his paycheck depends on him believing otherwise. In psych terms, I believe you could say it is also known as cognitive dissonance. Our investment as a country and as individuals are in the suburbs, therefore it must be good. Period. To recognize anything else is a dangerous place for many to go as our society has put its great wealth into the suburban experiment. Thus, until confronted with clear evidence that the suburbs are unworkable and a total travesty, most will cling to the mast as the ship goes down.

If one looks at the past however, there are ruins of many once-great civilizations, many covered in desert sands. Our suburbs will be no different. They are just so ugly that tourists of the future are not likely to want to undertake explorations of the ruins of defunct Wal Marts and Home Depots, let alone the Mall of America.....

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» Well said Posted by: kepstein7777
» RE: Well said Posted by: Michael Robin
Yea, dude, I'll happily live in the city
Posted by: debedb on Dec 14, 2006 3:55 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I love the cities. If I could afford it.

Ah, but there are no prescriptions given here (not even
toll roads to subsidize mass transit, e.g.) - of course,
we know how that went over in Massachusetts...

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» I wonder Posted by: vangogh69
» RE: I wonder Posted by: Gakl
"We have met the enemy, and they is us." Pogo
Posted by: crystaldave on Dec 14, 2006 4:32 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
...this is going to be a hell of a movie...enjoy the show

Love and Light,
Crystal Dave (The Wizard of Wyrd)

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New Jersey - not that bad! (could be their slogan)
Posted by: karma_ran_over_dogma on Dec 14, 2006 5:20 AM   
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I agree with so much of this, but wish the author hadn't picked on inoffensive Hackensack so much -- it has a still somewhat functioning downtown and excellent rail and bus transit. Dense NJ suburbia is not so comparable to, say, the far-flung suburbia of most of the south, or even the "Detroit area" (ex-Detroit?) for that matter.

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» He's probably from New York. Posted by: medstudgeek
» township vs city Posted by: deborama
Substitute "Infestation" for "Sprawl".
Posted by: KeepsonTickn on Dec 14, 2006 6:31 AM   
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It is no coincidence that a time lapse view of suburban sprawl looks so much like the growth of certain pathogens in a petri dish. The overuse of nitrogen based fertilizers and the massive consumption of oil have created an unsustainable blight of human population over the last century.

Disease is the only reasonable context to discuss the last few generations of human development. It is past time to acknowledge the roots of the problem, and look for humane ways to mitigate the damage that will occur between now and the inevitable day when humanity again comes into balance with the earth.

From the 10,000 year perspective of human civilization, the world will never again be as good as it was 200 years ago. If we work very hard and very smart we may be able to leave our grandchildren a world with a level of diversity similar to that following other global disasters. If there are grandchildren to enjoy it.

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» I Like "Cancer". Posted by: Sparks56
» Couple of cancer refs Posted by: HeroesAll
Housing and the Roman Empire
Posted by: ghunter on Dec 14, 2006 6:39 AM   
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This article referenced the Roman empire and I read over at the Oil Drum that housing prices in Rome took 1500 years to recover after the fall.

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How close in to cities will the suburbs die off?
Posted by: veggiegrrrl on Dec 14, 2006 7:05 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
How close in to cities will the suburbs die off? I live in Pacifica which is 13 miles to downtown San Francisco. There are two BART (train) stations within 6 miles of here and express buses run straight to downtown in 20 minutes during commute hour. Is this type of suburb also going to die out? Or are we talking about suburbs that are 20, 30, 40 miles outside of city limits?

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Suburban sprawl can't defeat the U.S. juggernaut
Posted by: cinattra on Dec 14, 2006 7:09 AM   
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I pretty much doubt that suburban sprawl will be the downfall of the U.S. empire. SUV sprawl i.e. the hour or more commute to work will put an end to suburban sprawl.

