Discuss - KunstlerCast #13: Personal Transit & Green Buildings

[Duncan]

KunstlerCast #13: Personal Transit & Green Buildings

James Howard Kunstler takes questions on personal rapid transit, sustainable green buildings and the happy motoring program in America.  He also scolds us for us referring to ourselves as consumers. This show is the result of a special collaboration between The KunstlerCast and Planetizen, the online network for professional planners.

Listen to  KunstlerCast_13.mp3 (7.1 MB)

Read KunstlerCast #13: Personal Transit & Green Buildings - Transcript

[plebow]

Just responding to Mr. Kunstler's negative comments on personal rapid transit.  I have read and enjoyed Mr. Kunstler's work, and as founder and past president of One Less Car, I am very much an advocate for his views.  After hearing him speak, however, I could detect a very common trait among many extremely intelligent thinkers who are insecure and uncomfortable with their grasp of science and technology - they take a defensive dismissive posture.  Such was his take on PRT.  Every phrase he uttered revealed a deep misunderstanding of every aspect of this exciting technology.

For one, the extensive "infrastructure" he snidely dismissed can't be less desirable than the impervious asphalt mess we now have that dumps heavy metals and pollutants into our aquifers and streams.  If he had ever needed to take mass transit for long commutes to work, he would quickly realize just how demeaning the experience is for the users of this lower class mode - the endless hours spent being herded, waiting, transferring. The  clear message is that a bus rider's time is not worth much to begin with.  PRT is truly an egalitarian mode and the only one that has the chance of luring we American lemmings from our tin cages.

Here's a list to ponder regarding PRT:
It would drastically reduce...
Dependence on fossil fuel
greenhouse gases
Noise
Huge infrastructure maintenance costs for asphalt
Environmental impact
Tens of thousands of deaths and injuries on our roads
infrastructure construction costs compared to any other mode
( I could go on)

It would encourage walking since the "last mile" of one's PRT journey is within walking distance as opposed to Light Rail - which serves the upper middle class and those fortunate enough to live and work close to a station. ( Look at DC where the S.E. and PG county (that is "black") is the last to get light rail - if ever)

Please read some of the recent studies on PRT (State of New Jersey Study, Booz-Allen) so we can carry on a lively and informed conversation without dissing a part of the solution merely due to ignorance.

Keep up the good work otherwise!

Regards -
Paul Lebow

[Innocent Byproduct]

Just responding to Mr. Kunstler's negative comments on personal rapid transit.  I have read and enjoyed Mr. Kunstler's work, and as founder and past president of One Less Car, I am very much an advocate for his views.  After hearing him speak, however, I could detect a very common trait among many extremely intelligent thinkers who are insecure and uncomfortable with their grasp of science and technology - they take a defensive dismissive posture.  Such was his take on PRT.  Every phrase he uttered revealed a deep misunderstanding of every aspect of this exciting technology.

I used to believe technology was what built our brilliant and modern society. I used to believe that technology would continue to be our savior. But since I learned about Peak Oil, I have come to a totally different understanding of technology.

Technology --in the truly modern sense of the word with all the Star Trek trappings of endless hope for the future -- is the result of the past 300 years worth of cheap fossil fuel. Take away that cheap fossil fuel --and fail to replace it was a comparable form of equally cheap energy with just as much bang for your buck-- and all our Star Trek aspirations instantly evaporate. And then we are left floundering in the backwaters of that OTHER famous NBC television series, the one starring Michael Landon and Melissa Gilbert. 

I do not believe it is Mr. Kunstler who misunderstands technology. I believe it is the Star Trek hopefuls in our midst who are overlooking the one Achilles Heel shared by all forms of modern technology: no technology (not the modern industrial kind, and CERTAINLY not the Star Trek kind) can be sustained and relied upon by an entire civilization without the massive and extensive and uninterrupted undergirding of cheap and copious and powerful energy reserves. So I do not see this as Mr. Kunstler's being ignorant or failing to grasp one particular example of just one offering being graciously bestowed upon us by the glorious messiah named Technology. Instead I see this as Mr. Kunstler's having a far greater grasp than most economists and world leaders of the one and only similarity that ALL forms of modern technology share: their universal, demonstrable, and easy-to-miss reliance upon vast stores of endless energy.

