JHK discusses his newly published nonfiction book Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation, (Altantic Monthly Press, 2012). Kunstler considers Magic to be an update on his 2005 book “The Long Emergency.” He says it was time to issue a reality testing report from reality central.
James Howard Kunstler and Duncan Crary record a podcast before a live student audience at Union College, in Schenectady, N.Y. As part of a Humanities Super Seminar on liberal arts and activism, the students read The KunstlerCast book. During the podcast Jim and Duncan riff on college architecture and the Union campus before opening up the discussion to questions from the class. Topics include: the value of a liberal arts education in The Long Emergency, monocultures concentrating poverty in the built environment, the prospects for restoring passenger rail in North America and more. Along the way Jim also delivers a call to millennial students to renounce their student loans.
“The Heirloom,” by Richard Davies, explores a post peak world where a group of Native Americans comes to terms with a dangerous and chaotic world. Guy McPherson, of Nature Bats Last, says, “Ultimately, The Heirloom is a wide-ranging tale about the human experience. It is about life, love, death, honor, and people struggling to make their way in a world not of their choosing.”
Part one of a trilogy, “The Heirloom” is available through Amazon in both paperback and eBook. The second book in the trilogy will be available late Summer 2012. Visit: http://theheirloom.blogspot.com/
Our Overcomplexity and Hyperdependence on Modern Technology
Released: March 22, 2012
JHK and Duncan have a ramble ‘n rant episode on the robitification of our communications landscape, that wasteland of overcomplexity and hyperdependence of modern technology.
ANNOUNCEMENT: The 200th episode of The KunstlerCast is coming up. Call the listener line and share your favorite moment from the kast.
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“The Heirloom,” by Richard Davies, explores a post peak world where a group of Native Americans comes to terms with a dangerous and chaotic world. Guy McPherson, of Nature Bats Last, says, “Ultimately, The Heirloom is a wide-ranging tale about the human experience. It is about life, love, death, honor, and people struggling to make their way in a world not of their choosing.”
Part one of a trilogy, “The Heirloom” is available through Amazon in both paperback and eBook. The second book in the trilogy will be available late Summer 2012. Visit: http://theheirloom.blogspot.com/
James Howard Kunstler speaks by phone with Arthur E. Berman, who is a petroleum geologist and consultant to the energy sector; editorial board member of The Oil Drum; associate editor of the AAPG Bulletin; director of The Association for the Study of Peak Oil. Berman has published more than 100 articles on petroleum geology and technology and has made more than 50 presentations in the last year to professional societies, investment conferences and companies. He speaks to Jim tonight about the history of shale gas “fracking” and a lot of the “magical thinking” surrounding the prospects of America becoming “energy dependent” through fracking.
Join CNU in West Palm Beach, FL this year May 9-12, for the 20th anniversary event of the Congress for the New Urbanism. Confirmed speakers include Richard Florida, Sprawl Repair Manual author Galina Tachieva, retail guru Robert Gibbs, Fighting Traffic author Peter Norton, Peter Calthorpe, Lizz Plater-Zyberk, Jaime Correa, Andres Duany and many more speakers being added every day.
Go to www.cnu20.org and register now to take advantage of early registration rates.
James Howard Kunstler comments on the rising rates of pessimism in the U.S. in response to Capital cronyism, the disappearing American dream, and our own entitled wishful thinking. During the second half of the program he examines some of the cultural and lifestyle changes we may observe in response the 21st century failures in politics, capitalism, technology and religion.
Join CNU in West Palm Beach, FL this year May 9-12, for the 20th anniversary event of the Congress for the New Urbanism. Confirmed speakers include Richard Florida, Sprawl Repair Manual author Galina Tachieva, retail guru Robert Gibbs, Fighting Traffic author Peter Norton, Peter Calthorpe, Lizz Plater-Zyberk, Jaime Correa, Andres Duany and many more speakers being added every day.
Go to www.cnu20.org and register now to take advantage of early registration rates.
