James Howard Kunstler

James Howard Kunstler is an activist opposed to, in his words, "the tragic landscape of highway strips, parking lots, housing tracts, mega-malls".^[1]

However, he is best known for his 2005 book The Long Emergency, which claims that civilization is doomed because of so-called "peak oil" which will take effect shortly if not already. Much like Paul Ehrlich had done earlier when he denigrated the idea that new technologies such as the Green Revolution of Norman Borlaug could increase food production to keep pace with human population growth, James Howard Kunstler spends much of The Long Emergency attacking the viability and feasibility of all other forms of energy, saying that none of them can support our current population and standard of living the way "cheap oil" can, and that the age of cheap oil is over. Kunstler also predicts that most of the United States will see mass starvation, riots, poverty and so on in the years to come, and that the only region that will fare relatively well is the smaller, older cities of the rust belt region, because of preexisting transportation infrastructure (e.g. canals and rivers) which predated the advent of the automobile. He also predicts a scenario similar to Jean Raspail's Camp of the Saints, of an influx of starving boat people from China arriving on America's west coast. He predicts massive water shortages in the midwest and southwest. Additionally, he attacks Christianity and gun ownership, both of which he equates with ignorance, and claims that the American south will fare poorly during the "crisis" because of Christianity and gun culture being stronger there.

Rolling Stone magazine, among other media, has promoted Kunstler's writings and apocalyptic predictions as if they were somehow credible.^[2]

See also[edit]

• Al Gore
• Paul Ehrlich

References and notes[edit]

1. ↑ http://kunstlercast.com/
2. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20060224120900/http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/7203633/the_long_emergency/