Greg’s Note:
As Americans continue to strive everyday to conserve, it’s hard
not to notice the sweeping changes that still need to be met.
Below is an excerpt from James Howard Kunstler’s talk at this
year’s Agora Financial Investment Symposium. He thinks that the
American suburb is largely to blame for our current situation.
Do you agree? Let us know at
greg@whiskeyandgunpowder.com.
By James Howard Kunstler
Saratoga Springs, New York, U.S.A.
August 18, 2008
The American suburb was the greatest misallocation of resources
in the history of the world… Why? Because it has no future,
because we’re not going to be able to run it…. We don’t have the
resource base to run it.
A lot of the delusions
that are now rampant in the country all focus on the alternative
energy scene. I want to be very clear about this, I am in favor
of alternative energy. I think we’re going to do everything we
possibly can. But the key to understanding alternative energy is
this: First of all, we are going to be disappointed by what it
can do for us, and second, it is not going to change the fact
that we have to make other arrangements for all the important
activities of daily life…
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We’re having an
incoherent conversation about that in our society right now
because of the psychology of previous investment. We’ve invested
so much of our wealth and even our identity in the [existing
American] way of life that we can’t imagine letting go of it…
But the “project of suburbia” is over as a period in our history
and the homebuilders are going down and they will not be coming
back.
We’re in the process now
of losing somewhere between $1.5 and $3 trillion worth of
capital. That capital is going to be lost. It went into a black
hole and things don’t come out of black holes. We’re not going
to have money to lend to people, least of all for mortgages. In
fact, the whole idea of mortgage in America may be similar to
what happened back in France after the Mississippi bubble. They
didn’t even use the word “bank” for 150 years, it was such a
toxic word.
And we are facing a huge
problem with food. All of the systems of our daily life are
going to have to be reformed, whether we like it or not…really.
We’re going to have to grow more of our food closer to home. The
age of the 3,000-mile Caesar salad is over! We don’t know how
much food close to home we are going to have to grow, but at
least more than we do now…probably a lot more… This is going to
change completely our idea of how we value our rural, so-called
undeveloped, land. Right now, we’re still in the frame of mind
where undeveloped means undeveloped for suburban crap. But
that’s going to be over. From now on it’s going to be land that
has needs to be used for agriculture…
But let me step back for
a moment, just to give you an idea of the differences between
suburban development and urbanism. In suburbia, everything is
rigorously and relentlessly segregated from everything else.
You’re not allowed to
live near the shopping mall; the school cannot be anywhere near
the business. Everything is separated and everybody has to get
in the car and go out to the “collector boulevard” then go into
the pod, whether it’s the education pod, the business pod, the
housing pod and we can’t do that anymore. We can’t afford it,
especially from 38 miles outside of Dallas and Minneapolis.
By contrast, traditional
urbanism networks of interconnected streets mix use with people
living close to the schools, the shopping and the business and
it will become self-evident that very soon that that is superior
way to live…
We don’t know what the
city of the future is going to be like, but I believe our large
cities are going to contract substantially, even while they
“densify” at their centers… And one of the things we’re going to
learn again, as the automobile begins to diminish its presence
in our life is how wonderful the composition of the urban block
can be, because the center of it is not going to be for parking…
We are going to re-learn the design and assembly of human
habitat and that too will be a self-organizing process, as we’re
compelled to respond to the circumstances of the global energy
emergency…
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We need a self-image that
informs us that we’re confident and that we are competent and
that we are capable people. And that’s why one of the first
things we have to do is rebuild the railroad systems in America,
because it’s the one thing we can do right away that will have
the greatest impact on our oil use. It will put thousands and
thousands of people to work in all layers and skills. The
infrastructure for running it is lying out there rusting in the
rain and it’s the one project that we can do right away that
will allow us to demonstrate that we can actually do something.
We can do a collective project as a nation, as a society, as a
people that can actually accomplish something important at this
time.
You know…the kids in the
college lectures are always asking me if I can give them hope.
And the one thing that the college students don’t understand is
that they have to become the generators of the hope. They have
to generate it themselves within themselves by demonstrating
that they are capable people who understand the signals reality
is sending to them about the kind of world they are going to be
living in the next 20–30 years…
We’ve got to build a
different world here in North America now and we don’t have any
time to waste. We don’t have time to be crybabies about it. We
don’t have time to point fingers. We have too many things to do
right away. We’ve got to reform the way we produce our food;
we’ve got to change the way we do commerce and trade; we’ve got
to change the way we get from point “A” to point “B,” and we
have to inhabit the landscape differently and, as far as
investors are concerned, we’ve got to find a way to do finance
that’s not based on getting something for nothing, because that
is what has gotten us into this situation we’re in now.
Regards,
James Howard Kunstler
Greg’s Endnote:
James Howard Kunstler’s talk at this year’s Symposium was just
one of many interesting and insightful presentations. If you’d
like to hear James’ complete talk, as well as the complete audio
of everything else you missed at this year’s Symposium, they are
available on CD and MP3 now.
Click here for your copy of the 2008 Agora Financial
Investment Symposium…
