An interview with doomsaying author James Howard Kunstler

25 May 2005

James Howard Kunstler.

"Check all of your assumptions at the door," James Howard Kunstler advises reporters before he commences an interview. "Don't assume that anything you think about the way we live today is going to be the same 10, five, even three years from now."

The author of the new book The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the 21st Century, recently excerpted in Rolling Stone, Kunstler is an emphatic petro-pessimist who argues that civilization is about to enter a sustained period of economic, social, and environmental decrepitude triggered by the end of the cheap-oil era. He summarily rejects the possibility that renewable energy could forestall disaster, and predicts that spiking fossil-fuel prices will precipitate the collapse of the airline industry, the electricity grid, highway infrastructure, agribusiness, big-box retail stores, and suburbia itself. The majority of Americans, he says, will likely suffer bouts of violent upheaval and be forced to return to agrarian, small-town lifestyles. Understandably, his prognostications have raised some eyebrows.

A former journalist and sometime novelist, Kunstler in 1993 published The Geography of Nowhere, a much-praised jeremiad about the car-dependent suburbanization of America. Grist's Amanda Griscom Little sat down with him over lunch in New York City to get a first-hand account of his latest dark vision for the nation's future.

Tell us about the evolution of The Long Emergency. Where did these mind-boggling ideas originate?

The Long Emergency, by James Howard Kunstler, Atlantic Monthly Press, 307 pgs., 2005.

I really got into this when I was a newspaper reporter 30 years ago in Albany covering the OPEC oil embargo. I was living in the middle of it -- going through the gas lines and interviewing the people who were ticked off, motoring around a suburban metroplex where all the accessories of contemporary life were new. My office at the Hearst newspaper building was at the termination of a brand-new, heroic eight-lane boulevard of commerce with malls on either side and suburban sprawl in every direction. You couldn't fail to notice that this was a catastrophe -- a living arrangement that really had no future.

I've since been investigating suburban sprawl through works like The Geography of Nowhere. The Long Emergency is the logical sequel -- addressing the question of what will happen to this way of life when we get in trouble with energy.

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Elaborate on how sprawl is inextricably connected to oil concerns.

Ever since the end of World War II, we've embarked on this project to build ourselves a drive-in utopia -- an economy based on suburban land development, eight-lane freeways lined with fry pits and hamburger shacks and a national big-box chain retail system. It has flourished because of two things: extraordinarily cheap energy and reliable supplies of it, and relative world peace. That has enabled big-box stores to develop 12,000-mile manufacturing and supply chains with the cheap labor overseas. Wal-Mart can move 4,000 TV sets from China to Wilkinsburg, Penn., and keep this tremendous stream of products going around the country with truckers who operate their warehouses on wheels. The system works only because it's cheap to transport stuff.

You also point out that the mainstream American diet is essentially predicated on "eating oil."

Yeah, industrial agriculture is another extremely problematical thing. We've now consolidated all of our food production into a very small fraction of the population and our agribusinesses rely on pouring oil byproducts -- pesticides, fertilizers, herbicides -- on the soil. We've got this cheese-doodle and Pepsi-Cola form of agriculture where large companies like Archer Daniels Midland and ConAgra are producing huge amounts of corn and byproducts like corn syrup to create junk food. It's generally understood that most of the food we eat travels [about] 1,500 miles. So we've got all these 1,500-mile Caesar salads winging or wheeling around America to get to our dinner plates. That won't be able to continue when the cheap-oil era ends.

Your premise is that this end is nigh. Can you lay out this argument?

The main idea is that we don't have to run out of oil or natural gas to have severe problems. All you have to do is head down the arc of depletion on the downside of world peak production. When that happens, the complex systems that we rely on for daily life are going to start destabilizing and wobbling. They will mutually amplify their instabilities and many will reach a state of dysfunction.

The clock is ticking ... as long as it's not connected to the electrical grid.

What kind of a time frame are you looking at?

We have reason to believe that we are at or near the peak right now because oil markets are wobbling and prices are volatile, and there is no swing producer. In the next three years we are going to be feeling the pain. Our lives are going to be noticeably beginning to be disrupted. In the next 10 years, you will see the beginning of a major collapse of suburbia.

Describe a day in the life of average citizens living in this post-cheap-oil epoch.

They are going to be living in a period of turbulence and political vicissitude. Industrial farming is going to fail by increments and we are going to have to grow more food closer to home. Agriculture is going to become much more central to the American way of life and economy and going to occupy a much larger percentage of jobs. The places that will be successful will be the smaller towns situated near viable agricultural land.

There is going to be this huge new class of people in America who I call the "formerly middle class" and they're going to be really ticked off and bewildered about why they were deprived of their entitlements to the American Dream. The easy-motoring lifestyle will be unaffordable for the masses, so the 21st century is going to be much more about staying where you are and much less about being in motion all the time.

Are you predicting that there will be an elite class that is still privy to all of the conveniences of the cheap-oil era?