Because of our tightening budgetary situation road pricing a.k.a. toll roads or turnpikes will take over our landscapes. It is inevitable because state and local governments in their fervor to build more and more roads will not be able to keep up with the demand as right of way becomes more expensive and less available.

We just need to learn how to build our cities smarter. More restrictive zoning and environmental rules might not hurt either.

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Ahhh . . . sprawl
Posted by: nosylae on Dec 14, 2006 7:23 AM   
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I used to live in a borough of NYC where I didn't have to own a car and could walk to get milk and bread and knew most of my neighbors.

Then I moved to Long Island where I had to get a car (because the supposed mass transit is non-existant) and even though the corner store was now 5 blocks away, it took 15 minutes to drive to and 1/2 hr to walk to and I didn't know anyone.

Then I moved upstate - 40 miles north of Albany where sprawl is going strong. I don't live in a McMansion, but they are spreading fast like wildfire! People here complain all the time about traffic, rising crime rates, rising taxes, rising energy bills (what did they expect their home heating bills to cost in a 3,000 sq.ft. home anyways?)

Foreclosure rates are also rising and the houses are not worth what is owed on them. What are we going to do with all those empty and half-built subdivisions? People that spent $300,000 or more for a house that are now worth less than half that are losing their shirts (and more) for their "American Dream." When it costs over $100 a week to drive to Albany for a job, how are people going to afford tht when gas prices go up? And prices will go up - gas doesn't grow on trees. (And even if gas did grow on trees, they are cutting them down to put up over-priced subdivisions with McMansions.)

One last note - since sprawl is really based on cheap oil prices - someone I know up here in the North Country who listens to Rush Limbaugh religiously said to me once that oil is a renewable resource. When I asked her what she meant by that, she said, well since oil comes from rotting dinosaur bones, aren't the dinosaurs that we haven't found yet still decomposing?

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» RE: Ahhh . . . sprawl Posted by: Trazom
» RE: Ahhh . . . sprawl Posted by: Sparks56
All Hat, No Cattle
Posted by: mpwilliams on Dec 14, 2006 7:27 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
"His (Bruegmann's) book fails entirely to acknowledge the fact that we are entering a permanent global energy crisis ..."

Another sloppy and overwrought attempt by Kunstler at rendering (his) opinion as fact. The only fact of which I am aware is that there is a very high probability (I'll stick my neck out and say 'statistical certainty') that the global energy economy is going to find it both advantageous and necessary to engage a strategy of robust transformation that results in a more diverse and sustainable mix of energy sources. The concept of a "permanent global energy crisis" -- The Long Emergency, as his poorly-selling book describes it -- is a construct of Kunstler's limited understanding and imagination. Kunstler is the sustainable-development neo-reurbanification version of W. - metaphorically speaking, all hat and no cattle.

Michael Williams
The Woodlands, TX

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» White flight is the crux Posted by: lwbaby
The Price
Posted by: NoPCZone on Dec 14, 2006 7:36 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
For short-sighted thinking is high. Some have said enough and are trying to do something about it. Even in the infamous South Bronx, there are people working to clean up the mess with a more sustainable vision.

A great video on this can be found HERE

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You ain't seen nothin' yet...
Posted by: MonkeyBoy on Dec 14, 2006 8:01 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
When the Oil crash occurs, it's going to be too late for alternatives to be developed. It's not going to be pretty, or easy to cope with. The least you can do is learn as much as you can about it, and at least be able to provide for your family's survival. If you do nothing else today, read the research and follow the links on the website below.

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Index.html

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» And also read some of this... Posted by: nickptar
Hobbitville, One sprawl step for man, one giant leap for Hobbits
Posted by: YinRising on Dec 14, 2006 8:17 AM   
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The link below is to a California sub-division built back in the 70's called Village Homes. It was desinged be a model for smart growth.

Bike paths and community orchards instead of individual lawns and 3 car garages, now that's what I'm talkin' about.

