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Nickelless
Administrator
USA
5580 Posts |
 Posted - 05/02/2008 : 00:48:29
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Author James Kunstler says the Automotive Age is almost history and deconstructs McMansion living
by Mara Der Hovanesian
The suburban landscape has been marred by foreclosures and half-built communities abandoned in the subprime aftermath. But James Howard Kunstler, author of a dozen books, including The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape, thinks there's a bigger threat to those far-flung neighborhoods: the scarcity of oil. As Kunstler sees it, oil wells are running dry and the era of cheap fuel is over. Given the supply constraints, he says the U.S. will have to rethink suburban sprawl, bringing an end to strip malls, big-box stores, and other trappings of the automotive era. Kunstler, 59, predicts a return to towns and cities centered around a retail hub—not unlike his hometown of Saratoga Springs, N.Y. But the shift to this new paradigm, he says, will be painful. (Kunstler could be off the mark; he predicted technological Armageddon after Y2K.) BusinessWeek writer Mara Der Hovanesian spoke with Kunstler about suburbia, which he calls "the greatest misallocation of resources the world has ever known."
Why has suburban life flourished?
The suburbs were largely products of industrialism. We had a huge supply of oil and cheap undeveloped land, and we decided to become a happy, motoring utopia. It had many practical benefits. The trouble is after a while it became a cartoon of country living.
Why is suburbia now threatened?
Cheap oil is what made suburbia possible. But we'll run into problems with spot shortages. As we get into trouble with these supplies, our economy will suffer. Major instabilities in the system will present themselves much sooner than we are led to believe. And by that I mean the way we produce food, the way we conduct commerce, and the way we move around.
When will all that happen?
The rise and fall of oil production is asymmetrical. In other words, it'll be a steeper, rockier tumble down than the steady increase going up. My own sense of things is that we will be in very serious trouble inside of five years.
Won't it help to cut back on gas?
I get people who come up to the podium after a speaking engagement to tell me they've just gotten a Prius, expecting brownie points. It's not that we're driving the wrong cars. It's that we're driving cars of any size, incessantly.
What about biofuels?
We will use all of them, probably. But we will be greatly disappointed by what they can do for us. We certainly aren't going to run Wal-Mart (WMT), Disney World (DIS), and the highway system on any combination of solar, wind, nuclear, ethanol, biodiesel, or used french-fry oil.
Isn't it a bit radical to declare game over for Wal-Mart?
It is part and parcel of the suburban predicament. How long can they maintain their warehouse-on-wheels as the price of motor fuels goes up?
How will the U.S. have to adapt?
Virtually anything organized on a grand scale is liable to fall into trouble—government, finance, corporate enterprise, agribusiness, schools. Our gigantic metroplex cities will prove to be inconsistent with the energy diet of our future. I think our smaller cities and towns will be reactivated. We are going to be a far less affluent society.
Does your lifestyle reflect all this?
I live in a classic Main Street town. I've always had a garden. It certainly doesn't provide for all my needs, but for all of my salad and salsa fresca needs, in season. I'm not a survival nut. I'm not squirreling away wheat berries in plastic tubs in the basement. I don't have an arsenal of firearms. I lead a pretty normal American small-town life. Of course, I'm a self-employed author and don't have to commute to work.
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misteroman
Administrator
USA
2565 Posts |
Posted - 05/04/2008 : 00:22:02
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I think Oil would have to be waaaay over $10 1 gallon to cause that to happen.Figure most I know spend say $75 a week in Gas.If it doubled to $8 they would take less trips here and there and would try to make trips where they would do most things at once.This would cut down their gas consumption.So instead of doubling, maybe they would spend $100-110 a week?That would equal an extra $1,500 a year.Maybe they would wait an extra 6 mos. to buy that new car,Plasma TVetc.Maybe the poor People would have to give up there $100 new sneakers and $75 Hoodies that they all seem to haveI laugh at people at work when they ask me How to make Money and they have on a Wardrobe AT WORK that costs as Much as most of the clothes I owned Combined.(exaggeration but ya get the point)
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Buying CU cents!!!! Paying 1.2 unlimited amounts wanted. Can pick up if near Ohio area. |
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moboman
1000+ Penny Miser Member
USA
2555 Posts |
Posted - 05/04/2008 : 01:27:53
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| Clothes really never have bothered me. I've always thought, so you want me to pay to advertise for you? |
"99% of all lawyers give the rest of them a bad name" 
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Saul Mine
Penny Collector Member
USA
343 Posts |
Posted - 05/04/2008 : 06:50:00
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There are always people who assume that the way things are must be a law of the universe. Suburbs were not created because of cheap gas, they were created because of paper money. Before FHA people bought only as much house as they needed and could pay for. Loans were difficult to get and often required 50% down. People lived any way they had to while they saved for a house. It was common for a family to live in a tent or a shack while they built a house next to it. Some people dug a basement and lived there while they built a house on top of it. In the 50s my family, father, mother, and 7 kids, lived in a two car garage while Dad built a house on the front of the lot.