There will be activities like flying that only the elite can participate in. You are going to see the aviation industry dramatically contract because it relies so heavily on fuel prices. You are going to start to see real political grievance over motoring becoming an increasingly elite activity. Let's say a third of the public can't participate in the motoring system at all. They may resent paying taxes to maintain this tremendous amount of highway infrastructure. The interstate highway system is actually very vulnerable -- once cracks and potholes start, the whole thing starts to fall apart very rapidly. So that could inhibit the mobility of the elite as well.

You argue that the promise of renewable-energy solutions evolving in time to save us from this crippling crisis is bogus.

No combination of alternative fuels is going to allow us to run the U.S. the way we're running it or even a substantial fraction of it. We will see the use of some alternatives, but on a very local basis. We're not going to be running biodiesel in Wal-Mart's warehouses on wheels. And there are questions about where we'll get the energy to build the wind turbines and solar arrays that require exotic metallurgy and complex manufacturing. As for biofuels, we are going to need a lot more land to grow food without the petrochemicals, so biofuel growers will have to compete for food-crop acreage.

This argument all rests on the assumption that renewable markets won't have time to evolve before the oil-production peak hits. You argue that peak production is happening now, but The Economist recently cited figures from the U.S. Geological Survey that the production peak is some two decades off.

The U.S. Geological Survey has been uniformly issuing bad statistics for years. It's really a well-known fact that their statistics tend to not comport with reality.

But many experts argue that technology innovations are making it cheaper and easier to extract oil from hard-to-reach places and recover the huge amounts of leftovers in existing wells.

All the new techniques that have been developed for oil extraction have only succeeded in making the oil wells deplete even faster or geologically corrupting them and destroying their structural integrity. I personally don't believe the argument that the technology is going to produce large increases in recoverable oil.

Let's assume that we do have 20 to 30 years before peak oil -- couldn't that buy us time to get the alternatives up to snuff to transition out of the oil economy more smoothly?

Not without making really severe changes in the way we live.

But let's assume we do make changes. Basic energy-efficiency measures could radically reduce our oil demands. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, the U.S. could cut its motor vehicle-related oil consumption in half by changing the way combustion engines are built, with today's available technology.

I think we will find ways to be more efficient, but it's not going to be enough. I do not believe for a moment that we will continue the way of life that we have in America now. I think that's a central fallacy of the environmental movement. It's part of a Jiminy Cricket syndrome that stems from our technological success -- things like landing on the moon and inventing computers -- that gives us this idea that if you wish hard enough for something, it will come true. But you know something? The bottom line is that life is tragic. Sometimes the things you wish for don't come true. History doesn't care whether we succeed or not, or meet our problems in an intelligent way, or behave decently, or pound our civilization down a rathole.

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A lot of critics have characterized your book as alarmist.

I actually don't think I am being alarmist. I am spelling out in fairly unambiguous terms some scenarios that we're likely to run into. It reflects the complacency of the American public that they find themselves so shocked that the normality of everyday life could be disrupted. We haven't been challenged by anything serious in this country since World War II, and that generation is dying out. So America is composed of people who haven't had these serious national or social challenges.

If technology can't dig us out of this problem, what will?

The things that will help us the most will be finding a new scale of living and a new way to rebuild local, cohesive communities and cottage industries around them. We will need a new infrastructure for daily life, a new place for the human spirit to dwell and rest in for a while.

How long is long? Do you predict that the "long emergency" will last 100 years? 200?

I really can't say.

Can you speculate?

You can look to history for similar kinds of tribulations that the human race has gone through. The Black Plague was a tremendous discontinuity for European life. Populations had risen in the medieval period, life was modernizing, and then all the sudden in the 1300s this plague comes along that kills off a third of the European population. Then within 100 years you see the rise of a whole new urban commercial society, which shortly becomes the Renaissance. The human race is resilient, and I think life will go on after the long emergency, but there will be a substantial interval of trouble like nothing we have ever seen before in the United States.

Tell us about your own life. Do you have a bunker?

No, I don't have a bunker, and I'm not hoarding wheat berries, and I don't have a gun collection. I moved to a classic, main-street American small town in upstate New York 30 years ago because I predicted that the quality of life would be good there for a long time. I figured that kind of town has better prospects than our biggest cities and suburban metroplexes. But I have enjoyed the luxuries of air conditioning, cable TV, computers, cheap air travel, advanced orthopedic surgery. I own a pickup truck that will probably be the last automobile I ever buy, but I get around town on my bike. I have a broad and deep social network, play in a band, and, generally speaking, am a cheerful, happy person.

What advice would you give to parents -- should they be teaching their kids survival skills aside from how to cooperate and live in a small-scale community?

Teach them how to be polite and fair, and teach them how to play a musical instrument -- we're going to have to keep our spirits up. Make yourself a part of a cohesive community. Be prepared to carry your weight and deal with a hands-on vocation. There will be far fewer public-relations executives and far more milkmaids.

This sounds a bit like science fiction for back-to-the-landers. Are you a sci-fi junkie?

I read next to zero science fiction. And I don't write it.

Amanda Griscom Little writes Grist's Muckraker column on environmental politics and policy and interviews green luminaries for the magazine. Her articles on energy and the environment have also appeared in publications ranging from Rolling Stone to The New York Times Magazine.