Plus, all the streets are named after characters in the Hobbit and LOTR.

http://www.communitygreens.org/Existing Greens/villagehomes/villagehomes.htm (erase space after "Existing")

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How did this idea that alternative energy won't work infect even the left?
Posted by: yurbud on Dec 14, 2006 8:19 AM   
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The primary argument against wind, solar, and other renewables being able to replace oil is that they represent such a small percentage of our energy sources now--essentially, it cannot be done because it isn't being done. While photovoltaics have some limitations on how quickly they can be ramped up, solar thermal and wind are relatively low tech and could be built very quickly, and though they might take up a lot of land, here in Calfornia and probably in most of the Southwest, we have an awful lot of land that is currently only being used to raise tumbleweeds and scorpions.

We will switch to some alternative to oil, just as we did from whale oil to kerosene for light in the 19th century. The only question is how much pain we have to feel before we hit the tippping point, and how much resistance is put up by those who profit from energy sources that can be monopolized and bottlenecked.

If suburbia dies, it will be because people get sick of sitting in traffic jams, not because the lights go out on civilization.

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» amen, brother Posted by: thistleblower
Government's Fault
Posted by: Liger on Dec 14, 2006 8:40 AM   
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“We're about to find out the hard way that life is tragic and history is merciless and that reality doesn't care what we like or don't like. The suburban system we have come to think of as "sprawl" is going to fail spectacularly. We will be desperate to make other arrangements, and all the statistical bullshit in the world will not avail us to bargain our way around it.

The global oil crisis we face, in combination with climate change, is about to bring on perhaps the greatest discontinuity that the human race has ever faced”.

How many times have we been told this? Who will hold Kunstler accountable when this doesn’t actually come to fruition? People have short memories and they forgot how often we are told that the “big oil crisis” is coming. It’s been perpetuated through the generations and here we are still waiting for the crisis, never mind that oil and gas are cheaper today than they were 50 years ago when factoring in inflation. It’s become the religion of global oil crisis and the believers are just waiting for the day when oil runs out like Christians await Christ’s return. It doesn’t matter what anyone else says or how many facts you use to point out the obvious flaws in their never ending theories on energy crises (like peak oil) because they are right and anyone that disagrees is wrong.

In terms of “sprawl” let’s not forget to factor in to the equation that the government had the largest role in the suburbs that we have today. I appreciate Kunstler’s acknowledgement of the insanity of single use zoning but he forgets to mention the many other land use regulations, federally funded interstate highway systems and most importantly government guaranteed mortgage loans that together contributed to what we call “sprawl”.

As a practicing urban planner I want the government to stop subsidizing first time homebuyers and stop backing mortgages – especially those that can’t afford it. In my state, the urban areas are suffering while people continue to buy homes that they can’t afford and then they end up in foreclosure. The government needs to also stop pushing homeownership as the best alternative. While indeed homeownership is a great thing, not everyone should own a home and our government should not be encouraging it. If you hate sprawl don’t hate the free market, instead hate your government’s intrusive attitude into the market and our lives. Government’s actions are the illness and sprawl is simply a symptom. You don’t treat symptoms you treat illnesses!

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» Big gubmint's fault, eh? How naive Posted by: thistleblower
» AS A PRACTICING URBAN PLANNER Posted by: mdruss42
» THUS SPAKE ZARALIGER Posted by: mdruss42
» Sometimes government does subsidize sprawl Posted by: karma_ran_over_dogma
Redefining the 'Good Life'
Posted by: wisewebwoman on Dec 14, 2006 9:22 AM   
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And this is what it's all about, right? When did we get it all so twisted and why? I know couples, empty-nesters, living in McMansions of 5 bathrooms. When did we ever think we would need all these space for two people? The word that comes to mind is obscene. A disease of 'more' has taken over the nation, fed by mass media corporate marketing and our incompetent governments who encourage the auto industry, sixteen lane highways running everywhere, lack of funding for urban enhancement, transit and off-the-grid self sustenance. Every time I see a Hummer I look at the driver in shock and awe at the overwhelming moronic instinct that tells him (and they are all 'hims') that this is OK, to drive this gas belching behemoth through a city street on his way to his McDrive in Suburbia to join others of his ilk.
Yes, I live in a small one bathroom in the city, affordable, I rent out half of it to a tenant and have bought some acreage, cheaply in the country and am investigating off the grid living out there for the coming crisis and it will be a crisis, the free sprawling ride is over, wake-up everyone and put plans in motion today. Turn off the TVs, get out in your communities and look around you, stand on a bridge overlooking a highway at oxymoronic 'rush-hour' and think of oil. Ending. Soon.

