Change You Won't Believe

       The peak oil story has not been nullified by the scramble to unload every asset for cash -- including whomping gobs of oil contracts -- during this desperate season of bank liquidation. The main implication of the peak oil story is that we won't be able to generate the kind of economic growth that defined our way of life for decades because the primary energy resources needed for it will be contracting.
      Just as global oil production peaked, our economy evolved into a morbid hypertrophy, and the chief manifestation of it was the suburban sprawl-building fiesta that has now climaxed in the real estate bust. By the early 21st century, when so much American manufacturing had been swapped out to Asia, there was no business left except sprawl-building -- a manifold tragedy which wrecked the banks that financed it, and left the ordinary people mortgaged to it with ruinous liabilities.
      That economy is now in its death throes. The "normality" it represents to so many Americans is gone and can't be brought back, no matter how wistfully we watch it recede. Even so, it was obviously not good for the country. The terrain of North America has been left scarred by unlovable objects and baleful futureless vistas that, from now on, will shed whatever pecuniary value they once had. It represents the physical counterpart to the financial mess that has been left to the young generations to clean up -- and the job will take a very long time.
     We have to, so to speak, get to place mentally where we can face the kinds of change that are now necessary and unavoidable. We're not there yet. It's not clear whether the elected new national leadership knows just how severe the required changes will really be. Surely the public would be shocked to grasp what's in store. Probably the worst thing we can do now would be to mount a campaign to stay where we are, lost in raptures of happy motoring and blue-light-special shopping.
      The economy we're evolving into will be un-global, necessarily local and regional, and austere. It won't support even our current population. This being the case, the political fallout is also liable to be severe. For one thing, we'll have to put aside our sentimental fantasies about immigration. This is almost impossible to imagine, since that narrative is especially potent among the Democratic Party members who are coming in to run things. A tough immigration policy is exactly the kind of difficult change we have to face. This is no longer the 19th century. The narrative has to change.
     The new narrative has to be about a managed contraction -- and by "managed" I mean a way that does not produce civil violence, starvation, and public health disasters. One of the telltale signs to look for will be whether the Obama administration bandies around the word "growth." If you hear them use it, it will indicate that they don't understand the kind of change we face.
     It is hugely ironic that the US automobile industry is collapsing at this very moment, and the ongoing debate about whether to "rescue" it or not is an obvious kabuki theater exercise because this industry is hopeless. It is headed into bankruptcy with one hundred percent certainty. The only thing in question is whether the news of its death will spoil the Christmas of those who draw a paycheck from it, or those whose hopes for an easy retirement are vested in it. But American political-economy being very Santa Claus oriented for recent generations, the gesture will be made. A single leaky little lifeboat will be lowered and the chiefs of the Big Three will be invited to go for a brief little row, and then they will sink, glug, glug, glug, while the rusty old Titanic of the car industry slides diagonally into the deep behind them, against a sickening greenish-orange sunset backdrop of the morbid economy.
     A key concept of the economy to come is that size matters -- everything organized at the giant scale will suffer dysfunction and failure. Giant companies, giant governments, giant institutions will all get into trouble. This, unfortunately, doesn't bode so well for the Obama team and it is salient reason why they must not mount a campaign to keep things the way they are and support enterprises that have to be let go, including many of the government's own operations. The best thing Mr. Obama can do is act as a wise counselor companion-in-chief to a people who now have to leave a lot behind in order to move forward into a plausible future. He seems well-suited to this task in sensibility and intelligence. The task will surely include a degree of pretense that he is holding some familiar things together and propping up some touchstones of the comfortable life. But the truth is we are all going to the same unfamiliar new territory.
     The economy we're moving into will have to be one of real work, producing real things of value, at a scale consistent with energy resource reality. I'm convinced that farming will come much closer to the center of economic life, as the death of petro-agribusiness makes food production a matter of life and death in America -- as opposed to the disaster of metabolic entertainment it is now. Reorganizing the landscape itself for this finer-scaled new type of farming is a task fraught with political peril (land ownership questions being historically one of the main reasons that societies fall into revolution). The public is completely unprepared for this kind of change. We still think that "the path to success" is based on getting a college degree certifying people for a lifetime of sitting in an office cubicle. This is so far from the approaching reality that it will be eventually viewed as a sick joke -- like those old 1912 lithographs of mega-cities with Zeppelins plying the air between Everest-size skyscrapers.
     The crucial element in the transformation underway will be emotion. The American experience for a few generations has produced an adult population with very childish instincts, increasingly worse each decade. For instance, the desperate power fantasies among the younger tattooed lumpenproles -- those with next-to-zero real economic power -- suggest a certain unappetizing playing-out of resource competition when the supply of Cheez Doodles and Pepsi starts to dwindle. But even the heretofore gainfully employed middle classes are pretty lost in fantasies at least of comfort an convenience. For years now, I have wondered how their sense of grievance and resentment will be expressed when the supermarket shelves run bare and the cardboard signs get taped over the local gas pump and the cable TV gets cut off for non-payment. You wonder, to put it bluntly, how far gone we really are.
____________________________________
My new novel of the post-oil future, World Made By Hand, is available at all booksellers. 