JHK discusses the concept of “The Trust Horizon,” which he first came across on one of his favorite blogs, The Automatic Earth blog. As the economy contracts, Americans are gazing at the “Trust Horizon” for big government. On the other hand, more people are forging their own trust networks at a very local level. Topics include: local currencies, bartering, small transport networks, basic local healthcare and permaculture initiatives.
Citizens React to Tragic Death With Calls to Demolish Train Bridge
Released: Jan. 12, 2012
Painting of bridge by JHK
After a tragic death, citizens in the Albany area are clamoring to tear down an old train bridge that is already slated to be re-opened as a bike-hike trail. JHK & Duncan examine this story and explain why we must save historic infrastructure like the bridge in question.
Links:
A long night at work, a sudden fatal slip
A bartender’s walk home on New Year’s Eve ends in a fatal fall from trestle
By STEVE BARNES, Times Union, Monday, January 2, 2012
Gregg Stacy, VP of Brown’s Brewing Co., and Troy author/podcaster Duncan Crary flex their manly vocal stylings to promote The Festival of Manliness this Jan. 22 at Revolution Hall. After wrestling a live sabre-toothed tiger on the airwaves, Gregg and Duncan have a serious talk with Rick Lyke, founder of Pints for Prostates, about the importance of getting regularly screened for prostate cancer. A portion of the proceeds from The Festival of Manliness will benefit Pints for Prostates and their awareness campaign.
JHK discusses his 2012 Annual Forecast. He thinks this may be the year that we discover that shale gas and oil is just another bubble, simply a destination for hot money to make returns in a financial landscape that doesn’t offer many. He also mentions a recent encounter with Noam Chomsky.
Lastly, Jim shares his resolution for the new year
James Howard Kunstler shares his thoughts on the Occupy movement sweeping America. It’s going to be a dark and difficult time ahead for the U.S. and JHK thinks we may be heading into a period of mischief this spring. But he has a lot of faith in the younger generation because they’re not cynical and they truly want to live in a country they’re capable of caring about.
There’s a crazy Christian cult on the rise in the US and JHK believes Americans needs to watch out. The New Apostolic Reformation is a dangerous movement exerting its influence on the American political sphere during a time when this country is so fraught with problems that we are leaving ourselves vulnerable to being pushed around by crazy people like this, Kunstler says. The group — which has connections to presidential candidates Rick Perry and Michele Bachman — not only believes in literal devils but that certain American politicians are afflicted by these demons. More concerning is their belief in dominionism over all aspects of American culture, politics and business. The “apostles” claim to speak directly to God and feel they have a mission to convert all the people of the world (particularly the Jews) to Christianity. Kunstler sees this group, and others like it, becoming more troublesome as The Long Emergency unfolds. He can imagine that the country may find itself in a new Civil War in the years ahead. During the conversation JHK also describes his experiences reporting on religious cults, his own thoughts on religion as an agnostic, and explains how the story of the New Apostolic Reformation may resemble some of the aspects in his fictional World Made By Hand novels. [Main discussion begins: 5:04 mins.]
Severe weather, the financial toll and other effects of global warming
Released: Sept. 8, 2011
James Howard Kunstler and host Duncan Crary are joined in the studio by Jeff Goodell, environmental writer for Rolling Stone magazine and author of How to Cool the Planet and Big Coal. Jeff speaks about global warming and some of the efforts to cool the planet through man-made projects. Some of the questions Goodell addresses include: What do people in other countries think about climate change and about Americans’ attitude toward global warming? Why can’t American scientists overcome the climate change deniers? What has Jeff observed regarding climate change while traveling the world? What does he tell his children about climate change?
JHK updates us on the recent credit downgrading of America as it relates to the unfolding Long Emergency. At the end of the show we play a song based on The Long Emergency by podcast listener Duncan Long.
On today’s episode JHK discusses a recent poll by the National Association of Realtors which found that while many Americans claim they want to be able to walk to stores, restaurants and other urban amenities, they prefer to live in single family detached homes above all else. This seems to be a contradiction, but the arrangement could be possible through New Urbanist planning.
