Kunstlercast/Small towns

I've been listening to James Howard Kunstler's podcast for a few weeks now, and it only occurred to me just now, sitting here with insomnia, that hey, I haven't even let CC blog readers know about it! Some of the older Kunstlercasts have transcripts up. Here, for example, is JHK on why towns and small cities will be better positioned in the post-peak oil era:

These places are coming back. One of the reasons that they will, is that in the future we’re going to have to have human urban habitats that have a meaningful relationship with productive ag-land outside of the city that’s not 3, 000 miles away. We’re going to have to grow a certain amount of our own food closer to home. In short, what had either already become suburbs or was slated to become more suburbs, that whole relationship is going to come to an end.

I happen to believe that the suburban project in the larger sense is coming to an end. The collapse of the housing bubble is viewed by a lot of people as just another part of a down cycle, in an endless set of repeating cycles. But I think in fact this is the end of all those cycles, and we’re simply not going to be doing it anymore.

I've been thinking lately, as regular readers know, about whether it's time to make serious plans to relocate to a more rural place, by which I mean a place that's much closer to where you can grow food. Last night I was at a social event among a conservative Republican crowd, and met an investor. He said he focuses on oil. I asked him, with a bit of trepidation, what he made of peak oil.

"Oh, it's real," he said, not missing a beat. "I saw it coming years ago. The scary thing is Exxon doesn't believe in it." And then the investor explained why he'd come to believe that oil had peaked.

He cautioned, though, that people shouldn't panic about this. "The transition will take decades," he said -- meaning the transition from our current economy and way of life, to whatever follows in a post-peak oil era (Kunstler's "Long Emergency"). I get that, and appreciate the point. It's not going to collapse overnight, Deo gratias.

Still, one wonders what one should do to prepare for the long run? If you live in Phoenix, should you move to another part of the country, given that it's going to be even hotter there, that there will be less water, and the electricity required to run the a/c is going to be even more expensive? What about if you live in any big city -- should you start looking to relo to a smaller town? Or will that cut you off from things you're going to need, and won't be able to get to as easily when gas is far more expensive, and scarcer.

And what about your kids? Even if you don't like the migratory, deracinated lifestyle of contemporary America, and hope your kids will reject it, ultimately it's their call. Insofar as you have a choice about where to relocate to for the Long Emergency, how much value should you place on living near extended family, given that networks of kin are going to be more necessary in the future we're creating (e.g., caring for the elderly, things like that)? And to what extent should you be thinking about living in a place that will likely be affordable for your kids to live when they grow up and start their own families? When I was visiting the great Orthodox community in Eagle River, Alaska, a big problem the community faced was that land was so expensive around there that the community they'd established a generation ago, when it was cheap, finds it hard to replicate itself geographically (that is, it's getting too expensive for the second generation to live in physical proximity to the first). If you not only want, but will need to have your adult kids living nearby, shouldn't that factor into your planning? Or is it foolish even to anticipate such things?

One last thing: I interviewed yesterday a professor of logistics about the crisis in the trucking industry. He said that permanently high fuel prices will of necessity shorten supply lines. This is going to cause wrenching changes in our economy, but that doesn't necessarily mean they'll be all bad. I got to thinking later that we'll likely see more agriculture and manufacturing done locally, for local and regional customers, instead of for customers living thousands of miles away. It'll suck to be Wal-Mart, because it won't be so easy to bring cheaply manufactured crap to the US on boats and then onto trucks that are too expensive to operate. But it may mean a return to making stuff people need right here. Maybe, just maybe, it'll mean people don't have to leave their homes to make a living. But I ramble...

Anyway, if you could pick out an ideal place to settle for the next 50 years, where would it be? Here's an idea: Staunton, Va. It's beautiful, the climate is projected to be moist (as opposed to the West), it's close to plenty of arable land, it's got two colleges. It's Southern! Amtrak goes through there. Downside: no nearby airport, but then again, ain't too many of us going to be traveling by air in the future.

Thoughts?