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flawed premise
Posted by: thistleblower on Dec 14, 2006 9:41 AM   
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The author of the article is stating a hypothesis that thus far cannot be tested: that automobile culture will cease to exist when the gas runs out. The premise with which you must operate is that culture will not be able to adjust to this potentially earth-shattering development. I think that's a load of BS. Believe me, just as much as anyone I would like to see sprawl go away. But the reality is this: life expectancy is on the upswing and space is a fixed resource.

I consider it a much more rational model to imagine decentralized living and working zones. Let me just point out that this trend is already in motion. The strip mall is only this arrangment in an embryonic state. Transportation will still exist more or less the way it does now. How? biofuel is a possibility. hydrogen power. solar power. superconductivity. Our plastics will be made of corn, or hemp, or whatever. The landside will eventually be full of inhabitants; get used to it. In a radically decentralized model, Safeway not only sells food, it grows some of it hydroponically or whatever means we develop in the meantime. Work is either online or in a satellite office a few miles from home. You think starbucks is already everyone, well just you wait.

Anyway, I think the end of gas will bring about a revolution, But an end to habitation patterns and transportation? Sorry, I don't believe it.

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» RE: flawed premise Posted by: pomes
Two words: Private Property
Posted by: vangogh69 on Dec 14, 2006 10:04 AM   
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Americans seem to have a different concept of this than other nations in the world and the issue manifests itself in numerous ways, including our lack of civic spaces and sprawl. While I don't have time to go all into it here, my feeling is that people in their hearts, if they're honest, hate (or are alienated with) this prized "privacy" and in their hearts like human-to-human connection. The US should never have spread out over this entire continent: we had neither the people nor the vision (nor unity) to successfully turn the land into something more beautiful than it already was.

One more thought though. It might not be oil which curbs the sprawl thing as much as that little-thought of yet important for human life resource: water. There are only so many aquifiers, rivers, and streams to go around. Given that global warming is already drying up water sources and humans are requiring more of it, it's only a matter of time before that puts the brakes on things.

Personally, I detest suburbs and feel ill whenever I'm in one. Give me store-front shopping outside any day to a mall! Yuck!

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This is an Awesome observation...
Posted by: pg on Dec 14, 2006 11:47 AM   
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Urban Sprawl is disgusting. The neighborhoods being built in southern california are gross cookie cutter, every house looks the same, bland, cheaply built, no charactor...water wasting...energy wasting...kinda like a parking lot full of YUGO of homes. But there is good news here... See we are running outa oil...the world is likely at or near "Peak OIL Production" now not the 20-45 years estimated...so as supplies decrease and prices rise...these folks wont be able to afford to drive(but Im sure they will find a way to blame Bush even if he is dead)...they will have to start walking, riding bikes, build some mass transit down Interstate 5 instead of more freeway lanes...that will cause people to lose weight and stop blaming McDonalds for their fat american ass problems and the even better news is because there is no more oil and people cant afford to drive we stop pumping carbon into the air and Al Gore is proved to be as full of shit as the rest of the hysterical chiken littles that say the sky is falling and your a traitor if you disagree (where have I heard that before?)