This week’s sponsor is The Congress for the New Urbanism, the nation’s leading advocacy organization dedicated to promoting walkable, mixed-use neighborhood development, sustainable communities and healthier living conditions.
This week’s sponsor is The Congress for the New Urbanism, the nation’s leading advocacy organization dedicated to promoting walkable, mixed-use neighborhood development, sustainable communities and healthier living conditions.
The 2010 U.S. Census figures have led to a newly empowered suburban electorate. But the figures also indicate that several major U.S. cities are increasing in population at their cores. JHK offers some analysis.
This week’s sponsor is The Congress for the New Urbanism, the nation’s leading advocacy organization dedicated to promoting walkable, mixed-use neighborhood development, sustainable communities and healthier living conditions.
James Howard Kunstler believes Americans and their leaders are lying to themselves about our current energy predicament. There is a tremendous body of fantasy about how much energy Americans can harvest from shale gas, shale oil, tar sands, running the American truck fleet on natural gas and other forms of alternative fuel for motoring. There is even one fantasy that an endless supply of abiotic oil is located in the earth’s core. Kunstler runs down the list and gives us the score.
After the recent earthquake and tsunami, James Howard Kunstler believes that Japan may be propelled into a much different society very quickly — one that somewhat resemble his World Made By Hand vision. But JHK thinks that using less fossil fuel and dexomplexifying their society might be a good thing for Japan as it may give them a headstart down the road that other complex societies like the U.S. are heading anyway.
This week’s sponsor is PostPeakLiving.com, offering online courses that prepare you for a post-peak world. Enroll now in the UnCrash Course, Sustainable Post-Peak Livelihoods, Navigating the Coming Chaos, Introduction to Sustainable Gardening or Chickens 101. Find out more at: http://postpeakliving.com.
JHK reacts to the tragic shooting in Arizona. He reflects on the gun ownership debate in the U.S. and his own conflicting thoughts about owning a gun himself. He discusses the power of violent rhetoric in our public discourse and evaluates his own use of strong language. He also muses on the built environment in Tucson, Arizona and what role it might have played in the tragedy.
Note: This episode contains explicit language
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JHK shares his thoughts on the recent U.S. midterm elections, the Tea Party, Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity, and the problems of progressivisim.
James Howard Kunstler joins Duncan by phone from his hotel room in New Orleans. Their conversation moves from Dearborn, Michigan (2:49 – 5:13 mins) to the failings of the airline industry (5:13 – 14:30 mins), to Burlington, Vt. (14:30 – 22:45 mins), to the potential of Thorium, the so-called “green” nuclear energy source (22:45 – 26:50 mins), to the Boomer generation’s parting gift to future generations (26:50 – 40:06 mins).
JHK explains how the current financial problems around the world factor into his vision of The Long Emergency. Kunstler sees these systematic failures of finance as a threat to all of our fundamental economic arrangements, including our ability to live in an orderly society. The President, says JHK, has become “the bank’s bitch” in his continuation of the American campaign to sustain the unsustainable. Rather than more financial innovations based on the notion of getting something for nothing, Kunstler says we need to have an economy in which people invest in productive activities and are rewarded for the value that is created through those productive activities. Society is becoming poor and that’s a huge political problem. JHK foresees a very turbulent autumn, in both finance and politics.
JHK examines the tragic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the fog of incomplete information that surrounds it. Kunstler sees this incident as further proof that the peak oil story is real. Now that the low hanging fruit of our oil resources has been plucked, the paradigms of our car-dependent society are forcing us to drill under difficult conditions that are hard to control. The return of $4 gallons of gasoline is not far around the next corner and the trauma from this event is already provoking strange emotional outbursts and pockets of denial from the public who do not want to get off the path of Happy Motoring. JHK also believes that the escalating and increasing failures of liberal democracy in the U.S. are getting to the point where American people don’t trust the government to be competent anymore. Ecological disasters are amplifying economic disasters, which are feeding a political disaster. In the end, this event may accelerate the process of America rethinking how its living and whether in fact maybe what we’re doing is insane, especially this campaign to sustain the unsustainable which is underway.
