Kunstler Hugged By Tree  

The foreshadowed interview is now up. Answers to reader questions (that's you Matt) will be up tomorrow.

James Howard Kunstler is the author of the provocative and controversial The Long Emergency,and graciously agreed to be interviewed by Treehugger. We post the interview here and apologise for asking such long questions, we do run on. We also asked him to pick one of our readers' questions and he answered all of them, which we will post tomorrow.

QIn Europe or Japan, because of high gas prices or tight land controls, people live in half the space, drive smaller and better cars, sit on well designed furniture and eat smaller and better meals. Is it not possible that this is all self-correcting- People will move downtown, live in smaller spaces, drive smaller cars or take transit, simply because it makes economic sense to do so?

JHK: I think a lot of things will be self-correcting, even in America. After all, human societies are essentially self-organizing emergent systems. The catch is, how much disorder will we have to endure while this re-self-organizing process occurs. It’s the thesis of my book, The Long Emergency, that there will be quite a bit of disorder. So I am generally skeptical of people who think we’re just going to have an easy transition.