For one, the extensive "infrastructure" he snidely dismissed can't be less desirable than the impervious asphalt mess we now have that dumps heavy metals and pollutants into our aquifers and streams.  If he had ever needed to take mass transit for long commutes to work, he would quickly realize just how demeaning the experience is for the users of this lower class mode - the endless hours spent being herded, waiting, transferring. The  clear message is that a bus rider's time is not worth much to begin with.  PRT is truly an egalitarian mode and the only one that has the chance of luring we American lemmings from our tin cages.

I think almost every last point you made in this entire paragraph can each qualify as oversimplification, and you also make superlative declarations based on little more than personal opinion and a dash of hope. (In short, it comes off as a sales picth.)

Here's a list to ponder regarding PRT:
It would drastically reduce...
Dependence on fossil fuel
greenhouse gases
Noise
Huge infrastructure maintenance costs for asphalt
Environmental impact
Tens of thousands of deaths and injuries on our roads
infrastructure construction costs compared to any other mode
( I could go on)

You seem to be implying that the infrastructure of PRT will not have huge costs. You seem to be implying that deaths and injuries from PRT will not result.

It would encourage walking since the "last mile" of one's PRT journey is within walking distance as opposed to Light Rail - which serves the upper middle class and those fortunate enough to live and work close to a station. ( Look at DC where the S.E. and PG county (that is "black") is the last to get light rail - if ever)

Light rail was a very cheap mode of transportation that was decimated in this nation by the auto industry. Light rail continues to exist extensively in Europe with much success because they were neither so evil nor so foolish to dismantle that highly efficient system. Here in America, in spite of the efforts by the auto industry, the upper-middle classes ferociously hung onto their local light rails because they knew better. If they are smart enough to demand it reamin intact for their own use, then those who are champions of the lower classes could/should try to get it into the poorer neighborhoods too.

Getting back to my comparison to Europe, I constantly find that Europeans who come to America are dismayed over how poor that public transit is here in this "great nation." Although when they get to Washington DC, they change their mind--DC has a FANTASTIC public transit, but only becaue the Senators and Congressmen who use it every day demand it to be so. And yes, it pretty much only serves THEM and NOT the poor of DC. However, recent months have shown that public transit ridership is up by double-digit percentage points in this nation. Perhaps a renewal of America's public transit is on the horizon, especially for the poor people who need it the most at this time of rampant demand destruction. 

Please read some of the recent studies on PRT (State of New Jersey Study, Booz-Allen) so we can carry on a lively and informed conversation without dissing a part of the solution merely due to ignorance.

Keep up the good work otherwise!

Regards -
Paul Lebow

I can't speak for Mr. Kunstler, I can only hazard a guess as to his position. But I will say that I do know he has said "Amory Lovins is out to lunch. He's my enemy," and that is an exact quote. I was in the audience (an utterly packed-out crowd with standing-room-only, plus a spill-over room) when he came to Vermont last month to speak in Brattleboro at the Marlboro Graduate Center. I took copious notes on everything he said. And that is an exact quote. He is very opposed to throwing resources into the infrastructure of this Logan's Run style of transit.

My own feeling is that it MIGHT work on a limited basis at colleges and university campuses. And even at airports. But on a public scale it won't work at all. My opinion is that half the cars of this PRT system will be vandalized in a matter of months, urinated in, vomited in, get all kinds of food slopped around inside of them, and rendered inoperable. I have a hard enough time trying to find a half-way decent stall in a public restroom, and I'm sure most of us here have had the ill experience of declining to sit in a car at an amusement park ride where the previous rider left behind some heinous mess. So I'm sure many people will have an equally difficult time trying to find a halfway decent PRT vehicle at the queue. And all it takes is for one little kid to get injured or trapped (if even for just ten minutes) inside one and you will have a major lawsuit.  It could take many years of experiment and legal test trials (test lawsuits) before we work out all the kinks in a PRT system, and it STILL might prove to be a disaster full of good intention, but a disater all the same. And we just don't have that kind of time anymore for tweaking and experimenting and trying to bring Star Trek dreams to reality. 

Getting back to Mr. Kunstler, while I'm sure he can speak for himself, I have come to sense that the overall position that he likely takes on this entire matter is that there is a need for us all to QUICKLY return on a society-wide basis to several SIMPLE and PROVEN systems and infrastructures that we already know to work, and which will require LESS energy and LESS mass centralization, and which foster a more organic degree of community interaction. And neither Logan's Run nor Star Trek nor Buck Rogers nor The Jetsons are going to do that for us. Not with such short time, and not with LESS energy.

We are now on the dawn of Peak Oil (ten years ago, we were merely on the eve of Peak Oil, but now the dawn has arrived and we are already in trouble) and there's no more time left to experiment (and fail) with stuff that merely MIGHT work.