The world is getting warmer...so buy some frozen land up north cheap before it melts...start riding a bike to work...it is good for you, fun and will help cut pollution and will shrink your fat ass...stop building neighborhoods and golf courses in deserts...duh...I can go on...there are so many ways we as individuals can fight pollution...and these neighborhoods are indeed pollution...

Hows that from a "right wing nut?"

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G.Karnezis
Posted by: gtk on Dec 14, 2006 12:45 PM   
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I really look forward to finishing my reading of this review. I stopped at the first lengthy quote from the text under discussion because it's so obviously preposterous. I grew up on the south side of Chicago (Chatham) in a real neighborhood with access to commerce on foot and to downtown on public transportation. I witnessed the infection of automobiles and expressways.

I eventually wound up in Naperville, a sprawl suburb west of Chicago. In the 16 years spent there, the cancer spread. Yeah, there's lots of room ---- room for parking lots, sterile subdivisions, and building of zillions of car dependent Mchomes. The farmland retreats. It's an awful place. We escaped and now live in Portland, Oregon, where we've found some hope. Though it's by no means perfect, we feel folks here are not married to cars and have successfully fought the destruction of neighborhoods (proposed in the 80"s) by lethal expressways.

Downtown, across from a theatre/cinema district, there was an ugly square block. It's now being turned into a green park, with an underground parking lot. The sign on the construction site? "Tearing down a parking lot and building paradise!" Well, not quite, but sure as hell better than Illinois sprawl and the cancer of Naperville and much of DuPage and other counties that surround Chicago, where auto trips to the city have become horrendous.

If this sprawl is "what people want," count me out. Yeah, people "want" to smoke, too. Gimme a break!

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tedrad
Posted by: tedrad on Dec 14, 2006 1:11 PM   
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Well, just what do you think is the cause of urban sprawl, water shortages, electricity outages, traffic slowdown, pollution, less and more expensive health care services, etc., etc? Does unsustainable population increase have something to do with it?
Business supports population growth no matter how damaging the consequences to society as a whole. After all, people are consumers. Even hospitals don't complain about too many patients, only about not being reimbursed for them. Unless we stabilize population growth none of these problems can ever be solved, no matter how innovative our technology.

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The Ant and the Grasshopper...
Posted by: MonkeyBoy on Dec 14, 2006 1:29 PM   
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I won't go into the whole story...most of us learned it in Elementary school. My question is, when "winter" (Energy Crisis, Peak Oil, whatever) finally arrives, will you be an ant or a grasshopper. Only one survives...

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Lifeboat
Posted by: ghunter on Dec 14, 2006 1:43 PM   
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It is going to happen and as Jared Diamond has pointed out the crash is usually that a Crash. So build your lifeboats and put away your food, but the only thing you will need is enough ammo and the willingness to eat ants or grasshoppers!

Surburbia was built on hunting grounds and it will be a hunting ground again. Ciao or is that Chow!

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When we lost our home to eminent domain
Posted by: Maryanne on Dec 14, 2006 3:12 PM   
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we wanted to stay in the same area of the city, but there was nothing available at the time except a few houses that were in deplorable condition So we ended up in suburbia- actually just the overflow of the city (the dividing line is just a sign that you are no longer in the city). Since then our original neighborhood has deteriorated into a slum and we are grateful to be out.

Our present locationt has all the advantages of the suburbs- nice neighbors, well maintained property, yards. It has all the disadvantages of suburbia- no convenient public transportation, no neighborhood stores, lengthy streets (ours is a mile long to the main street), nothing handy.

In the city people sat on porches, the streets were filled with walkers. In suburbia, if anyone is outdoors (mostly to keep up those gardens- but we had one that was a showplace in the city) - it is to work on the property, and the streets are empty. Even children seem not to exist.

It would be nice to either be in the city or in a rural village where services are convenient and where walking is part of life. But when one is settled with years of accumulation, it is so much easier to stay put. We have options other than the choices above but a move is overwhelming. SO don't scold us now....