Comments: (25 comments)

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Very bad news

What I find intriguing about both the Kunstlerian and Heinbergian points of view is that they describe the sickening and absurd excesses of our consumer society, and then posit that it will all simply collapse without the possibility of say reducing everyone's consumption to a sane level (sorry... only 2 brands of detergent at the store, food from only 100 miles away and in season, no $200 flights to Cabo, etc.).

The discrepancy between the situation described by these two Casssandras and say the Economist is so stark (3 years to oil peak versus 25), that I wonder if the real time frame isn't in the middle. If its 10 years, consumers and business might quickly readjust their consumption and resourse efficiency. If its 3, then its "Katie... bar the door and pass the ammunition!"

Lance Funston

by lfunston at 3:03 PM on 25 May 2005

Facism, democracy, and energy

Kunstler posits a final outcome of a sort of agrarian paradise (at least, it sounds like paradise to a young small town farmer, and it sounds from the interview like he would hold the same position). I think it is instructive to compare our current situation to major crises of the recent past (The Black Death doesn't count). During the Great Depression, there was large scale unrest and poverty. Many people's lives changed dramatically, some even died of starvation... but the US reacted to strengthen its democratic institutions and forge a new social contract to try to limit the scale of future economic swings. Germany, in contrast, reacted by electing an ultra-nationalist (Hitler) whose solution was state centralization, blaming the Jews (and others) for everything, and invading neighborhing countries.
Given recent developments, I am not that optomistic about the American people's ability to repeat the electoral sanity of the 1930s. However, I think it is important for those who are worried about peak oil to look beyond simple fear, or material survival, and work to insure that our democratic institutions continue to be sound. Civic engagement...

by Forrest at 3:42 PM on 25 May 2005

Long Day's Journey: Step one....

Howard Kunstler, like the few among his clique, has added to the short list of truth-telling exposures to the industrial world's future. There is no cure for the alcoholic in denial and, aren't we all in denial about the calamity we older ones have set up for our children.

Yes, the "debates" on the end-of-oil, climate change, US federal deficits, private debt (add your favorite) are going to play out for some time to come. But, nowhere have I heard the right or the left convince me the outcome for any of these dramas will be satisfying for me and certainly not for my children.

Wind and solar energy and increased energy use efficiency are the topics and tasks we busy environmentalists toil at. We cling to the hope they will give us time, bail us out, come to the rescue and prove us right.

I have been an environmental activist and believer for thirty five years. And, I have been programmed to believe environmental organizations are credible and altruistic. Watching the near-haphazard way we/us have squandered those thirty-plus years to the point we are now toothless social clubs instead of a powerful political movement sickens me to the core and makes me feel complicitous. The national Sierra Club sent out some 741,000 ballots last year to its members to elect its Board of Directors. Maryland has half as many SUVs registered. Folks the enviros are not matched to the task of averting what Mr. Kunstler projects.

When pessimism becomes reality it is too late to organize the deck chairs. Like it or not the non-denialists among us are ready to encourage some very bold ideas such as getting off our duffs and marching to proclaim the rights of our children to have as good a life as we have enjoyed. And, if that means they can have access to things they might truly need such as next-generation nuclear power I say lets be certain they have that option.

Dr. Caldicott aside, our aloofness about real energy decisions in America has wasted precious time and our children will pay the price. Bio-diesel and the cult or renewables are boutique energy sources meant for remote villages and civilizations.

We cannot wish the world to be the way we want it to be. Climate change-wise, it is the way it is because the population of Rhode Island exceeds the number of card-carrying environmentalists. GE and WRI may have the money and luxury to partner in a new world of E-magination but it will take more than glitz to give our children a chance for a future. It will take trillions of dollars of investment in base-load, non-carbon emitting power generation stations here and there and everywhere.

John McC

by johnmcc793 at 4:02 PM on 25 May 2005

End of suburbia? Oh, no!

Kunstler predicts "the collapse of the airline industry, the electricity grid, highway infrastructure, agribusiness, big-box retail stores, and suburbia itself?"

End of suburbia itself? Say it isn't true!

Kunstler offers little data for his predictions, so I'll offer no data for mine: we give up our SUVs, our sedans, maybe even our airconditioned houses and heat pumps. But, collapse of civilization? I doubt it.

by TomKeffer at 6:00 PM on 25 May 2005

A similar article, with a hopeful ending

Harper's just published an article called "The Cuban Diet" that lays out how Cuban society changed over the past couple of decades, since the collapse of the Soviet Union shut them out of the global economy, and Cubans had to shift to an economy not unlike that which Kunstler describes.

The transition sounds like it was difficult, but what emerged at the other end sounds, at least in some ways, not so bad.

Save big bucks. Help the environment. Ditch your car. www.flexcar.com

by Steve Gutmann at 6:22 PM on 25 May 2005

Resiliant Community Resources

The key to cultivating resiliant communities is reaching out to others who share your concerns. Below are some good starting points:

Oil Awareness Meetup Groups
[a]http://oilawareness.meetup.com[/a]

Post Carbon Institute
[a]http://www.postcarbon.org[/a]

For links to Post Carbon Outposts and information on creating an Outpost of your own, see:
[a]http://www.postcarbon.org/subpage.php?page=outposts[/a]

Long years ago I was told friends will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no friends. Perhaps we'll get a chance to find out.