[plebow]

I't sad to see how we, as Americans, overlook the devastation that the automobile has caused.  The whole "Geography of Nowhere" we are now experiencing is due entirely to the fact that the myth of freedom and flexibility promised by the automobile gave the false perception that distance no longer mattered.  Living in concentrated cities made no sense since any commute was seen as reasonable.  So "land-use" followed suit and just became a rubber stamp for the endless suburban sprawl demanded by the automobile. 

That one would prefer the extreme high technology of the modern car, traffic controls, and road construction to the utter simplicity of small guided electric vehicle is a reflection of our implicit acceptance of the status quo.  Better the devil you know..... I guess.  And believe me, you have not read a single study on PRT or you wouldn't make the groundless claims you have.

 I don't buy the absolutely cynical and demeaning attitude that we need fear the vomiting and destructive masses:

But on a public scale it won't work at all. My opinion is that half the cars of this PRT system will be vandalized in a matter of months, urinated in, vomited in, get all kinds of food slopped around inside of them, and rendered inoperable. I have a hard enough time trying to find a half-way decent stall in a public restroom, and I'm sure most of us here have had the ill experience of declining to sit in a car at an amusement park ride where the previous rider left behind some heinous mess.

I deal with "can't do" attitudes all the time - its the credo of our culture.  You are falling into their trap of having us fight amongst ourselves instead of taking a multi-faceted approach to our problems.

[Innocent Byproduct]

And believe me, you have not read a single study on PRT or you wouldn't make the groundless claims you have.

I have not read any studies at all on them.

And what claims have I made that are "groundless?"

I don't buy the absolutely cynical and demeaning attitude that we need fear the vomiting and destructive masses:

Why not? 

You are falling into their trap of having us fight amongst ourselves instead of taking a multi-faceted approach to our problems.

I do have a multi-faceted approach. I advocate solar and wind and nuclear. I also advocate no more cars --inlcuding these PRT cars. I advocate public transit like traditional trains and ferries. I think I am very multi-faceted.

[plebow]

And believe me, you have not read a single study on PRT or you wouldn't make the groundless claims you have.

I have not read any studies at all on them.

And what claims have I made that are "groundless?"

I don't buy the absolutely cynical and demeaning attitude that we need fear the vomiting and destructive masses:

Why not? 

You are falling into their trap of having us fight amongst ourselves instead of taking a multi-faceted approach to our problems.

I do have a multi-faceted approach. I advocate solar and wind and nuclear. I also advocate no more cars --inlcuding these PRT cars. I advocate public transit like traditional trains and ferries. I think I am very multi-faceted.

Well....you've kind of made my points for me, again.  You don't read or educate yourself on the facts and cherry pick a few random romantic themes that you "like".  Same approach all Americans seem to take, uninformed opinion - blinders on - my way or the highway.  At least you are one person who volunteer to live next to a nuclear waste stockpile - protected by the "fail-safe" high tech safeguards required.  Right?

[Andrew]

PRT could have some merit on a small scale(think about the turbo lifts in Star Trek), though still streetcars are a far better thing in the long run. If you want use PRT to replace taxis that's a huge expense!

This also reminds me of the stuff that monorail people keep pushing, though for all intensive purposes, monorails have less advantages to regular trains. 

In transit, Andrew

[jarober]

The thing I notice about your discussion of energy is the sheer volume of hand waving.  I think you have a serious misunderstanding of the way things are going to go politically on energy use and lifestyle.  If "peak oil" is a near term thing (and I don't know whether it is - nor do you), then a simple alternative to power generation will become much more attractive very quickly: nuclear.  Right now, plant construction gets bogged down in regulatory nightmares.  At the point where people recognize that they can have heat in the winter, AC in the summer, and power for all of their stuff all year round only if we build nuclear plants, then bam - opposition will drop, and they'll get built.  I don't know how fast battery technology will improve, but the tech already exists to power most people to and from work with a typical commute.  That will require more power generation capability, which will also drive the construction of nuclear power plants.

Mr. Kuntsler seems to believe that people will ignore this possibility (never mind that it's what the rest of the world is doing) and don his preferred hairshirt approach: move to small cities, walk everywhere, and recreate Jefferson's "yeoman farmer" society.  If you seriously believe that will happen, then I have some very attractive swampland I'd like to offer you....

