Visionaries or cranks? How can you tell?

The point of being a prophet [and Kunstler fits the bill, though a secular one] is to the masses back to the best path. The predictions made do not necessarily equal the results gained, hopefully, in the sense that a successful prophet will be wrong about the future because people have heeded the warnings of doom.

Think of Jonah, chapter 4. Jonah preached doom on the wicked Ninevites, they repent, no doom, and he's p***ed off. God has to straighten him out at the end of the story because Jonah's attitude was completely wrong. A prophet is supposed to change his audience, not enjoy the show.

We are the visionaries. It's "the others" who are always the cranks.

Kunstler likes to think that he's the messenger being blamed for delivering a bad news. But southern college audiences don't like him for the same reasons the rest of the world doesn't like him; he's a prissy Jew with an earring who jets around the world whining that other people use too much fossil fuel.

He's a masochist, who (as Rod's observed before) likes to say we're an "evil people who deserve to be punished." Every year for the last four he's predicted the markets would crash, and seemed genuinely dissapointed when they didn't.

Despite all that, he makes some good points about our feckless moron of a president and the general decrepitude of the US financial system and basic infrastructure. I guess he could be considered a visionary if dozens of other pundits hadn't already made the same gloomy observations in less caustic and smarmy ways.

A track record of accurate prognostication would be worthwhile as a mark of vision instead as one of crankhood.

After we all resorted to cannibalism and brigandige just to survive the abrupt reversion to the Iron Age level of civilization that came in the wake of the Y2K bug, I figured I'm never going to ignore Kunstler's warnings ever again.

Rod, I would have to attribute generalized Southern hostility to Kunstler more to his overt anti-Southern bias than any failure on the part of his audiences to "get it." I read "The Long Emergency" and as much as I agree with him on many points, and as much I like reading his entertaining prose, there's no doubt he has a very skewed vision that goes something like this: All you ignorant rubes living south of the Mason-Dixon line are goners in "the long emergency" and only sturdy upright Yankees will survive. He has a very sharp disdain for Southern culture, as well as a blatant hostility toward evangelical Christianity (he often lumps it all into the term "Pentecostal") and I think that's gotten in the way of objectively assessing the situation. If anything, Southerners have preserved rural folkways to a much stronger degree than Northerners in America, and probably have a better chance of thriving under the Mad Max conditions Kunstler foresees. That's not to mention the "life together" grounding that Christian communities will provide (instead of understanding this, Kunstler seems to think that the latest mega-church iteration of American Christianity is all he needs to know). Kunstler is a little bit stuck in his "World Made by Hand" fantasy that his upstate New York town will be the last hold out for civilized people, while everywhere else will melt down into a dystopian meth-fueled nightmare. I'm not buying that.

The crank exhibits a fundamental hostility to his fellow human beings while a prophet cares and empathizes to the depths of their soul. Martin Luther King was a prophet who spoke truth to power, who stated uncomfortable truths while seeking to elevate both his own people but everyone. He died for his vision. Kunstler on the other hand is no prophet. The difference between a prophet and a crank has to do with depth and breadth of their vision and the clarity of their moral purpose. A prophet usually speaks to a higher goal, a more abstract morality, a better and more just world as well as the capacity to re-imagine things in creative ways. A crank is characterized by the opposite, a narrowness of vision, an endless repetition of trivia disguised as profundity, dogmatism, a pedestrian and soul crushing view of the world rooted in the dismal and the irrational. This description fits Kuntsler's world view quite well.

Here are some hard facts about Peak Oil"

According to energy investment banker Matthew Simmons, global oil production is now declining, from 85 million barrels per day to 60 million barrels per day by 2015. During the same time demand will increase 14%.

This is like a 45% drop in 7 years. No one can reverse this trend, nor can we conserve our way out of this catastrophe. Because the demand for oil is so high, it will always be higher than production; thus the depletion rate will continue until all recoverable oil is extracted.

Alternatives will not even begin to fill the gap. And most alternatives yield electric power, but we need liquid fuels for tractors/combines, 18 wheel trucks, trains, ships, and mining equipment.

We are facing the collapse of the highways that depend on diesel trucks for maintenance of bridges, cleaning culverts to avoid road washouts, snow plowing, roadbed and surface repair. When the highways fail, so will the power grid, as highways carry the parts, transformers, steel for pylons, and high tension cables, all from far away. With the highways out, there will be no food coming in from "outside," and without the power grid virtually nothing works, including home heating, pumping of gasoline and diesel, airports, communications, and automated systems.

This is documented in a free 48 page report that can be downloaded, website posted, distributed, and emailed: http://www.peakoilassociates.com/POAnalysis.html

I used to live in NH, but moved to a safer place. Anyone interested in relocating to a nice, pretty, sustainable area, good climate with much rain and good soil?

If oil is going to become scarce what is the feasability of converting coal to liquid fuel? I know this was done in Germany in WWII and in South Africa during apartheid. Obviously it can be done from a technical standpoint but the real question is what would the ultimate cost per gallon be to the consumer?

Before I accept the soon-to-be-coming end of civilization I'd like to explore some options.

Kunstler is a bit of a crank. He is passionate and indulges in amusingly over-the-top rhetoric. His aesthetic revulsion at NASCAR Nation blinds him to the underlying strengths of the Southron. Nonetheless, there is more truth in one Clusterf*** Nation column than in an entire week of Fox News rah rah.
Brother Jobe for President!