~Mark

by Mark at 6:29 PM on 25 May 2005

Long journey

I find it compelling that 70% of Grist readers voted for the "doomsday" scenario in the poll associated with the Kuntsler article. A major factor that, ironically, was not discussed in the interview is the condition we have put the planet in, let alone the fact that cheap oil is on the way out. Over the past 100 years, humans have not only depleted resources, but have done irreparable damage to natural ecosystems that make the earth's closed system operate. A dramatic reduction in the burning of fossil fuels may help mitigate global warming, but some studies and scenarios suggest that we may already be too far down the road toward catastrophic feedback mechanisms that could produce anything from another ice age to even more widespread droughts and wildfires. Religious fanatics secretly throw up their hands and say, "Oh well, Armageddon may be upon us, but if so, it is God's will, there's nothing I can do about it except pray for salvation." That kind of pervasive mentality, along with the fact that many of us are running out of steam from banging our heads against the wall trying to make real changes in lifestyle and attitudes, is what the Long Journey is really about.

by cmpuppies at 10:15 PM on 25 May 2005

Industrial Society Is Not Sustainable

And the sooner it becomes extinct, the better!

Jeff Hoffman

by jdhlax at 10:29 PM on 25 May 2005

Re: "next-generation nuclear power".

Nice ecomagination neoconman talking point you slipped in there. Hehehey.

Committed activist? For GE?

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

by amazingdrx at 4:36 AM on 26 May 2005

RE: "next-generation nuclear power"

To amazingdrx,

I scrolled your blog page and found lots of intriguing numbers, suggestions and ideas for America's energy future. My instinct tells me not to reply to your above comment. But, it might serve you and visitors to your page to reflect on some real numbers.

Wind and solar? Yes! Wind and solar replacing coal and backing out nukes? Wouldn't that be a blessing!

Truth is, America's housing stock is going horizontal and residential electric demand is going vertical. Instant and prolonged power blackouts are driving the sale of polluting, on-site diesel generators for backup so integrity of the electric grid is paramount.

Intermittant sources of electric power in a land of two AC interconnects and a DC island (TX, wouldn't you know) make your wind and solar mega-plans impossible. Fossil backup serves the auxilliary power requirements of any power source accessing the grid. That is how the lights stay on nearly all of the time. As expensive stand-bys, they add to the cost of wind power.

Now, here is the real gorilla -- growth in electric power demand from 2003 to 2004:

total net gen. 2003 = 3,883,185,000,000 kwhr.

total net gen. 2004 = 3,953,407,000,000 kwhr.

one yr. growth in demand = 94,955,000,000 kwhr (about 2.4% growth rate).

Assuming a 40% availability (high end in real world) of a 1.5 megawatt wind tower, that state of the art turbine would yield 5,256,000 kwhr/yr.

Relying only on wind (and I admit you do not expressly make that proposal) to make up the electric demand growth since 2003 would require the installation of 18,066 wind towers at a cost of $27.1 billion (assuming $1 million/megawatt of installed capacity).

18,066 x 1.5MW 27,099MW x $1MM/MW$27.1 billion

Lots of wind not all the time and, in some cases, blowing in remote or pristine locations. So, lets get busy and build wind towers where we can.

For the rest of the grid demand, I suggest we face reality and work with engineers, scientists, nuclear non-proliferation specialists to craft a next-generation nuclear power industry that our children just might have to call upon to maintain their standard of living such as that will be -- given the mess we are leaving them.

I use compact flourescent lamps in my house and turn out lights whenever my family members don't object. It is tough lifting for me to be so committed to not wasting electricity in a world that thinks I'm an obsessive pain in the neck.

I enjoy your characaterization of Karl Rove. We need more of that wherever the opportunity presents itself.

I am not GE and not a neocon. And, I am more concerned about abrupt thermohaline circulation change than about the X-thousands of years of nuclear waste storage costs. Pebble bed reactors deal with the waste problem in a most constructive way. It needs more enlightened, curious readers. Look into the pebble bed technology and tell us what you learned.

Thanks. John McC

by johnmcc793 at 6:13 AM on 26 May 2005
[ Parent ]

Long Day's Journey: step One...

I want to correct my above posting. The population of Rhode Island is a bit more than a million persons. National Wildlife Federation may have several million members, though I do not have current information. I meant to type "Sierra Club" when I referred to 'card-carrying environmentalists'. John McC

by johnmcc793 at 6:26 AM on 26 May 2005
[ Parent ]

a long day's journey into night

I have just finished reading HIGH NOON FOR NATURAL GAS which also presents a scenario in which we have peaked in oil and soon will in natural gas even as the economy builds off shore LNG docks. The drop-off for natural gas, he says, will be sudden as gas tends to drop sharply when the field is depleting. He covers the options of natural gas also: coal bed methane, methane hydrate, etc., and still predicts an early demise of the oil/gas based economy. He also advocated a return to community-based economies. Well worth a read. Without the natural gas, there never will be a hydrogen economy on a global scale.

by katesisco at 7:27 AM on 26 May 2005

comments re pebble reactors

I thought it was too good to be true. France depends on nuclear power for a majority of its energy needs, if pebble bed reactors were feasible and practical, France would have build them as it is facing an aging nuclear infrastructure.
Germany closed its pebble bed reactor after an accident in which the recorded radiation release was first attributed to Chernobyl.
I do not know about the US site Peach Bottom Unit I.
According to the article, a reactor is being built using this format in Africa. I wondered just how an air-cooled reactor would be sufficiently cooled by temperatures sustained in the African continent?