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???
Posted by: Logic's Edge on Dec 14, 2006 3:30 PM   
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What gets me about the response to these kinds of articles is how many people actually gloat about prospects of doom and seem to want it to happen, instead of banding together and trying to develop programs to deal with it.

It is not "Game over, man", at this point, by any means.

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» RE: ??? Posted by: ghunter
» Thank you! Posted by: Maxwell House
» If only it were that easy Posted by: MonkeyBoy
» RE: ??? Posted by: JimTheAnarchist
JHK and excuses for book reviews
Posted by: DaBear on Dec 14, 2006 4:27 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
As I read this "review" I just had to keep myself from laughing. This is classic JHK: say you're going to review something then use it as a soap box to test-drive your new book [pun intended].

I agree with a lot of what JHK has to say and I'm no more likely now to buy "Sprawl" as I was before reading Kunstler's piece. But it's not really just a book review. It's Kunstler's rebuttal to a book 'o stoopid.

The responses in the comments are like lurching through darkened hallways while drunk. Everyone is convinced they've got the answer, be it doom, delusion, or work-together-people. Should be a wild party the next fity years. My kids are gonna be pissed picking up after all of us, if they're even alive.

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sandman8
Posted by: socrates2 on Dec 14, 2006 5:33 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
But for one of the postings which replies with a non sequitur that reads like more Wall Street cant, alternet readers seem to know the score.
Sprawl in these gasoline-depleted days is a culturally dead-end practice.
I would argue that anyone who lives more than 5 miles from an urban center will have a difficult time moving about to and from work, not to mention shopping, etc., (assuming the job is "downtown") within the next 15 to 20 years.
Unless city fathers in cities with populations of over 50 thousand find the courage to engage in serious mass transit development such as metros, trolleys and/or light rail cars, they will see their suburbs decay as they sit and do nothing.
Unless these same officials understand the Parisian (not to mention Manhattan) blessing of mixed zoning and the desirability of medium density living with abundant green zones, their suburbs will rot. Perhaps these obsolete suburbs should rot and let nature reclaim them...
Oil is no longer found two feet underground nor within the boundaries of the 48 states. It's found in arctic wastelands, African killing fields or miles under hurricane-infested waters. So the price to access and transport oil is no longer nickels and dimes; it's more like 60 to 90 dollars a barrel. And it will never get cheaper. That's all folks. We spent it in an artificial lifestyle (synthetic fibers, plastics, herbicides, pesticides, fertilizers--all oil-based) all grounded on the premise of eternally cheap, abundant and accessible oil.
Come on people. It's up to us. We elect these clowns into office. We can elect those that come up with "greener" solutions. Real food, real wood, real "natural" materials.
It may come easy for some readers to critique alternative energy solutions, such as solar (which in the Sun Belt would be decentralized, and threatening to corporations), wind, geothermal, etc., but I have a question for these people, what is YOUR alternative?
Like junkies we live in a delusional world of "cheap oil" (factor in the trillions of the Iraq war into your gallon of gas, not to mention the tribute/protection we pay to Mid-East monarchs to guarantee access to "cheap oil') and kept that way by those who profit from our addiction.
And no I won't mention the synthetics we eat, drink and breathe. Yeah, that stuff that may lead to cancer and more subsidies to the medical/pharmaceutical complex...
Oh, well, "Soylent Green is people..."

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Kunstler's obvious flaw
Posted by: RP94116 on Dec 14, 2006 5:53 PM   
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In predicting the cataclysmic death of suburbia, it would seem that Kunstler has never heard of Silicon Valley or similar suburban economic strongholds. He argues that suburbs will die out because their residents depend on oil based transportation to commute to their jobs in the urban centers. Where I live, in San Francisco, people commute FROM the city TO the suburbs to work at suburb-based companies like HP, Google, Yahoo, Apple, Intel, etc. Those suburbs are growing and employing more people in the 'information economy'. The nearby major city of San Jose is essentially a bedroom community for people who commute to high technology suburban job centers. Kunstler needs to update his 'theories' to match reality (but he'd prefer to just keep ranting away).

