James Howard Kunstler: Investing In Infrastructure For An Age Of Scarcity
Posted by Big Gav
"The Infrastructurist" has an interview with James Howard Kunstler, in which JHK once again outlines his reversalist view of the future and scorns technophile solutions - James Howard Kunstler: Investing In Infrastructure For An Age Of Scarcity.
A few years ago, author James Howard Kunstler famously convinced petro-billionaire and Bush crony Richard Rainwater to build an off-the-grid rural compound because the fabric of American society would soon be threatened by oil shortages and skyrocketing energy prices. The Long Emergency, Kunstler’s pungent and highly influential book on the subject of peak oil, won a lot of other smart money converts as well. When a barrel of crude hit $147 last summer, he was looking more and more like a prophet. At the present $47, let’s just say the jury is still out.
But it’s hard not to have the sense that Kunstler’s ideas are worth careful consideration, even if one believes that future oil supplies might be a bit more abundant than he suggests. For instance, his 1994 book The Geography of Nowhere was a decade or more ahead of the cultural curve in describing the structural miscalculations of America’s sprawling suburbs. Now, even with OPEC cutting production, Kunstler still predicts oil supply shortages dead ahead. Will we feel the bite this year? Next? The year after? “Soon enough,” he says.
Naturally, this informs his ideas about what kinds of infrastructure investments the nation ought to be making. Recently, he discussed that subject, the tragic nature of imaginary money, and “evangenical roller rinks” with the Infrastructurist.
JR: So we’re starting a major new round of investment in our national infrastructure. Can we agree that’s a good thing?
JHK: Well, for instance, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to devote a trillion dollars to fixing up the highways. I mean the days of “happy motoring” in this country truly are behind us. We should be planning for a period when energy resources are much more scarce. Throwing that kind of money at roads is not the way to go about doing this.
How would you be doing it?
I don’t know that I would undertake a spending program like this at all. That said, I’m a pretty strong advocate of repairing the national rail system. It’s obviously not the answer to everything. But it would certainly put a lot of people to work doing something that’s meaningful for society. The infrastructure is out there, waiting to be fixed. I’m pretty adamant that we shouldn’t be going the path of high-tech, maglev, high speed rail at this moment, because we need to prove that we can do this at the Hungarian level before we try to proceed past that.
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