URL for nuke watchdog site:
http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/pbmrfactsheet.htm

NO REACTOR CONTAINMENT BUILDING AND REDUCED SAFETY SYSTEMS CUT PBMR COSTS

Unlike light water reactors that use water and steam, the PBMR design would use pressurized helium heated in the reactor core to drive a series of turbine compressors that attach to an electrical generator. The helium is cycled to a recuperator to be cooled down and returned to cool the reactor while the waste heat is discharged to the environment. Designers claim there are no accident scenarios that would result in significant fuel damage and catastrophic release of radioactivity.

These industry safety claims rely on the heat resistant quality and integrity of the tennis ball-sized graphite fuel assemblies or "pebbles," 400,000 of which are continuously fed from a fuel silo through the reactor "little by little" to keep the reactor core only marginally critical. Each spherical fuel element has an inner graphite core embedded with thousands of smaller fuel particles of enriched uranium (up to 10 %) encapsulated in multi-layers of non-porous hardened carbon. The slow circulation of fuel through the reactor provides for a small core size that minimizes excess core reactivity and lowers power density, all of which is credited to safety.

However, so much credit is given to the integrity and quality control of the coated fuel pebbles to retain the radioactivity that no containment building is planned for the PBMR design. While the elimination of the containment building provides a significant cost savings for the utility--perhaps making the design economically feasible--the trade-off is public health and safety.

The protective containment building also is nixed because it would hinder the design's passive cooling feature of the reactor core through natural convection (air cooling). Exelon also proposes a dramatic reduction in additional reactor safety systems and procedures (i.e. no emergency core cooling system and a reduced one-half mile emergency planning zone as compared to a 10-mile emergency planning zone for light water reactors) to provide for further reducing PBMR construction and operation costs.

To date, however, Exelon has not submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission descriptions of challenges that could lead to a radiological accident such as a fire that ignites the combustible graphite loaded into the core. Fire and smoke then become the transport vehicle for radioactivity released to the environment from damaged fuel.

In addition, the lack of containment would require 100%-perfect quality control in the manufacture of the fuel pellets--an impossible goal. Imperfections in fuel pellet manufacture could lead to higher radiation releases during normal operation than is the case with conventional reactors.

End of Article

by katesisco at 7:58 AM on 26 May 2005
[ Parent ]

John, that was an excellent post.

Polite, rational, accurate.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

by biodiversivist at 9:10 AM on 26 May 2005
[ Parent ]

The Population Bomb all over again.

Peak Oil has its analogy with Ehrlich's The Population Bomb. The meme Ehrlich's book started, that it is wise to limit the size of one's family, combined with the technology growth that gave us the green revolution and contraceptive technology, snuffed the predicted famines. Peak Oil should have a similar effect. Predicting the future is impossible because those same predictions alter the future in unpredictable ways.

Cuba survived when their oil ran out completely unexpectedly in the span of a few years. We have much longer to adjust. We also have immense coal deposits (and hopefully clean coal technology) and oil sand in Canada to ease the shock. Both options will cost much more but that is the point. Vastly superior nuclear power plant designs may have to be used, along with plug-in rechargeable cars. People will react by doing what makes their lives better. Gradually rising energy prices should make it all come about fairly naturally, without crisis, without coercion, as happened with the predicted famines. We will miss driving SUVs about as much as we miss driving muscle cars. Train travel will return (good investment for your children).

Engineering is the art of compromise. Every energy scheme comes with its drawbacks. Nuclear has its waste. Biodiesel would eventually put pressure on remaining jungles and forests to convert them into farms for fuel. Instead of allowing us to increase our forest cover by locking carbon away in trees, it will pollute the air with carbon from plants grown where there should be trees. Solar works only when the sun shines.

I'm old enough to have been through this before. Humanity will take care of itself. The end of oil may also mean the end of global warming. One problem may well fix the other.

Enough of the cheerleading. The biggest threat to humanity is war. It is human nature to form up into self-righteous groups to compete against other groups at the drop of a hat. Human history, and even prehistory, is an unbroken string of wars over resources. Finding ways to stop war is the best insurance for our future. I don't know if that can be done. The Red state/Blue state, conservative/liberal, Christian/Moslem worldviews are smoking embers. China is buying Canada's oil sands, our twin towers are gone, and we have an imbecile for a president.

And in the end, how do we protect what is left of our planet's biodiversity? If you can't change human nature (and you can't because it is instinctive wiring, like walking upright) then channel it in ways to meet your goals. Putting bigger and bigger chunks of the planet into the hands of NGOs where the resources found on them are buffered against the profit motive is the key. Government, under pressure from lobbyists, will always in the end, give those resources away to developers, mining, logging, or oil interests.