[Duncan]

The thing I notice about your discussion of energy is the sheer volume of hand waving.  I think you have a serious misunderstanding of the way things are going to go politically on energy use and lifestyle.  If "peak oil" is a near term thing (and I don't know whether it is - nor do you), then a simple alternative to power generation will become much more attractive very quickly: nuclear.  Right now, plant construction gets bogged down in regulatory nightmares.  At the point where people recognize that they can have heat in the winter, AC in the summer, and power for all of their stuff all year round only if we build nuclear plants, then bam - opposition will drop, and they'll get built.  I don't know how fast battery technology will improve, but the tech already exists to power most people to and from work with a typical commute.  That will require more power generation capability, which will also drive the construction of nuclear power plants.

Mr. Kuntsler seems to believe that people will ignore this possibility (never mind that it's what the rest of the world is doing) and don his preferred hairshirt approach: move to small cities, walk everywhere, and recreate Jefferson's "yeoman farmer" society.  If you seriously believe that will happen, then I have some very attractive swampland I'd like to offer you....

Hi Jarober, welcome to the discussion. Are you the author of this blog: Speaking of Jerks...?

If so, I'm especially looking forward to your contributions to this discussion. If not, I'm still looking forward to hearing from you!

P.S. JHK does address nuclear power in The Long Emergency. I believe he wrote something along the lines of -- thanks to nuclear power France will be able to keep the lights on longer. (Anyone else remember the specific passage?)

[jarober]

Yes, that's my blog - I don't normally discuss political issues there, as it's a corporately sponsored site.  What I would like to see you address is your basic theory that "peak oil" will bring down society as we know it.  That's unlikely for a whole host of reasons, not least of which is the fact that nuclear power can provide more than enough electricity for us, and we have hundreds of years worth of coal in the US - and, at a high enough price for oil from overseas - it becomes cost effective to create gas from that coal.  It was done by the Germans with 1943 era technology, so it's certainly not a technological reach. 

Basically, I think Mr. Kunstler completely misunderstands how the politics of this whole thing will play out.  People aren't going to adopt lower lifestyles if they don't have to, and - based on my paragraph above - it's clear that they won't have to.  The only thing I see shifting is the attitude towards things like nuclear power.  If you think people are going to bail out of the suburbs for rowhouses in the city, give up their cars and stop using air conditioning, then I think you simply don't understand how things will really go. 

Heck, his theory on how large intl business will dry up and be replaced by a return to late 19th/early 20th century small shops is absurd as well.  Those big cargo container ships you guys think are going to be unsustainable?  If oil based fuel becomes too expensive, then big ships like that will go nuclear - the military proved the feasibility of that 40 years ago.  I expect to see nuclear piles in cargo ships long before I expect to see small corner shops re-appear.  Where I live (Columbia, MD), smaller grocery stores have been going out of business ever since I moved here (and the trend has not slowed - we are seeing huger grocery stores go in all the time, and they are always, always packed).  The only small stores that survive are niche ones, like Trader Joes.

[Innocent Byproduct]

Hi James Robinson,

I agree that nuclear is the way to go. Although I deeply fear its complications. And if we want to go nuclear here in the USA the way France did, we need to continue to have a ready supply of oil for the purpose of maintaing the equipment in those many plants that we soon have to start building.

Meanwhile, Mr. Kunstler's audience has grown widely in the past two years alone, and he is now a non-stop speaker at colleges and univestities across the United States. In the past six months he is constantly being called by major news networks and news publishers for interviews.

He has a message that was dismissed several years back as sheer lunacy, but is now being taken seriously simply because almst every last prediction he has made has come true with few exceptions. Connections that he made on paper which were at first viewed as irrational leaps of logic are proving utterly concrete today.


Basically the whole Peak Oil concept is NOT Mr. Kunstler's idea but one that he has embraced. Perhaps one of the leading Peak Oil activists out there right now is Matt Simmons (he's in Wikipedia if you care to do a search).

Meanwhile, an excellent treatise on how Peak Oil will cause problems for the future survival of the United States can be found in a recet book by Dmitry Orlov called Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Example and American Prospects where he chronicles the collapse of the Soviet Union and then compares their downward spiral to what may soon happen to the USA. And Mr. Kunstler's book with a similar message of impending American collapse is called The Long Emergency.

I do want to point out that when the Soviet Union collapsed, it didn't utterly implode into total oblivion --it did NOT go into full blown Mad Max mode. The Russian Rubel was still used. The Kremlin was still there. The overall framework of government still existed. But the whole nation did have to restructure itself on a significant level. And now, fifteen years later, they are still trying to regain themselves. Once again, Russia never sunk into official Mad Max territory, but it did wind down like a spinning top that lost momentum. And both Mr. Kunstler and Dmitry Orlov are both advocating a similar wind-down shall soon befall the USA. The US Dollar will probably still exist. Washington will still function. But both men are asserting via their respective books that the USA will stumble severely --on the same scale as the Societ Union did-- and then will have to restructure itself on a significant level. 

