A CACOR Live meeting.
[After much consideration, with the agreement of the speaker, CACOR is publishing this presentation under the title A Disturbing and Provocative Viewpoint on Breaking through the Fog of Unreality. Here is the Wikipedia page on Mr. Kunstler. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Howard_Kunstler Viewers are reminded that Mr. Kunstler’s views are controversial. Further, the speaker’s views may not reflect those of CACOR. Ed.]
Topic: A Disturbing and Provocative Viewpoint on Breaking through the Fog of Unreality
Speaker: James Howard Kunstler
Time: 10 July 2024 13:30 Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Summary:
Kunstler takes you on a deep dive through the broken consensus about reality now be-setting the nations of Western Civilization in the essential matters of economy, politics, and culture. We have a lot of repair work to do in our own minds before we can coherently face the challenges to everyday life coming at us. He lays out the problems with precision and then addresses the intelligent responses to them. He emphasizes the physical arrangement of life on the terrain of North America: the changes we apt to see in the patterns of cities, suburbs, small towns, and the rural landscape. You are allowed to laugh.
Biography:
James Howard Kunstler is probably best known as the author of “The Long Emergency” (The Atlantic Monthly Press 2005), and “The Geography of Nowhere” (Simon and Schuster, 1993). Two other non-fiction titles in that series are “Home From Nowhere” (Simon and Schuster, 1996), and “The City in Mind” (Simon and Schuster, 2002). He’s also the author of many novels, including his tale of the post-oil American future, “World Made By Hand” (The Atlantic Monthly press, 2008) and its three sequels. His shorter work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic Monthly, Metropolis, Rolling Stone, Playboy, and many other periodicals.
He has lectured at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Dartmouth, Cornell, MIT, RPI, the University of Virginia and many other colleges, and he has appeared before many professional organizations such as the AIA , the APA., and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
There are two parts to this presentation. Part 1: the presentation and start of the Q&A
and Part 2 the main Question and Answer session
Is it just me or did it seem like almost every questionnaire felt the need to describe their scientific credentials and absolute opinions regarding the “climate crisis” before allowing the poor, ill informed Jim Kunstler, to even defend his viewpoint.
In case he wasn’t clear I think Jim was simply stating that, after the coming collapse of complexity, all of these fanciful hi-tech solution being proposed by the COR et al. will die on the vine as humanity has to figure out the new paradigm of existence.
Jim can be a bit abrasive for modern sensitivities, but I find him refreshing, even if I don’t agree with him 100%. I think his point regarding climate change was just that:
1. There have been large changes in climate that predate human existence and industrialization and perhaps the complexity of how those systems (and negative feedbacks) work is beyond our current climate models.
2. Fossil fuel consumption tracks economic productivity almost 1:1. Because humans are unwilling to become voluntarily poorer, we will not collectively volunteer to reduce our consumption. Further, as geologic constraints limit the production rate of fossil fuels, our ability to respond to climate change meaningfully or with technological solutions (solar panels, electric windmills, battery banks) will be reduced and then go away.