Recongnize this species?

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

by biodiversivist at 9:19 AM on 26 May 2005

Pebble bed.

Already have john. That ceramic coating better be perfect. Can anyone guarantee it won't crack?

How would one prove it? Decades of testing? That maybe too late.

A reactor that uses superheated hydrogen as a cooling element and propellant for the turbine? No one ever questions that aspect of the design.

One infitesimal leak of that high pressure, superheated gas and its all over, those pebbles will be dust, scattered all over 3 states.

I'm proposing 20 megawatt 1000 foot wind machines located on the high wind regions of the northern midwestern great plains.

Enough capacity to equal the present generating capacity of the US. 30,000 machines, all connected into an upgraded and extended national power grid, regulated by the government to prevent monopoly manipulation (as happened in California) or power blackouts. This upgrade is sorely needed.

It would be a project on the scale of the Tennesse Valley Authority or the Hoover Dam projects in the depression era. A way to get the US manufacturing base back.

You are at the very least playing into the hands of the neo-conservatives backing nuclear power.

A comprehensive plan involving wind, solar, wave and tidal current, biofuel, and plugin hybrid vehicles would be affordable, eliminate imported oil, and revive the US economy providing good jobs for US familes.

Nuclear power is unsafe, way too expensive, and is another monopoly controlled source of power like oil, coal, and natural gas.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

by amazingdrx at 11:22 AM on 26 May 2005
[ Parent ]

Great find kate!

I had seen descriptions of pebble bed designs using ceramic coated fuel, the ceramic was designed to resist the maximum heat that could theoretically be created by the pellets. This temperature was theoretically fixed since the pebbles automatically kept the fuel at a minimum separation distance.

Graphite is what made Chernobyl happen. Definitely not a safe idea. And helium as the coolant/propellant? That's a new one, I had heard it was to be hydrogen.

This notion of controlling temperature by circulating the pebbles is really frightening. If any blockage occurs? Yikes.

What these folks touting next genersation nukes forget is that we already have the leaking, dangerous rad waste from the first generation to deal with. and all indications are that this will cost arpound a dollar per kwh generated by nukes to dispose of and watch over for 20,000 years or more.

Is the public supposed to trust the nuclear industry again with nothing but faithbased neoconman propaganda? Or should we demand real proof of this new technology operating safely for decades.

If that is needed, why not just go with renewables...the clean, cost effective, p[roven alternative. Wind is proven to be 3.5 cents per kwh in the latest installations.

The cost will drop to 500 bucks per kw of generating capacity in the huge 20 megawatt machines.

The actual cost of new nukes, if they could be sited, would be more like 5000 bucks per kw of generating capacity.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

by amazingdrx at 11:34 AM on 26 May 2005
[ Parent ]

Polite? Yes.

Accurate, rational it was not.

It was classic sophistry of the figures don't lie category...

That phrase "next generation nuclear power" is right out of a talking points memo.

Ask john how much the equivalent in nukes would cost to cover that growth in electric power use.

Try up to 5 times that 27 billion, if and when NIMBY lawsuits could be overcome someday.

Those big wide great plains are waiting for wind machines right now! No NIMBY because there are hardly any people.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

by amazingdrx at 11:43 AM on 26 May 2005
[ Parent ]

Wind vatiability.

Variability is far less serious when the generating capacity is spread over a large are connected into a grid designed to stabilize the supply. And when solar, wave and ocean tidal current is added in.

Hydroelectric is the perfect "battery" for wind power, since the water behind a dam can be held up when wind is strong and then released when the wind slows.

But the real permanent solution to energy fluctuation is superconducting energy storage rings.

When we started WW 2 who though that the atom bomb could be byuilt or that huge aircraft carriers would be ready to go to wat, or that the millions of trucks, planes, ships, tanks, bombs... could be supplied to win that war?

We are in a series of energy/oil wars. The one in Iraq is 300 billion so far, projected to be 500 billion? We cannot afford to try to win these oil wars this way.

Let US spend that money on a 10 year energy plan instead. eliminate imported oil in 10 years. Eliminate reliance on fossil fuel and nulkes a few years after that.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

by amazingdrx at 11:52 AM on 26 May 2005

Cut Demand, Don't Destroy The Earth

I always appreciate amazingdrx's anti-nuke comments, but I also oppose destroying the plains or any other natural area with windmills or powerlines. We need to reduce our consumption of electricity so that it can all be generated locally. The basic fallacies here are caused by trying to determine how to reduce ecological and environmental destruction in order to provide for selfish luxuries like electricity, instead of trying to determine how to live in harmony with the Earth by using as little electricity as possible and requiring that the sources be from the least harmful technologies.

For a start, no single-family home should be allowed to use more electricity than it generates with its windmill and/or solar collectors. Business should be forced to drastically reduce their use of electricity (all office buildings must have functioning windows and cannot use air conditioning, all lights off at night except in rooms being cleaned, no lighted advertising, etc.). If these ideas are not sufficient to reduce consumption so that we don't need extremely harmful sources of power like coal or nukes, we must reduce further until that goal is acheived.