It's normal to fear something scary. It's normal to hate something perverse. Our oil driven culture is perverse. It's pushing the collapse envelope. So if you get the program you'd be with Kunstler, not against him. He deserves praise for being a visionary.

Unless they are performing actual miracles, be wary of prophets who think they are prophets... The last thing Keith Green wrote before his untimely death was an apology: He had told himself that he was offending people because he was prophetic--and then realized he was often just being offensive.

I think Christian has a good point. When you are giddy at the prospect of a coming catastrophe then you are not a prophet but a crank. And his past history of predictions is pretty bad. The end of cheap oil is not exactly fun, but it's pretty hard to imagine the end of civilization resulting either.

Here are two points to consider. First, 10 of the top 15 countries based on oil usage are projected to have either zero population growth or declining populations over the next half century. Second, demand is (finally) declining. Partly this is because of slow moves to other sources of power generation. But much of this is because people are moving to more efficient vehicles. Look at SUV sales year over year.

Even better, just remember the last time we went through this. I remember the parking lots in my hometown in the late 1970's were filled with Camaros and passenger vans and mile-long Lincolns. Five years later they were filled with Toyotas and Datsuns and Chevy Luv pickups.

I think Kunstler is over-the-top. I don't think we are in for some Mad Max future. I don't think our lifestyles will change all that dramatically. We'll live much as we do now, but in reasonable sized houses instead of massive McMansions, and driving SMART's and Priuses instead of Tahoes and Escalades. That's no change at all for me, and not a bad trade-off for most people.

This Kunstler is a clown, I believe in peak oil and am preparing for it by buying energy stocks, and alternative energy stocks, gold and silver bullion, I dont own Walmart or Apple in my portfolio.
And since I grew up on a cattle ranch in Colorado that still is in the family, 600 acres fully irrigated, I can raise and grow my own food, I can catch my meal from the river that borders our property, or bring it down with a 30-06 if its on the hoof.
I am a blue collar worker, an auto mechanic, so I can weld and fabricate anything made out of metal or wood,I learned it in the Marine Corps, my skills will always be in demand, no paper pushing for me, however I do not take joy in knowing the rough road we are heading toward, I am anxious for my family and my fellow citizens, unlike Kunstler who loves every bit of it.
This guy is moses from the top of his hill preaching how evil we all are and how we will be smitten down because of our ways, contrast him with other people like Mathew Simmons who are warning the world in a contructive way.
You need to read Kunstlers book, The World Made By Hand, and then you will understand the hardon he gets over the end times.
He completely dismisses any alternative energy source or conservation efforts, expensive oil means we all starve to death wishing we had listend to mosses Kunstler.
I would put a large wager that the government would outlaw gas sales to general public, and redirect it solely to food production before that happens.
I visited China in the early 1990's and saw very little cars but millions of bicycles everywhere, it will happen here before that clown gets his way.
Everyday enough sunlight hits this planet to provide enough energy to power our daily energy use hunderds of times over, we need to harness it, at first it will be expensive but costs will come down as the years go by, Geothermal has already been used for 40 years succesfully, check out ORA, Ormat.
We are surrounded by energy sources, but we got hooked on oil because its so cheap, we will have to get used to paying more than we're used to, and using much less.
Major recession yes, bad worldwide depression lasting 30 years of more maybe, end of times hell no.

S

Kunstler is mad because he has been documenting our disastrous living arrangements for a long time. If he was a quiet, demure person, he would not enjoy the spot as Peak Oils top spokesman worldwide.

I hope to God things don't go the way he says, but have been reading everything energy related, and peak oil related for many years and think he is pretty close to the mark.

I attend every political, environmental and similar type presentation that happens and talk to most all of the speakers afterward. These great thinkers mostly echo the facts that Kunstler uses to prop up his forecast of our probable future.

Things are really starting to accelerate, so I think we will start finding out very soon how accurate he was in his writings.

Last year, I went out to the Land Institute near Salina, Kansas, to hear Mr Kunstler talk (amongst other things). I'm from Topeka, and as Kansas is an agricultural state, I wanted to hear his take on how things would turn out. What I heard was a scornful, disdainful view of American culture, how bad it was, and how good it would be to be utterly destroyed as, in his view, it soon would be. Eventually the talk ended, and there was a time for questions, and I asked one, specifically about what would happen to mechanized agriculture in Kansas, and what could be done to change it so that catastrophe were at least partially averted. He entirely evaded my question with a short sarcastic remark about whining farmers, said there was nothing that could be done, and said "Next question!". That was all, it was obvious that he hadn't considered any solutions to the problem - and didn't care. Reading through his books, I get the same attitude, and frankly I see the same from a lot of Peak Oil people. They're all saying that there's a big problem coming, but they're really short on solutions and really long on apocalyptic scenarios.

My take on Mr Kunstler (and anyone else who offers apocalypse without a way out) is that they're cranks. Listening to them is probably worse than doing nothing, because if you get sucked into their game, they'll rob you of any energy to do anything.

Interestingly enough, there are some people in Texas with solutions. They've recently put out a book entitled "Toolbox for Sustainable City Living", by Scott Kellogg and Stacy Pettigrew, of the Rhizome Collective in Austin. The book is published by the South End Press (www.southendpress.org) and costs $16 and is full of solutions worked through by the Rhizome people and put in actual practice. Five pages of this book are worth everything that James Kunstler has ever written. Check it out and write about them, instead.

Their website is www.radicalsustainability.org - and I've got no connection with them whatsoever other than owning their book.