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» RE: Kunstler's obvious flaw Posted by: Iconoclast421
Kunstler Correct, But...
Posted by: icurhuman2 on Dec 14, 2006 7:14 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I particularly enjoyed seeing several people being dragged over the coals in this excellent item by Kunstler, Shields' criticism was especially savoury.
However, it would've been more informative to who've been critical of this article if Kunstler had also mentioned the most serious shortfall expected in suburbia - having a greater impact on the populace than its ability to travel to work etc.
Food. In the end it will be more important than a place to shelter from the weather; water is certainly going to be a problem too, but the "unwashed masses" will likely find water less of a concern than food, or lack of it.
When oil-depletion hits, even those close to malls will find that the shelves will empty fast as hoarding becomes endemic. When there are no fleets of trucks to supply food to the malls, where people with some currency might actually buy food, the threat of starvation will cause panic on a scale never seen before. Neighbours will kill neighbours for the sake of enough food to survive...
The end of suburbia will be the end of more than just "comfortable" living it may well be the end of living altogether.
The worst part of it all will be that there'll be no satisfaction seeing the detractors of peak-oil suffer from their shortsightedness as we also decline in the mass die-off that is sure to come...

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i dislike suburbabn sprawl as much as the next guy
Posted by: amerique on Dec 14, 2006 10:36 PM   
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but what's with the unstated assumption here that modern urban centers will be somehow exempt from "adapting" to the fallout from peak oil? using this crisis to critique the suburbs is like chiding passengers on one end of the Titanic from the other end... actually, its probably the more densely populated urban areas that will go down first and suffer the most. people in the suburbs presumably could pool together and organize collective farms out of their backyards and outlying areas...

ironically, people in the sparsely populated, rural conservative "heartland of America" are probably in the best position to weather the peak oil crisis. peak oil will probably be regarded after the fact by the rural conservative Christian population as God's way of cleansing the urban liberal population of both coasts... they are the ones who are sitting pretty in all that farmland.

Conservatives' Vision of an American without Cities

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Where jobs are going?
Posted by: domenico234 on Dec 15, 2006 6:56 AM   
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No, they won't be going from the subs to the cities; they are already being shipped overseas...

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Fake Left
Posted by: Iconoclast421 on Dec 15, 2006 8:21 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Just kidding!

"it presents the worst elements of urban and rural life in the same package, with few of the benefits of either. The megaburbs have all the congestion of a city and none of the human contact. They have all of the isolation of the country, but no real connection to nature."

That's well written, but very sad...

The question is, how to avoid misplacing the blame for all of this? Was it "excessive freedom" that led to sprawl? I believe many on the left will think so. After all, it was an exercise of free will, wasn't it? This cancerous spread across the countryside... But then again we're victims of mass propaganda, and in essence "programmed" by the elite wealthy owners of the media and the oil companies.

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Focus
Posted by: nevyn on Dec 15, 2006 11:29 AM   
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This was obnoxious. I have followed Kunstler a long while and I applaud his vision, but in recent months his rants have lost cohesion. It's as if every month America avoids collapse his shouts grow more frantic and insistant: "suburbia is doomed . . . IT IS DOOMED I SAY!!!"

Kunstler's rant revolves around the central fact everyone can see: oil prices are on the rise, permanently. But his war on 'The Burbs' is pointless. Suburbia is not going anywhere. Suburban homes wont be magically emptied when gas hits $5.00 a gallon, nor will they be filled with the dead remains of suburban victims. People will adjust to save their homes! Kunstler can't wish his "dying suburbia" position to come true anymore than Bruegmann can defend it because he "likes it."

