Rational discussion of Kunstler seems often to founder on overly simplistic views of the suburb and its relationship with the urbs and the rus, the city and the country. Kunstler's undoubtedly dyspeptic analysis is clearly focussed on that subset of the suburban phenomenon that has been dominant since the middle of the last century. His primary critique is intense and in many respects irrefutable: these suburban developments of the last forty years or so generally have generally an almost complete lack of livability sans automobile: take away the car and this particular version of the suburban way of life simply falls apart. I believe few intelligent observers would deny this. On what follows from this observation however critics diverge dramatically.

On the one hand we see the Kunstlerites extend the analysis more or less as follows: continuing the automobile culture indefinitely is going to be extremely difficult and prohibitively expensive (it could even cost us our use of much of the planet); there are excellent modes of development available to us which make the automobile vastly less important in our daily lives; there are immense additional societal positives associated with these alternative development modes; if we make this change of direction early it can be relatively painless; if we procrastinate it will be forced on us by circumstance, probably with great suffering especially to the most vulnerable among us.

On the other hand the anti-Kunstler camp sees the automobile-based development mode either as a wonderful thing that we must strive to preserve or as a bad thing that we are compelled to accept because 'people won't give up their cars'; either way we must  figure out a way to keep the cars running no matter what. Anti-Kunstlerites include a wide range of political extremes, from the 'drill, baby drill' right to the 'science will save us' technophiles on the environmental left.

What both camps can easily ignore in the heat of the argument is that the suburb predates the automobile by many centuries. It has existed, and flourished, for as long as we have had towns and cities. Ancient Athens and classical Rome had suburbs, medieval walled cities had suburbs, eighteenth-century London and Paris had suburbs. Keats retreated to London's leafy Hampstead, Kahlo to Mexico City's Coyoacan for a measure of quasi-rural peace within easy reach of the city's bustling resources. Towns and cities of the modern age with major development that took place shortly before the hegemony of the automobile had some very attractive and livable suburbs indeed: Philadelphia and Chicago are prominent large-scale examples in the US but finer-grained examples in smaller towns and cities can also be found across north america. A common characteristic of the best of these is that they provided excellent resources mostly within walking distance to supply the daily needs of their inhabitants: grocery and hardware stores, cafes and restaurants, parks, schools and libraries. Then of course to supplement these local resources there were public transportation nodes giving access to the commercial and cultural resources of the urban center.

We need not fear the anti-Kunstlerite caricature of horses and carts and peasant hovels in the country, teeming tenements in the city and nothing in between.  Nor do we need to bother ourselves with the 'environmentalists hate cars' straw-man meme. If we seek a rational way forward we can quite simply look to the best of these traditional suburbs to be our models for new development and for updating the old in a vastly less car-dependent future. The new urbanists seek to do this, as did the Garden City movement of a century ago: there's plenty of excellent literature available on how to achieve the suburb's traditional promise of 'the best of both worlds' with just a modicum of research as well as these excellent built examples. It's not a question of blowing them up but of doing them right.

There remains the huge question of what to do with the large tracts of existing development which if we give any credence to to the Kunstler view may be functionally uninhabitable within a few decades. There is a traditional name for extensive residential developments without convenient access to local resources for daily life: we call them slums. Some of these non-place places may prove redeemable with intelligent retrofit; some will not.

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

and what spaceshaper said.  Particularly the part about workable suburbs -- I wonder if the word "towns" is applicable to those?  We live in Evanston, just north of Chicago, one of the original "railroad" suburbs that popped up as rail became cheap enough for a commute into the center of the city.  Downtown Evanston is just as walkable (well, almost) as Manhattan.  Daniel Burnham, the great urban planner and architect of a century ago, moved here.  I'll quote maybe his most famous words:Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood and probably will themselves not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die.

Rural residents will still need cars and so will urbanites who want to visit rural areas.  Work vehicles will still be necessary.

Reducing the number of cars to one third, maybe 100 million and making them plugin hybrids would save maybe 10% of GHG.

Converting work vehicles to plugin hybrid might save another 5%.

Leaving this whole issue a small portion of the change necessary to avert disaster.  jim's stuff is mainly about peak oil and the effect of oil dependency on the economy, not so much on curing the climate.

He was a one note guy on Y2K, now he has one note on energy and climate, peak oil.  Does he even believe in climate change?  I doubt it.  He's an oil guy, he made his mark touting peak oil to help out his oil trading friends.  That's his focus.  His books are pop culture based on peak oil.

Peak oil is mainly a hoax.  Bringing it about would wreck the climate.

Ground source heating/cooling with solar cogeneration could eliminate 36% of GHG.  Distributed renewable smart grid power generation and storage could get rid of another third.  Wind power could get rid of most of the rest, other than GHG related to transportation like air travel and vehicles that can't be electrified.

