Words matter. These are the best James Howard Kunstler Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I’m convinced that the Great Lakes region will be at the center of an internally-focused North American economy when the hallucination of oil-powered globalism dissolves. Places like Buffalo, Cleveland, and Detroit will have a new life, but not at the scale of the twentieth century.
Saudi Arabia is, of course, the keystone of OPEC. Saudi Arabia has had the distinction of remaining stable through all the escalating tumult of recent decades, reliably pumping out its roughly 10 million barrels a day like Bossy the cow in America’s oil import barn.
My beef with the alt-fuel people is not the renewable or alt-fuel ideas themselves. Sooner or later, there’s no question we’re going to have to rely on them. For me, it’s an issue of scale.
The earth is a fickle place for all life, not least the human project of civilization.
I think water transport will see a revival. However, we’re not going to replay the 20th century. The industrial city of that era will not be revived. Our cities are going to contract. Many of them will contract as a whole but densify at their core.
Parallel parking is desirable for two reasons: parked cars create a physical barrier and psychological buffer that protects pedestrians on the sidewalk from moving vehicles; and a rich supply of parallel parking can eliminate the need for parking lots, which are extremely destructive of the civic fabric.
The newspaper headlines may shout about global warming, extinctions of living species, the devastation of rain forests, and other worldwide catastrophes, but Americans evince a striking complacency when it comes to their everyday environment and the growing calamity that it represents.
We have created thousands and thousands of places in America that aren’t worth caring about, and when we have enough of them, we’re going to have a country that’s not worth defending.
Phoenix and Las Vegas have grim long-term prospects. On top of oil-and-gas problems, they will have terrible problems with water and the ability to produce food locally. I suppose it shows how delusional the public is, and how our institutional controls have decayed – for instance, lending standards.
Generations will soon come into their power feeling differently about themselves than we do now, and in their re-enchanted world, they will wonder about us and what we did to their world, and what we thought we were doing.
History is merciless. History doesn’t care if we pound our society down a rat hole. It’s up to us to make more intelligent choices about how we live!
White America is tortured by black America’s failure to thrive, and all that guilt and anxiety has only gotten worse as a substantial quota of white America loses its own footing in the middle class and plunges into the rough country of joblessness, hopelessness, and government dependency.
Suburbia is not going to run on biodiesel. The easy-motoring tourist industry is not going to run on biodiesel, wind power and solar fuel.
Neurologically, people have a need to feel oriented, to know where they are, not just in terms of a compass and not just in terms of geography, but in terms of their culture and history. To be informed about where they’re coming from and to have some glimpse towards a hopeful future.
The model of the human habitat dictated by zoning is a formless, soul-less, centerless, demoralizing mess. It bankrupts families and townships. It disables whole classes of decent, normal citizens. It ruins the air we breathe. It corrupts and deadens our spirit.
American cities are not scaled to the energy diet of the future. They have become too large. They’re over-scaled.
I don’t like talking about ‘solutions.’ I prefer talking about intelligent responses.
Our twenty-first century economy may focus on agriculture, not information.
When a society is stressed, when it comes up against things that are hard to understand, you get a lot of delusional thinking.
Black America surely faces an existential crisis, but not the one imagined in the condescending news media – of somehow getting non-black America to be more just and generous. The truth is, we’ve already been through that, and there is nothing left to do. We’re out of ‘affirmative actions’ of all kinds.
I’m very optimistic about the future. I’m just not optimistic about the skyscraper as a building typology that is suited for the future.
The sentimental view of anything is apt to be ridiculous, but I feel that I have been unusually sensitive to the issue of place since I was a little boy.
I’m serenely convinced that we are heading into what will amount to a ‘time out’ from technological progress as we know it.
It’s self-evident that we are going to have permanent problems with oil and gasoline and the prime resources that are needed to run the American suburbs. And we’re just not going to be able to run them. You know, it’s just unfortunate, it’s tragic, but it’s the truth.
One of the problems with the fiasco of suburbia is that it destroyed our understanding of the distinction between the country and the town, between the urban and the rural. They’re not the same thing.
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.
Please, please, stop referring to yourselves as ‘consumers.’ OK? Consumers are different than citizens. Consumers do not have obligations, responsibilities and duties to their fellow human beings.
Americans are suffering so much from being in unrewarding environments that it has made us very cynical. I think that American suburbia has become a powerful generator of anxiety and depression.
Life in the mid-21st century is going to be about living locally. Be prepared to be good neighbors. Be prepared to find vocations that make you useful to your neighbors and to your fellow citizens.
The quality of life of European cities and towns of almost any size make life in America look not just like a joke, but a sick joke, a horror movie. But I’d rather stay involved and do what I can to make this a better place than move to the south of France and enjoy the good life.