As to John McC's comment that we "face reality" and cause further extreme harm to the Earth by mining and processing uranium, and creating plutonium and nuclear waste that lasts virtually forever, just so that today's children can continue our gluttonous and highly destructive lifestyles: The reality is that our current lifestyles are nowhere near being sustainable, let alone in harmony with nature, which is what we should really be aiming for. I suggest that those who oppose drastic reductions in (especially American) consumption face that reality!

Jeff Hoffman

by jdhlax at 2:41 PM on 26 May 2005

Yes, a low consumption, high quality lifestyle.

"We need to reduce our consumption of electricity so that it can all be generated locally."

That is a great goal, homes that generate all the energy they need, as well as small businesses. It is achievable with inovative design and building, solar, wind, and biofuel power.

I believe that a home or farm can also generate all the biofuel for family transportation needed too, with extra input of waste products into biofuel equipment if needed.

I think we can get there, I am trying this on a small scale family level.

But to replace the electric power now generated by nukes and fossil fuel that is needed to feed industry and government needs, and to replace imported oil with biofuel plugin hybrids, we will still need a lot of green electric power.

Wind can get it without destruction. A 50 foot diameter area for the base of these towers and buried generators and transmission lines will not destroy anything.

These systems leave no waste behind. when they are obsolete, in say 50 years or so, when better solutions are available, the whole system can be recycled and the land restored to original condition.

But I completely agree with the principle of low impact, low consumption life, humankind living symbiotically with nature. Relying on homes and buildings that follow organic architecture into a new realm. The living symbiotic home.

Wright and Fuller showed the way...now we need to apply the illumination they provided. It's a fantastic challenge and adventure!

Quality of life over quantity of possesions and consumption, those are our family values. The family of humankind on this living spaceship earth.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

by amazingdrx at 5:55 PM on 26 May 2005

Planetization Ho!???

Author William Irwin Thompson and Fellows of the Lindisfarne Institute started in 1973 to carry fourth work based on the profound vision of the end of Industrial civilization and the transition to "Planetization". Projections of energy disaster based on the work of Donella Meadows were making a big impact then. Since then, well, anyone who has been alive in the past 10,20 years knows the recent history. There was a lot of optimism at the first United Nations Conference On the Environment in the early 90's. Maybe,we need a new work to bring added scholarly documentation to
James Kunstlers work, proclaim that profound changes are upon us and recognize it.
My hope is placed in small institutes
Like THE NATURE INSTITUTE, and Julie and Paul Mankiewicz' GAIA INSTITUTE, already
implementing the kinds of creative solutions
and steps in the direction of "Planetization".
Regarding energy: were new biological energy sources ever mentioned? Things such as biological energy cells? And also, I have made "Bioglass" in my kitchen out of gelatin
and glycerin as a sample of "Biodegradable Plastics".I know there are issues & problems to be resolved, but perhaps this could be an
example of the kind of "cottage industry" envisioned, in a rudimentary way now, of course.
Lastly, at the risk of being mis-understood and
placed in the "New Age" box, I propose simple
meditation as an essential element, or at least that the element of an "inner life" be an ingredient. A final thought is that has anyone
proposed tying in the issue of "Reparations"
to Afro-Americans as an essential step for
a transition to a new civilization?

by Paul Kuchynskas at 6:29 PM on 26 May 2005

Natural gas to hydrogen?

>Without the natural gas, there never will be
>a hydrogen economy on a global scale.

I don't understand. Surely you are not proposing making hydrogen from methane (natural gas?) Methane is a clean fuel, it can be produced from biological sources, is easy to transport/store/use, is already distributed via nationwide pipelines, and we already have vehicles that use it. To change it to hydrogen - a gas that is harder to store, distribute, and use - makes little sense.

--bill von

by billvon at 1:48 PM on 27 May 2005
[ Parent ]

Long Day's Journey Into Night

I have long held the belief that mankind was adversely affecting their chances of having a healthy, productive lifestyle for the furture generations. Mr.Kunstler has provided the information that everyone needs to understand the extent of the problem, not just the current political "hot potato". I am beginning to realize that it will take an educated public and people who are willing to risk a great deal to push communities into taking action that might fly in the face of political folly. The need for more communities to say "No" to developers of housing developments, and to agrabusinesses offering the moon and delivering mud. I live in an area of Arizona that is currently under attack by housing developers who are offering riduculous prices for farm land, making huge proifts, and encouraging city and county officials to believe that commutes of 70 to 100 miles is prefectly acceptable for future residents so that no land is set aside in county development planning for the next 10 years for industrial or agricultural growth. I am trying to work to encourage local residents to refuse to sell farm land to developers, but rather to turn it from cotton and hay to other agricultural products that can be grown organically to renew the land, and open up the local markets for their products. I would also like to get people to demand that new housing be built with greywater systems, personal wind or solar power systems with grid tie-in as the back-up, and the use of alternative building materials such as strawbale to reduce heating and cooling requirements.