Even with all this change, which seems to have zero chance of even getting started in the first term, given Obama's choices for his team members, it would take the next 20 years at least.

Peak oil fantasies, like Jim and his fans are so enamored over, are not only irrelevant, but actually divert attention from the real problem and the obvious solutions.

  The possibility of enough change in a short enough time span looks dim if this is the best political action can acheive.

Given the new data on methane release and ice melt, Jim's diversionary fiction of a return to feudal agrarian life due to the onset of peak oil is worse than ludicrous.

We are in a world of hurt, maybe geo-engineering can save us.  It doesn't look like the triumvirate of mass delusional media, corporate corruption, and political pandering are going to do the job.

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

Putting it in gigaton CO2 equivalent is very concise.  What I would like to find now is how many gigatons are coming from methane release from permafrost and undersea methane hydrate ice melt.  That would offer some idea of when methne release will overwhelm possible and probable human reduction efforts.

Jim and his fellow peak oilers ought to start writing about that tippong point.  I agree though, peak oil still gets a lot of attention.  my feeling is that it is a diversion.

Ground source heating/cooling at 36% of GHG is a good solution that politics could focus on next.  Cars not so much, oil is mainly used in transportation.  That will remain a problematic, marginal source of GHG savings until government directed manufacturing policy starts up, if it ever does.

Wind is aready increasing rapidly, and smart grids are starting to be developed.  Solar PV is dropping in price.

Plugin hybrids will appear on the scene in fractional numbers in 2010.  Rail upgrades could take a decade ot so.

The frightening aspect of this looming depression is that the resources for a green stimulus may not be available, even with the ability of the fed to "print" electronic money.

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

Bio-d put up a handy graphic a few months back that claimed 36% of GHG was from building heating and cooling, I am theorizing that solar cogeneration providing the elecvtricity and ground source heating/cooling, could get rid of all of that.  Reality might be less of course.  But only a few percent.  

I guess my point is that we ought to go for the big savings we understand how to get while we are still debating transportation issues, how much car, how much train?  It looks like transportation progress might be very slow, with manufacturing crippled by capital shortage.

Well I never have looked into Jim's life too far Bart.  The peak oil lecture at an oil industry conference part was something I read.  And his wrong headed take on Y2K, which he failed to recant even after the fact.  I did read a chapter or two of "World Made By Hand", it seemed to take an I told you so smirk at the brutal feudal nature of post oil-pocalypse civilization.

Anyway looked him up on wiki, I can see now where he's coming from.

It still strikes me that his peak oil extrapolation closely resembles his Y2K.  I don't sense that he is all that interested in scientific and technological questions.  It is more social commentary, seemingly misinformed by his shallow understanding of the scientific principles behind the headlines.

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

To put it succinctly, Jim's world is like "The Big Valley", and the opposite of "Bonanza".

I prefer "Bonanza".  It's like oil and water.  He is still stuck on oil.  The world has moved on to water, this century's "oil".

He's just not cool.  

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

He is great.  I'll give him that.  I just disagree with his vision, it's very valiable couterpoint.  The best way to clarify your point of view is to deal with a challeging one.

I don't really want to personally insult him.  Actually he is kind of an icon for all bloggers, his musings are actually influential.

He is getting up there with Ariana Huffington.

I wish he would account for the Amish solar energy wave though, hehey.

What does he think of cloud forming human weather control?  As a means of couteracting climate disaster?  There's a good question for him.

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

"The entire American way of life is an artificial life support system that runs on fossil fuels, and it is going to get knocked out as these fuels run low."

But they aren't low and haven't been so far.  Economic shock caused by unregulated, manipulated markets for credit and commodities, combined with auto/oil industry corporate political corruption  caused the Detroit area crisis.

The commeter from Michigan puts it in a frightening perspective.  A region used to high wages and benefits and full emplotment now dying.  GM killed the electric car, that's when the death knell for Michigan was sounded, but no one heard it over the rambling of the idiot warrior president and his cadre of tyrants.  This (from JMG's link) is worth excerpting:

In the last few years, roughly half of my neighborhood has gone up for foreclosure, and I live in a middle class neighborhood. I am still haunted my the memory of a neighbor down the street driving away with her 3 children, tears streaming down her face. She was a victim of the auto layoffs. I learned later that she stated that she had nowhere to go. Just a few months ago, the street was alive with the sound of children playing. Then the streets became silent. Homes that went up for sale are just sitting there, not being sold.

Many others are moving back in with parents, relatives, friends or family. Those who do not have such resources head for the homeless shelters, which, like the soup kitchens here, are bursting at the seams. Many people, when asked, will state with utter despair that they never thought they would have been in this predicament just a few months ago.

This IS the new great depression already, at least in the rust belt.

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