Comments

[upstatebob]

My main point of wonderment is how the current mindset of entitlement will play out.
Everyone has this kind of disney/fanasyland sense that "they" or somebody will come along to save the day. -that we, as a good "christian country" cannot possibly lose. A lot of folks
were relieved of that impression back in the 30s. Giving all the little kiddies new laptops
won't help. Learning to grow potatoes will.

[GothikOrk]

"We still think that "the path to success" is based on getting a college degree certifying people for a lifetime of sitting in an office cubicle."

I'm sorry I ever wasted so much of my life in college. Worst mistake of my life. :( I hope I live to see the abolishment of college as we know it today. It is a hopelessly useless waste of time, effort, money and talent and will be glad to see it go. Too bad it will happen too late for me.

[Gobe]

I hope you're wrong Jim. I plan on being a multimillionaire with my investment in CTL FT technology.

[The Mule]

Commerce will reorganize itself, as Kunstler predicts, around the small local family-owned retailer as the large big box chains all, one by one, declare bankruptcy. Watch what happens in the first quarter of the new year as all the stores that didn't "make it" during this Christmas season line up for Chapter 11/13.

[Frank Gifford]

Maybe the kind of change we are about to see is really only handled by the passing of the older generation (baby boomers, of whom I belong:). It seems humans have this way of taking our experience and projecting it forward in a linear kind of way to create a certainty of opinion in how the world will be. Reading the novels of Wendell Berry about the fictional characters of Port Arthur Kentucky made me realize that only a few generations ago, Americans were industrious and frugal. Madison Avenue is largely responsible for what we have become:acquisitive and pleasure seeking. The other unfortunate characteristics we can attribute to cultural collapse. Humans are really social beings who function more by cooperation than competition. Without the twenty to thirty energy slaves of fossil fuel available to each of us, perhaps that paradigm will reestablish itself. While it does seem likely that things may get real ugly for some time, this is not a certainty. Many are working to establish new paradigms of living. In diversity lies resilience. Our project is EntropyPawsed, http://entropypawsed.org

[Jynx]

Jim, thanks for mentioning the population issue. Although you were talking only about America and immigration (in which I agree with your stance). Humane population stabilization needs to be stressed the world over if we are to have any chance of managing the coming energy transformation and have any hope of dealing with climate change and other environmental problems.

[gitupoffyourass]

Frank,

I have looked at your website and for the life of me, can't figure out what you are trying to promote. Everybody can't live out in the boonies as hunter-gatherers. The fact of the mater is, if we are to save any parts of 'civilization' humans will have to adopt high-density living arrangements based around available resources. People lived in cities long before the industrial revolution.

[Hokey Pokey]

Nice to see someone finally bring up Immigration as a BIG ISSUE.

The power elite have always used the immigration "faucet" to depress the wages of Americans by simply letting in waves of immigrants who will work for less and have tons of kids who by their shear numbers will also help depress wages even further.

This will not be an option during the coming Greater Depression.

In fact it will be a lethal issue on the job front.

I imagine some of the millions of unemployed auto related job seekers will react violently towards any new "open the faucet - turn on the tap" immigration policies.

