Added: Aug 20, 2008
From: liamh2
Duration: 6:53
James Howard Kunstler, author and civic gadfly, shares his views on Main St. America. Using slides, he spotlights the flaws in the architecture of some buildings, placing the blame on the regulations which don't allow for any "standards of excellence." Kunstler also warns that the national economy can't run forever on cheap oil and that the country should prepare to downscale.
Channel: News
Tags: baltimore cities college economy howard hughes james kunstler loyola oil william
Rating: 4.75 (28 ratings) Views: 9035' favoriteCount='35 Comments: 24
Mincan2 Says:
Aug 20, 2008 - hear hear
timwmartin Says:
Aug 20, 2008 - Just try telling the bitches who live in Livonia and do all of their shopping at Wall-Mart that their way of life has no future. They'll think your an idiot.
PKM42 Says:
Aug 20, 2008 - But what will replace it?I agree that destruction maybe necessary to break the habits.
malvarco Says:
Aug 20, 2008 - Jim Howard Kunstler is a great social critic. Behind all his witty and funny remarks there's a lot of strong basis in acknowledging the difficulties in the face of an energy scarce future.
goldsak Says:
Aug 20, 2008 - What is that supposed to mean? What kind of base do you think there would be to move on from if our '10 000 year old civilisation' is 'destroyed'? Certainly not much of an intellectual platform to make any critques. The 'matter' wont be an issue any more. We will be gone.
mornashowsmommam Says:
Aug 20, 2008 - Get a hot date at > WEBFLINGTODAY . COM <
alanhowitzer Says:
Aug 20, 2008 - Won't we be dead? There will be no historians left.
malvarco Says:
Aug 20, 2008 - The Middle Ages were a result of energy scarcity. One should study the fall of the Roman Empire and the medieval era to get an idea of where we are heading on to.Jim Kunstler is great. He doesn't give solutions and he doesn't have to. He's just stating the facts of reality. He's right when he says it's one's responsability to know how to deal with this new reality.
gtar100 Says:
Aug 20, 2008 - Part of the problem, too, with the dark ages was also a scarcity of knowledge. A dark religion was in control and scientific inquiry was demonized. It may make a difference in this day and age because our science has been developed much further than 2000 years ago.
CrazyHorseInvincible Says:
Aug 20, 2008 - Religion is poised to make a huge comeback. Ask yourself what's easier, taking responsibility for your actions and working hard to find a solution to the crisis, or getting on your knees and praying?
clumma Says:
Aug 20, 2008 - A bit anachronistic. Science hadn't been invented yet. Literacy had to come first. The Middle ages were a result of literacy scarcity. Language is a powerful tool that we take for granted.
jjbrouwer Says:
Aug 20, 2008 - Lulz. Scientific inquiry was invented during that "dark" time and by that "dark" religion. "Science" did not exist 2000 years ago.Read a book nikra, read a mofo book.
matchbox555 Says:
Aug 20, 2008 - Kunstler is totally full of shit.
littleStomata Says:
Aug 20, 2008 - Great message 'be your own generator of hope...'
Vice81 Says:
Aug 20, 2008 - Let decentralized creativity create it. You create and find intercourse with fellow creators
soylentgreenb Says:
Aug 20, 2008 - Portable power is the hard problem. Electricity is easy, there's always nuclear; fairly cheap and enough fuel for thousands of years into the future. Long distance trucking may be going the way of the dodo, but ships and rail are very efficient and amenable to electrification.
BubbFromGEI Says:
Aug 20, 2008 - We need to MANAGE oil demand destruction.Think CarFree. Invest CarFree. Get CarFree.And New Urbanism provides a way of improving our living, while moving towards CarFree.GreenEnergyInvestors dotcom is a place to build understanding, and explore the concepts
tabrizicracker Says:
Aug 20, 2008 - He's right, when I went to visit the home country of my childhood nanny, we stayed in a luxury hotel. When we faced a citywide blackout during the hottest part of the day, I was forced to open the window for air and realized that there wasn't a lot separating the rich jerks in the hotel from the animals and multitudes crowded in the stinking humid street below! What if this was a daily fact of life in our own country? Also I love this presentation, ended on a positive hopeful note.
gareball Says:
Aug 20, 2008 - Well, that settles it then. Thanks so much for your griping commentary.
matchbox555 Says:
Aug 20, 2008 - he should be called cunts-ler
TombKaios Says:
Aug 20, 2008 - I hope the Deathless Gods make a comeback.He makes a Religious point in the Old South as Evangecal Christianity and Neo-Feudalism, in the latter section of his book "The Long Emergency."
SlaughterMcKill Says:
Aug 20, 2008 - Kunstler's an interesting commentator, focusing on the fact that we need to adapt ahead of time to the aftermath of events that are inevitable instead of placing hope in pie-in-the-sky pipe dreams designed to support an increasingly impractical civilization model.
FunnyDigestion Says:
Aug 20, 2008 - Fer rill.Good comment, btw.JHK's comments to the college kids were very wise too.
Vice81 Says:
Aug 20, 2008 - Kunstler while he gives a great analysis on whats to come, ultimately lacks a solid critique of civilization and modernity to understand the root cause of these problems. The whole idea of smaller scale local capitalism and new urbanism(same as the old one) is not going to cut it. This 10 000 year old experiment of ours called civilization must be destroyed to trully get to the heart of the matter.