The reason I am trying to do this? I beleive that if small communities such as those in my county start setting a line that will not be crossed, start setting living examples of what can be done, and insist that the developers meet the standards set by the communities residents rather than setting their own rules which are forced on residents, we can maybe begin to make a shift towards the sanity that Washington has thrown out the window. If small communities concentrate on the development of economic bases that meet the needs of the communities, such as "green" industries that provide jobs close by, agricultural development that is more organic and healthy, and central retail areas that use alternative building and energy resources,then these communities can establish viable economic models that can be used to sustain arguments in legislative hearings to change rules and policies.

I agree with Mr. Kunstler that the affects of our dependence on oil will begin to be felt within the next three years. Not only will the oil related collapse be prolonged, but coupled with the financial disaster looming with the withdrawl of "baby boomer" investments from the financial markets within the next 12 years, the collapse of our economy and the world's economy will lead to a depression unlike anything we have seen in history. Mr. Kunstler presents a very pessimistic picture of the next 10 or more years, and unfortunately, he is probably right. We may not be able to stave off this decline, but if we work at creating some regional models now, we may be able to speed up the recovery. It will not be a paradise, but it can be a healthier, more sane way of living that will benefit everyone.

I have also read with interest several postings by JohnMcC. This gentleman has not only presented some very technical information, but also information that makes me wonder if he is perhaps more in touch with the political decisionmakers than most of us. He has expressed concerns that many people here in Arizona are being forced to look at as we see our population exploding with the influx of California investment money and retirees. I would hope that his information is being used productively to create solutions for the area in which he lives and to help in the desinging of legislation for his commuity that could become part of the national discussion by setting working viable solutions.

Good luck to us all if we do not heed the words of the "Cassandras" as one person posted. In mythology, Cassandra was cursed not with false prophecy, but with the gift of true prophecy which no one would believe. If Mr. Kunstler is a "Cassandra" then maybe we need to pay closer attention and start changing today, because he is speaking the truth.

by djnoll at 5:03 PM on 31 May 2005

Let Our Children Tell Us how they view the future

To djnoll:

I emailed you separately to respond to your welcome comment. You replied and agreed to share a suggestion to GRIST that it open a page for youth to speak out on issues of environment, energy, climate change and most important and paramount, how they view their future in a world of our making.

The following is an invitation to GRIST contributors to join this appeal to the GRIST folk in the hope they can advertise this opportunity to the youth of America and give them an audience of grownups who are failing to give them the opportunities we have so richly enjoyed.

From John McC
To djnoll

Thank you for the kind words.

I found your February comment also and thought it best to reply directly and not on the Grist blog. I must confess, I am skeptical of the real value of blogging. Earlier attempts to start a valid and accountable discussion of America's energy use and options our children may need to select have generated some replies not worth reading. I am reluctant to encourage ranters.

Your February comment deserves a reply and with it a suggestion that might ripple into a substantive Grist discussion others might join because it does not address our egos; it is about and for our children and grandchildren.

You have grandchildren and I hope I will one day. As parents, we share that unwritten responsibility governing our entire lives -- we must live and do for our children until they are able to do for themselves. With that goes the
life list of means and opportunities we want to provide them and coax, nudge, badger and do whatever it takes to get them to utilize the values, smarts, and whatever else we can offer them as tools to become healthy, happy and
loved offspring. Sounds lyrical but all parents have their own ways to express what and how we want to give to our children.

Most of us struggle to just get them into college and out of trouble; a 24-7 task to which too many of us devote less time than we should.

That said, I am beginning to see my teen age son as a victim of my generation and not a benefactor. When I talk with Danko about the world he is rapidly growing into, it is a challenge to hold back the scary details as I see them because children need hope as well. That does not mean he is not aware of the shrinking future out there for him and his class mates. He just doesn't have an avenue to voice how he sees the world around him (the real world) and the impressions he has about the future. Schools do not encourage students to
go outside of the test-track and when he gets together with his buddies, they want to do what I did, play sports and more sports.

Here is a thought: invite GRIST to open a young people page and encourage youth to describe to us how they see the path we are leading them down.

I want to end this note here because anything else I can say would be redundant.

If you think this is a worthy proposal, we could post a shared comment and see what is the response.

Peace,

John McC

This is from DJNoll

I agree with you that our children should have a voice in how we continue to move forward on this planet of ours. I believe that many of our children have lost hope for a better world, and until they have a voice again, and we listen, there will be not renewal of the environmental movement. Perhaps renewal is the wrong word - I should say regeneration or re-energization. Our children do need to be invited to the table and I think your idea of a young people's page is fantastic. Our children have amazing imaginations that can generate ideas so fast that it is absolutely amazing what they may be able to see as ways to improve the future. I will happily join you in making such a suggestion to GRIST. If you wish, please attach this e-mail to GRIST, and submit it as a suggestion that is supported by other GRIST readers.

May we all find Peace in the Beauty that surrounds us, DJNoll

by johnmcc793 at 7:56 AM on 02 Jun 2005
[ Parent ]

The comments of Grist users reflect the opinions of those individuals only, and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoints of Grist, its staff, its board members, their psychotherapists, or their aestheticians. Got it?