America isn't going to need anybody's "tired poor huddled masses", we will have Plenty right here.

Immigration is going to get very nasty: detention camps, xenophobia, nazi-like stuff, despite or even because of having a black president.

Race issues and immigration are almost one and the same.

Also, immigration is not just cutting into blue collar jobs, computer programming and high tech immigrants can help finish off the middle classes' wage 'dreams' and unrealistic career aspirations.

It's not just a threat to the lower end of the job scale, even doctors can be replaced at lower cost by immigration.

It will be interesting to say the least.

[Zack S]

Perhaps Detroit is what the future will look like. Whenever I drive though it I think that this is how things would look long after an atomic war.
On the other hand there are at least 40 miles of vacant land in it. Some urban planners have been speculating that it could be used for farming. Now if John Deere would just come out with a bullet proof tractor……

Be sure and read the whole article. Below is an excerpt.
http://www.freep.com/article/20081215/NEWS01/812150342

Acres of barren blocks offer chance to reinvent Detroit

Detroit's thinning population is vividly -- some would say disturbingly -- illustrated in a new map that is creating a buzz in local planning circles
The map shows how to tuck the land mass of Manhattan (23 square miles), San Francisco (47 square miles) and Boston (48 square miles) -- and their combined populations of nearly 3 million people -- into Detroit. All three urban areas fit snugly within Detroit's 139 square miles with room to spare.

Detroit, where the population peaked at 2 million in the early 1950s, is home to about 900,000 today and is still losing people. The depopulation and demolition of abandoned properties has left the city dotted with thousands of vacant parcels, ranging from single home lots to open fields of many acres.

The map is the handiwork of Dan Pitera, a professor of architecture at University of Detroit Mercy. He says he created it as a simple and dramatic illustration of how underpopulated Detroit has become.
To see for yourself: Use Google Earth or a similar computer program to fly over the city and see how many vacant parcels you can find. Pitera estimates that all that empty land adds up to about 40 square miles -- nearly the land mass of San Francisco.
His conclusion: Hopes and plans to repopulate the city and to redevelop all the city's vacant land, are unrealistic, at least for another generation. Some redevelopment deals will succeed, but realistic Detroiters should seize the opportunity to become a leaner, greener city for the 21st Century.

[steve]

Obama was not elected to tell Americans the truth and he will not disappoint. Look what happened to Jimmy Carter when he tried that in 1979. Obama is not about to make that political mistake. Listen to him now - it's all about "fixing" the problem and restoring growth.
And there is no way the Democratic Party is going to restrict illegal immigration; or the Republicans either. They both see the burgeoning latino population as their ticket to future dominance. We'd better hope the hispanics are better tuned to the brave new world than anglos - and they just might be.

[envirosponsible]

Cuba was relient on Russia for fossil fuel inputs and food, and when Russia's economy collapsed Cuba had to restructure overnight.

The average person lost 30 pounds and ate meat only once a week. Growing produce and raising livestock became the largest employment sector.

Now, 50% of all the food consumed in Havana is grown in Havana. And the change swept across the entire country. Most Cubans are involved in sustainable, organic farming.

America has a chance of restructuring, though population density is definitely an issue.

We'll be fine here in Canada. That is unless/until the North American Union is formed.

[RUMCSwan]

Interesting article, as usual Mr. Kunstler.

Agree with you about the ""We still think that "the path to success" is based on getting a college degree certifying people for a lifetime of sitting in an office cubicle," which is why I decided the best education I could have given myself was to spend 14 years travelling around the world with a backpack. As for current education, I am a big supporter of home schooling, even setup a eco home schoolers, introductory website (eco-home-schoolers.co.nr), for those exploring the ideas and concepts.

As for population policy and raising the topic of how and why people are addicted to their cultural hateful procreation slave and cattel breeding beliefs; well, until the 'consumers' decided they want to become 'citizens' and adopt responsibilities in accordance with their 'rights', I imagine they shall continue to vote for politicians who enable them to avoid addressing the root causes beliefs creating the problems, and just let the consumers sit with the end problems of the problems their unexamined beliefs helped to co-create.