That said, he is quite right. The US cannot sustain current consumption levels with renewable energy. Change is happening now. Many adjustments--albeit slowly--have already begun. Rather than booming doomsday rhetoric against suburbia, Kunstler and others with foresight should be focusing on helping real people with real lives make the difficult sacrifices to meet the energy crunch.

One last thought. I am no proponent of suburbia. On aesthetic grounds alone it is repulsive. But it is not an illness either; it is an organic process. Whether you call its brachiating tendrils a viral outgrowth or a snowflake it is a natural response to existing conditions. Rather than attack ignorant suburbanites with invective, a few words of guidance could work wonders for those ill fated victims of the coming crisis. Focus on educating and assisting!

An Inconvenient Truth

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jmgiza
Posted by: jmgiza on Dec 15, 2006 1:30 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
mr. kunstler has described the horror and mess that is sprawl in a stunning fashion - he leaves no possible argument to his case uncountered. people need to read this and really really understand it, he is right on every point and the world is going to get brutally dangerous and ugly when the inevitable unravelling of sprawl and suburbia begins in earnest.

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I may be crazy
Posted by: BluTexan on Dec 15, 2006 2:18 PM   
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I may be crazy but I'm not stupid. I can read, reason, and do math. The combination has taught me that we are using 10 barrels of oil for every one we find. Exxon-Mobile says we have plenty of oil for the next 50 years with which I definately disagree but even if they are right, what happens in 51? The geologist who first predicted "Peak Oil" said that peak US production would happen in 1972 has been proven correct. He also called for peak world production about now and the world wide numbers have declined since Dec 05. A small decline but still right on schedule.
I grew up in Beaumont Tx, home of Spindletop, the first large Gulf Coast producing find and as a youngster had oil pumpers in our schoolyards. These pumps are all either gone or shut down and just left standing now. Texas is in the process of approving 10 coal fired power plants because of the unreliability of future oil and natural gas supplies. Easy oil and cheap gas are done. Even Iran imports gasoline for it's people now.
Iraq is the first of many resource wars to come. My belief is that my children will see these wars go nuclear. Nations will use desparate measures in desparate times. These wars will last until the oil is gone
Without oil so much of our modern world will disapear. Solar cells cannot be produced without oil and massive amounts of water. Hydrogen power is the same. Heavy industry, medicine, fertilizer, basic transportation, refrigeration, air travel, all these things upon which our modern society depends will either disapear or be so limited as to be only availabe to the most wealthy. Pie in the sky will not feed clothe and shelter.
It is not hard to picture the world of 2250 being closer to that of 1850 than 1950 much less 2000 and a world population of closer to 2 billion than todays 6.

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too much money
Posted by: andy on Dec 17, 2006 12:58 AM   
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we have the knowledge, the technology and most of all tons of money now (thanx to this cheap commodity) to enable many solutions. I dislike capitalism and the society it creates with a passion, but i know that consumerism is apparenty the greatest thing on earth and the elite will not allow it to collapse. One way or another the stupid dumb consumers and their money will save the day. But personally i hope you are right, this new generation need a dose of reality.

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superheated fluff
Posted by: rosemkremer on Jan 2, 2007 3:29 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Kunstler's article is a lot of worthless verbiage. He loves his clever turn of phrase but never says anything of value. That he doesn't like suburbia is not interesting. He adds nothing to what we already know....Suburbia exists because after WWII there wasn't enough housing for the returning GI's and the new families they were creating. Suburbia isn't just MacMansions. It's affordable 3-bedroom ranch houses. Forget the cities as viable inexpensive places to live: two bedroom apartments costing $750,000??? The urban middle class is finished and, in the near future, will be finished in the suburbs as well. The exurbs--70plus miles out--are the only affordable places now for teachers, nurses, firemen. In other words, it is MONEY--the lack of it--that drives demographics, the market, the sprawl. Certainly, we will see a middle class revolution at some point and, perhaps, it will be the high cost of fuel that ignites it. -Rose

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