FHA changed all that. Suddenly anybody could qualify to borrow money for a house, as long as it was nice enough to impress a banker. Suddenly one bedroom houses were unknown, because bankers wouldn't loan on anything less than three bedrooms. Suddenly everybody could seriously expect a large house with all the conveniences. And because everybody knew how much the banks would loan, that is exactly what the price of a house was. And because bankers considered a house near a city to be better than a house in the country, millions of people were forced to move to a city to get jobs, because that is where the money was going around.
The cost of gasoline, adjusted for inflation, has been fairly constant for a whole century, and people have griped about that expense the whole time. When did you ever hear anybody gripe about the cost of housing? They don't gripe, they go bankrupt. And then they don't notice the cost of gasoline because they live under a bridge and don't go anywhere. It is not the cost of gasoline that will kill the suburbs, it is the time bomb written into the mortgage contracts. |
A penny sorted is a penny earned!
Please use tinyurl.com to post links. Long links make posts hard to read. |
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swusc
Penny Hoarding Member
USA
553 Posts |
Posted - 05/05/2008 : 10:35:55
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quote:
Originally posted by Saul Mine
There are always people who assume that the way things are must be a law of the universe. Suburbs were not created because of cheap gas, they were created because of paper money. Before FHA people bought only as much house as they needed and could pay for. Loans were difficult to get and often required 50% down. People lived any way they had to while they saved for a house. It was common for a family to live in a tent or a shack while they built a house next to it. Some people dug a basement and lived there while they built a house on top of it. In the 50s my family, father, mother, and 7 kids, lived in a two car garage while Dad built a house on the front of the lot.
FHA changed all that. Suddenly anybody could qualify to borrow money for a house, as long as it was nice enough to impress a banker. Suddenly one bedroom houses were unknown, because bankers wouldn't loan on anything less than three bedrooms. Suddenly everybody could seriously expect a large house with all the conveniences. And because everybody knew how much the banks would loan, that is exactly what the price of a house was. And because bankers considered a house near a city to be better than a house in the country, millions of people were forced to move to a city to get jobs, because that is where the money was going around.
The cost of gasoline, adjusted for inflation, has been fairly constant for a whole century, and people have griped about that expense the whole time. When did you ever hear anybody gripe about the cost of housing? They don't gripe, they go bankrupt. And then they don't notice the cost of gasoline because they live under a bridge and don't go anywhere. It is not the cost of gasoline that will kill the suburbs, it is the time bomb written into the mortgage contracts.
I agree that something as to give there. The FMV of housing to income ratio has increased greatly. I think there is likely a long term trend of it increasing, but it has gone way to high to fast.
I think most people now want to spend 100% of their income. There is nothing wrong with this. They don't want to build up equity in a home. They want to consume the increase in value. They have every right to do so. The government shouldn't attempt to save them when they hit bottom though. Bad things will happen that weren't thought to happen. If you dont have a safety net, then it will get bad for you. It isn't luck...it is their fault for not having the net there.
I think most here likely have a net. |
`Everybody is ignorant. Only on different subjects.' Will Rogers
"This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the "hidden" confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard." Alan Greenspan, 1966. |
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PennehChaos.
Penny Collector Member
USA
269 Posts |
Posted - 05/06/2008 : 16:41:23
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quote:
Originally posted by Nickelless
How will the U.S. have to adapt?
Virtually anything organized on a grand scale is liable to fall into trouble—government, finance, corporate enterprise, agribusiness, schools.
Hm, so the laws of economy of scale and comparative advantage will be proven false by a fossil fuel shortage? That's, um, an interesting theory... |
Considering Verizon Business service? Perhaps you'd like to consider a nice drain cleaner enema instead? |
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Good-Bye, Cheap Oil. So Long, Suburbia?
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