Lord knows my beliefs (and the only thing I consider worthy of being called a 'belief' is one which I am happy to consciously with intention take a bullet for; anything else is just an idea, not a belief) on encouraging dialogue of a real go**am change we can believe in Parenting Test (interesting quite a while before 'change we can believe in' became an Obama four letter word), ain't very high on many people's discussion lists; although not one the men with whom I practiced it, have ever called back to complain that I made it as a requirement for them to test their committment to 'sowing their seed' via my body. So, I guess they agreed -- in hindsight -- it was a good idea?

And finally, when it comes to your views on emotions! I agree. My personal perspective -- from my travels, one community that totally, and I mean totally changed my life, in so many, many incredible ways -- anyone interested in growing their emotional repertoire, may find some very interesting perspectives from Brad Blanton and the Radical Honesty Community, particulary from Radical Honesty About Anger & Forgiveness: Radical Liberation from Anger and Radical Forgiveness as An Instrument of Creation.

If the concept interests you, and a few friends, I can guarantee you, those will be stronger, more intimate, real and sincere relationships, than you have ever thought possible to have.

Lara

[Spyware]

Here's something from today's Guardian (UK) in the comments section regarding rail traffic here in Britain, i.e the rebuilding of the West Coast line. Should gladden Jim Kunstler's heart:

Plataea:

15 Dec 08, 2:11pm (about 1 hour ago)
This has been an extraordinarily complex project to rebuild Europe's busiest mixed-use railway,"

The UK has decided to follow the above strategy which makes things just that bit more complex (faster moving passenger traffic mixed with slower moving freight). Our continental cousins are trying to de-mix such traffic. Still the UK clearly knows something the rest don't.

Did a report for a company recently on European Rail. The report covered most Euro countries sadly the Uk was an annex due to its lack of any credible long term investment plan. Funnily enough Air France is now moving into operating high speed trains - you see the new Euro high speed lines will have such an impact on its regional ari traffic that it is going to progressively can these services in favour of rail. Something similar is happening in Spain, Germany, Italy .... Still as I observed, clearly the Uk knows something about rail that the rest of Europe does not (snigger). Oh yes I forgot - UK holds the record for the most expensive rail in Europe. Well done chaps at least you are first in something eh what?

[Spyware]

Second thoughts:re, my post on the Guardian article-anyone seeing any kind of good sense in Jim's article should read the current on-line Guardina feature. Nearly every article endorses Jim's p.o.v..

[ThomasJMcVeigh]

Links for JMCSwan (December 15, 2008 at 10:39 AM) post did not come through:

Eco-Home Schoolers: http://eco-home-schoolers.co.nr

The Unwash your Brain Six Pack Curse in Practicing Radical Honesty about Surviving Economic, Goverment & Ego Collapse, by Black Pope of Lebed Dofenism
http://black-pope.co.nr/

JMCSwan
http://sqswans-prh.blogspot.com/

[SpaceElevator]

Jim, you have been consistently correct in your predictions. No one in the MSM comes even close. My family and I are buying 7 acres near town, and plan on growing hops, asparagus, and yams. Bye bye development and HOA. Hello big bike paths when the inter-states highways run out of motor vehicle traffic.
PS: thanks for my new word for the day, lumpenproles

[overeasy]

The hardest thing for American's to imagine is that life will be different tomorrow. Most of the adult population can't even get their heads around the fact that people in France or Spain or Norway live differently. This is an essential problem, and these people will react strongly. "How can this be happening?"

However, their children/friends won't fare much better, having been swaddled in comfort and computer-generated fantasy from the moment they caught draw breath on their own. "Oh, little Jason loves that DVD. He's watched it 489 times!"

As to the built-environment? You gotta love entropy! Most of the worthless shit that has marred the landscape will, out of necessity, slowly rot and return to the dirt....

My hope in all this is that the small-towns and smallish cities, so many of which are sitting fallow, with lots of strong, handsome 19th century buildings, will once again be the focal point of life...and the center of their communities...