The civilization-tipping Achiles heel that both men are pointing to in their books is oil. The FSU stubled fifteen years ago when their oil ran out, and the USA will do the same when our oil starts likewise sputtering into unreliability. Oil is held up as the key to both scenarios.

This whole premise has been somewhat dismissed until recently. The US Government Accounting Office released a report in the past three years that affirms that Peak Oil is capable of undermining the US economy. And the Army Corp of Engineers also released a report declaring Peak Oil to be a threat to national security (thus the term "Oil Security" being tossed around lately).

Mr. Kunstler's position is being vindicated by all of this. And so he's making the rounds on all the major news networks.

[Innocent Byproduct]

Just to add to the above post by me:

Among the alleged leap-of-logic connections Mr. Kunstler made years ago which are being proven true today (both in the USA and abroad):

• Cross country trucking will no longer be profitable, and truckers will go on strike and cease their deliveries.
• The business model known as "just in time" shelf stocking --whereby there's no such thing as a stock room anymore, just a display floor full of merchandise which gets replenished every few days by the steady arrival of trucks-- will get utterly derailed and stores everywhere will be left with empty shelves. This will impact big box stores like Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Target, etc. It will also impact fast food chains like McDonald's and Burger King. The truly devastating impact will be upon grocery stores, none of which have more than three days worth of food on the shelves.
• People who live in the far-flung suburbs will no longer be able to afford to drive their crippling commutes to work. They will try to sell their houses and move closer to work, but their houses will not be worth anything anymore because evrybody else already realized that houses that far removed from EVERYTHING are worthless. Because the housing market is heavilly skewed toward favoring the suburbs, this irreversible devaluation of the suburbs will cause an implosion of the US housing market as a whole.
• Yellow school bus fleets will no longer be able to run because the price of diesel will be enough to kill the budgets of most school systems. This will cause schools to resort to drastic measures like going to 4-day schedules, 86-ing ALL extra ciricular activities, and forcing more kids to walk who did not walk before.
• Fire, police and ambulance services will be heavilly impacted by the price of fuel and they will need to cut vehicles from their fleets. This will pose a danger to the safety of many communities.
• Airlines will no longer be able to provide extensive and cheap service like in the past. The whole airline industry will suffer a huge shakedown and the only carriers that will survive will be the ones with limited servcie and that cater to the very rich.

These are just some of the many predictions he made. And they are all coming true. So his message is being vindicated with each passing day. And he gets called all the time by network news now.

[jarober]

Hmm.  If his track record is so impeccable, I invite you to ask him about his Y2K fear mongering.  He was saying the same things about Y2K that he's now saying about oil.  He sees the same disaster, only the root cause has changed.

I predict that 10 years from now, when none of this has come to pass, he'll have found some new reason to fear the future...

[kwellada]

Okay, I think it's time to take the attention off the messenger and direct you to some other literature on the subject:
Matthew Simmons: republican oil investor who has been talking about peak oil for years:
http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/research.aspx?Type=msspeeches

He wrote Twilight in the Desert and is considered one of the foremost experts on the subject. 

Richard Heinberg:
http://www.richardheinberg.com/
Refer to Peak Everything for his latest book on the subject (and related issues).

Y2K and peak oil are unrelated and not very wise to conflate.  Y2K issues big and small were averted because billions were spent to solve it.  It was a technical problem with basic technical solutions.  Peak Oil is a physical reality based on simple geology.   You have a finite substance and at some point, you have used half of it. 

There are many authors who have written about the subject.  I presume you are familiar with them all and can somehow refute all their assertations as well, possibly by referring to something completely unrelated that you disagreed with?

[jarober]

The point you're missing is that whether we are at "peak oil" or not is irrelevant.  We aren't at the end of energy as we know it.  We have enough fuel for thousands of years of nuclear power, enough coal for hundreds of years, and likely enough oil (in things like shale deposits) for hundreds of years.  What we might well be at is the end of easily and cheaply extracted oil.  We aren't at the end of anything else. 

As I said above, if Americans have to choose between a lower lifestyle and nuke plants, they'll go with nuke plants.  In a heartbeat.  If you think otherwise, you have a complete lack of understanding of how politics work in this country.