Support for the KunstlerCast comes from Post Carbon Institute, the world’s leading think tank dedicated to getting society off fossil fuels fast. PCI is proud to have James Howard Kunstler as a valued advisor–joining Richard Heinberg, Bill McKibben, Majora Carter, Rob Hopkins and 25 other Fellows in leading the transition to a more resilient world. Learn more at http://PostCarbon.org.
As NASA prepares to retire its space shuttle program, James Howard Kunstler takes a few moments to muse on the past, present and future of space exploration. Personally, JHK is glad that our government is cutting funding for space exploration. He’s not sure what the 20th Century fiesta of technology accomplished anyway. On the topic of space colonization, Kunstler says he fears that humans will make the rest of the universe as bad as Hackensack, New Jersey. He also touches upon the issues of resource exploitation, offloading surplus population, and the wishful thinking that lies behind the space exploration narrative.
Support for this program comes from the Congress for the New Urbanism, the nation’s leading forum dedicated to advancing urbanism and promoting alternatives to sprawl. CNU’s 18th annual Congress,”New Urbanism: Prescription for Healthy Places” will be held in Atlanta, May 19 – 22, organized with help from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It will feature 90 plus sessions, tours, and immersive experiences with world’s leading thinkers and builders of good urbanism, and prominent researchers into the health impacts of how places are built, including the CDC’s Dr. Howard Frumkin, co-author of “Urban Sprawl and Public Health.” Register today, at: www.cnu18.org
James Howard Kunstler takes a moment to examine where we’re at as a culture at the end of 2009. JHK shares his thought process leading up to his 2010 Forecast. Topics include healthcare, economics and foreign affairs.
There will be a staged-reading of James Howard Kunstler’s play, “Big Slide” this Jan. 9 at the Multi-use Community Cultural Center in Rochester NY. The playwright will introduce the show, which begins a 7:30 p.m. Admission is pay what you can. For information, visit: http://muccc.org
James Howard Kunstler believes that the consumer credit economy is over and that we are now moving on to the next phase of the U.S. economy. Kunstler provides some historical context on our current global economy and muses on the relationship between over-complexity and diminishing returns, which he believes is the “hallmark of all civilizations that come to grief.
This week’s sponsor is The Stakeholders, Inc., inviting you to attend a Sept. 24 talk in Albany NY by urban theorist Richard Florida, author of “Who’s Your City?”
James Howard Kunstler responds to a listener call about the 10 “high speed” rail corridors the Obama administration is seeking to restore in the U.S. The phrase high-speed rail is a little misleading, though, because what Obama is looking to do with rail in this country is actually just bring it back up to “Bulgarian” standards. These passenger rail upgrades and restorations will service trains that travel around 100 miles per hour, not nearly as fast as the high speed trains in Europe or Japan.
Sponsor: Sponsorship for this podcast comes from the Congress for the New Urbanism, the nation’s leading forum dedicated to advancing urbanism and promoting alternatives to sprawl. CNU’s 17th annual Congress will be in Denver, June 10-14. For information and to register, visit:www.cnu.org.
James Howard Kunstler talks about the recent outbreak of swine flu and the increased attention to modern-day pirates. Several bloggers have noted some similarities between current headlines and the scenario in Kunstler’s novel, World Made By Hand, in which a severe economic downturn is followed by a deadly Mexican flu epidemic. A few years ago, Kunstler took some heat from critics for his chapter in The Long Emergency that addressed the potential threat of Asian pirates in the Pacific Northwest. Now that piracy is in the news, some people are going “hmmmm.” The show closes with a listener call responding to the KunstlerCast about bad behavior and urban policing.
*Note: Jim swears at 20:42, while immitating a pirate’s parrot.