Ron

[dale]

Nudge,
I think you took the wrong lesson from the example. While your point on the evolution of a chop saw is a good one, i.e.: A chop saw is a device manipulated by a person, and hence would benefit from generations of feedback to the production process by the end users, that is certainly not the case with highly passive gear such as a wind turbine or a solar panel. No such feedback in the production of this technology by a theoretical end user would be very beneficial. Such technology would be much more easily designed and refined with the benefit by computer testing and modeling. That is not to say that they wouldn't get better with practical experience, just that the degree of benefit would be relatively small, both in historical terms and in relation to my example of the chop saw.

To some extent this is all rather academic. I think your point was that we 'don't have time' given the long development lead times on the advanced energy production equipment needed when PO is evident, and my reply was to point out that this is not necessarily so. The required lead time in product development has been dramatically reduced due to the advances in computer assisted design and manufacturing, and that your point characteristically was overstated.

[FARfetched]

Yes, JHK, peak oil has not been nullified by anything — geological phenomena below ground care nothing for economics or sociology on the surface. However, to the people on the surface, peak oil is not an issue at the moment. The issue has always been a matter of whether the oil supply is/was enough to meet demand; at the moment, demand has dropped so far that not even artificial supply reductions (not to mention distributors stocking up at a time they usually are depleting) have been enough to stem the freefall in prices.

On the other hand, this provides "us" with a golden opportunity to set up the managed contraction you describe. A lot of correspondents are fixated on the meme that fossil fuels are required to (ahem) fuel the transition to more nearly sustainable energy sources — well, right now we have the same amount of oil and fewer people using it. Might as well invest that "excess" supply into something that will reduce our need for it. But at the same time, I wouldn't get hung up on the word "growth" because Obama might assign a different meaning to a comfortable word. Wingnuts have often used the word "crime" to stand in for "black people" to oppose expansion of public transportation, for example. Wary suburbanites latched onto the surface word, kind of knowing its underlying meaning. So Obama might use "growth" to mean growth in character, in independence from fossil fuel, or other stand-ins. People will latch onto the comfortable old word while subconsciously realizing that it's not *economic* growth.

Outside of a few die-hards, though, I'm not sure you need worry much about how people will react. How many cubicle dwellers would say they love their work? I'm guessing very few. There's a lot of resentment and unrest out here in Cubeistan, and people are playing the game right now because they can't imagine any other. But once the TV is turned off for good, people's imaginations might start working again… but at worst, I think most people (from the 'hoods to the cubes) would jump at the chance to work on something *meaningful*.

Meanwhile, in the FAR Future, Episode #64 is up: http://is.gd/bMrg

The junta has ceased to provide meaning, and summer's getting too hot for them.

P.S. Good point on immigration. I suggest we redirect all immigrants to cultural and intellectual wastelands like Oklahoma, Wyoming, Utah, and Tennessee. They can't make something worse than what's already there.

[dale]

Steve,
If the stories I hear are accurate there will not likely be much of a need to restrict immigration. The wave is already is rapid decline. It's easier to be poor in Mexico than it is in Los Angeles after all. As usual, by the time the government gets around to fighting a problem, it's no longer a problem.

Hokey Pokey says”
“It's not just a threat to the lower end of the job scale, even doctors can be replaced at lower cost by immigration.”
I wouldn't underestimate the impact of the AMA on that idea, that is “it ain't gonna happen”.

JHK,
Back when I was in high school I opted out of the “college prep” program and started taking a few shop classes, wood, auto and metal. As a result I can still repair a 70's era car (good luck with these new ones) weld, and build most things out of wood. Don't get me wrong, I'm no natural, “good hands” like good brains are born not learned, and I'm definitely average in that respect. Nonetheless, I've never regretted those shop class substitutes for Physics or whatever, and it didn't hurt my chances in college either. For those of you with kids out there, I recommend it.

[FARfetched]

Zack, I had a friend recently visit Detroit. He's working on a photo-travelogue of what he found there; I'll post a link when he starts putting them on his blog.

I've been hearing about urban gardens in Detroit; I hope he gets some shots of that.

[Kris]

I have been guilty of stereotyping swaths of demographics. Such as: the Boomers feel entitled and are reyling on technology to save us; and the younger set is heart-hardened by violent video games.

Upon more intimate examination, chatting one-on-one with representatives of many ages and financial abilities, I can say that I have been enlightened.

I know some sensitive youngins who are peak-everything aware and planning their futures with this in mind.

I know some conscious Boomers (even here in McMansion-ville), unsure of the next step to take.

I know some 60-somethings who participate in a CSA and are beginning to acknowledge our fate.

Of course, there are many spoiled ones (of all ages) with elitist attitudes in denial. I truly fear the point when reality collides with their pretend worlds. Things will get scary.

I wish, wish, wish that we could stop the charade of manicured lawns and whitened teeth. It's all so fake. We have so much work to do, but we are still busy attempting to impress each other. I am looking forward to the day when it's acceptable to show some dirt under our fingernails.

There is an ominous feeling in the stores this season. Do you feel it? It's like people are going through the motions because of gift-giving expectations. When will the population feel sheepish purchasing junk food in front of someone buying only a loaf of bread and a can of peas?

Do you get distracted by the masquerade that everything's fine--everything's the same as always? This is a challenge for me. I know I must busy myself, but it's easy to get nonchalant. Anyway, we must stay focused even in the midst of those in denial. Protect ourselves and plan like crazy for our families' futures.

Perhaps we peakniks aren't so alone after all. The future is recognized by some whom one would never expect to "get it."

Now that I've written this novel I must get back to the task of existence.

Kris
working hard at www.sccworlds.com

[Ahmad]

I once sent Kunstler an e-mail demanding him the basis of his support to Obama and the democratic party, because everything that he writes about(including from now on immigration policy) resonates with the Ron Paul agenda. He side-stepped the question with a deprecating reference to Paul and the republican-libertarian manifesto...Small government, end to this Ponzi Wall Street Finance led by the FED, localism, small military, sound money, no to bail-outs (It's really hard to establish if it is Paul's or Kunstler's agenda, they have got so much in common)...One would say that Kunstler is Paul's alter ego...but then perhaps liberal left political correctness demands complete negation of anything coming from Paul...even if it's fundamentally and morally sound and justified...

[dale]

Doom, agreeing with poster Tanguy who said:

“Do your Goddamn homework before claiming that there is plenty of oil, that wind will save the day or that conservation can do the trick.
Just spend an hour on the subject. Read what the “pessimists” REALLY have to say, just for ONE HOUR of your life (if you’re right, you’ve got plenty of hours to live anyway).
Then we’ll talk. Until then, it’s like PhDs trying to have an educated conversation with pre-schoolers.”
Doom,
I have spend the hour, and then some. Maybe on that website there is a lot of discussion about how PO can occur without consequences, I'm not sure I've seen a lot of that here. The real issues are I think; When will it occur?, Will Oil production flatten for a few years before going down?, and How easily can we adapt? I think there is much more debate, even in main stream sources, around these issues then pretending that PO will NEVER happen. The immediate question is then, are there problems with the thesis of PO predictability? I think the answer is absolutely. I couple of the more obvious issues are:
1.)Hubbert's thesis seems to be predicated on the assumption that oil production is all that it can be at any point in time. Otherwise, if production were voluntarily, or through miscalculation, restrained there would be no reason why production would necessarily be a reflection of reserves or potential future production levels. In other words “production” depends on a number of factors many of which are decision based and human related and would thus seem to be inconsistent with forecasting absolute levels of geological reserves (which of course, are not based on human determinants). Hubbert's use of 'new discoveries' would likely be more predictive, but would also be constrained by the discoverers in question willingness to divulge such information. In short, the information available on production and discovery seems to be subject to many limitations on accuracy.
2.)Almost without fail over the course of the last several decades PO has been predicted as imminent by often respected engineers and geologists. As we know these predictions have almost always been shown to be false and known reserves and production has increased consistently.
3.)I could go on and on of course. The point is even small changes in the expectations of recovery, discovery, and technology can make pretty significant differences in the date at which a constraint in the supply becomes a problem. That says nothing about efforts to deal with demand. The simple facts are the facts are so complex as to make simple predictions, an oversimplification.