Sponsor: Sponsorship for this podcast comes from the Congress for the New Urbanism, the nation’s leading forum dedicated to advancing urbanism and promoting alternatives to sprawl. CNU’s 17th annual Congress will be in Denver, June 10-14. For information and to register, visit:www.cnu.org.
James Howard Kunstler believes the credit orgy that was the background and basis for our era is over. It will become increasingly harder to lend money into existence and Americans will probably have to pay as they go with what they have. Kunstler explores the historical relationship between credit and the creation of suburbia. But he does not know how our current credit problems will stimulate people to change the physical arrangements of their lives. He assumes, however, that Americans will be dragged kicking and screaming from the happy motoring commuter experience.
A listener caller asks James Howard Kunstler about President-elect Barack Obama’s massive proposed stimulus package, which will probably be used to rebuild America’s highways. Along with the auto industry bailout, Kunstler thinks this major proposed investment in our highway infrastructure may be a last ditch effort to sustain the unsustainable. Americans have invested so much of their wealth and identity into their happy motoring suburban commuter system for daily life that they cannot imagine letting go of it or even substantially reforming it. Kunstler also talks about passenger rail, light rail and streetcars. He also strays into the thickets of futurology to talk about 21 century trans oceanic zeppelins. A listener caller ends the program with his thoughts on efforts to create local currencies, such as the Berkshares in the Berkshire region of Massachusetts.
In this abbreviated edition, James Howard Kunstler shares his New Year’s resolutions for 2009. He also sets some personal goals for finishing the sequel to his post oil novel, World Made by Hand, and gives some details on what that book will be about. For the rest of this short show Duncan answers some listener questions about the podcast.
Every year James Howard Kunstler publishes his annual forecast on his popular blog. For this installment of the KunstlerCast, Jim gives us a sneak preview of some of his predictions for 2009. Topics in this show include: phony baloney money, new economies, home deliveries, oil shortages and price increases. Kunstler also talks about his 1999 predictions and thoughts about Y2K.
James Howard Kunstler shares his feelings about President-elect Barack Obama. For now Jim is hopeful that Mr. Obama can set a good example for decent behavior as he takes the helm of a functionally bankrupt government. In order to reform the systems of daily life that have to be fixed, it’s important that Obama tells the truth to American people. Jim also addresses the high speed rail bond that passed in California. Lastly, a listener in Japan predicts how the Japanese will face The Long Emergency.
The Increasing Irrelevance of our Two Political Parties
Released: Oct. 30, 2008
James Howard Kunstler muses on the increasing irrelevance of the two political parties in America. Neither party seems to be truly facing our energy predicament and the coming obsolescence of suburbia. Yet this is with the complete connivance of the voting public, which is too heavily invested in the status quo.
James Howard Kunstler comments on the Great Bailout of 2008 and how we got into the current financial crisis. As the U.S. manufacturing economy withered away, Americans sought to gain wealth by getting something from nothing through Ponzi scheme investment algorithms. By assuming liability of bad mortgages, Congress may be in position of attempting to prop up the value suburban houses. But Kunstler believes the housing values will continue to go down, no matter what happens. And the truth is that we shouldn’t want that devaluation to stop because we need to reach a point where the median price of a house is equal to the median income of the average America. The true damage may yet to be seen. Kunstler also explains his meme that the GOP is the party that wrecked America.
Can natural gas and electricity replace gasoline and diesel fuel?
Released: Aug. 21, 2008.
This July, oilman T. Boone Pickens told Congress that James Howard Kunstler is worth listening to and that he’s right on about the mistakes we’ve made in America regarding our use of cheap oil. In this program, Kunstler discusses the “Pickens Plan” to use wind energy and natural gas to reduce America’s reliance on foreign oil. Other topics include Shai Agassi’s Better Place plan to make electric cars viable. Kunstler also answers a listener’s question about purchasing a new car.
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JHK discusses his newly published nonfiction book Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation, (Altantic Monthly Press, 2012). Kunstler considers Magic to be an update on his 2005 book “The Long Emergency.” He says it was time to issue a reality testing report from reality central.
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