New York
I’ve finished reading James Howard Kunstler’s new book Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation.
This book is pretty much an update to Kunstler’s 2005 book The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century.
Seven years have come and gone. Has the Peak Oil doomer forecast panned out?
(1) In hindsight, the highly anticipated global peak in conventional oil production – the dependable stuff you pump out of the ground in oil rigs from vast underground pools – seems to have arrived on schedule in late 2005/early 2006.
(2) In 2007/2008, the “housing bubble” collapsed and the suburban sprawl economy sputtered and still hasn’t recovered. This doesn’t come as any surprise to Kunstler who has spent over a decade criticizing suburbia as the greatest misallocation of resources in world history and as a living arrangement with no future.
(3) In 2008, the global financial system got into serious trouble, and before the dust settled Congress and the Federal Reserve had ponied up a $7.7 trillion dollar bailout to Wall Street and European and American banks. Although Kunstler is renowned for his annual failed stock market predictions, the destruction and/or transfer of wealth in the 2008 financial crisis was effectively the same.
There is no telling how much money the Federal Reserve has printed since that time. Meanwhile, the financial crisis never ended in Europe and has become a slow motion trainwreck, with world leaders flying by the seat of their pants trying to stamp out fires as they appear in the eurozone.
(4) We’re now in the fourth year of a depression (recovery) which the Beltway establishment refuses to acknowledge.
(5) In the Middle East and North Africa, the uptick in global food prices has already led to political instability, most recently with the Muslim Brotherhood coming to power in Egypt and with the civil war now raging in Syria – oil prices are down in part because Saudi Arabia has put the foot on the accelerator to stave off its own problem with “domestic unrest.”
(6) As I write this, protests are breaking out in Japan over the restart of nuclear reactors following the Fukushima disaster.
(7) In the Nineties and Aughties, much hope was invested in alternative energy sources ranging from the hydrogen economy to switch grass to ethanol to algae to wind and solar and biomass to the “Pickens Plans” with liquified natural gas – none of which panned out, btw, in spite of the hype.
Like all the other presidents before them stretching back to Nixon, Bush and Obama promised to make America “energy independent,” and seven years later it still hasn’t happened. Obama’s “green economy” and “green jobs” has become the butt of jokes even on the Left.
(8) In Spring 2010, the Gulf Coast was inundated by an oil spill following BP’s Deepwater Horizon catastrophe – disasters such as this one were predicted as drilling has shifted to ever more marginal areas overseas and offshore.
(9) Since Kunstler’s The Long Emergency was published in 2005, we’ve seen various countries like Mexico go through Peak Oil which is one of America’s biggest sources of imports.
(10) We’ve seen all the major airlines (most recently American Airlines) either merge or go bankrupt. In 2011, the last space shuttle was launched with a promise that America would go back to space sometime around 2025.
(11) Since 2005, technology has continued to advance, so we now have things like HDTV, smartphones, Netflix, Kindle, YouTube, Facebook and various apps, but the really important systems haven’t advanced much unless you count, say, the advent of predator drones.
(12) Kunstler is a big fan of paleo-futurism. In 2001, there was no space odyssey. We’re almost to 2015 and it is unlikely there will be any of Doc Brown’s flying cars or hoverboards. The future of 2000 hasn’t lived up to the hype of those imagining the future in 1950.
(13) Americans are an optimistic people and much hope is now being invested in shale oil and shale gas (now that we have moved on from solar, hydrogen, and ethanol) which Kunstler spends a considerable amount of time debunking. He points out that the Bakken formation in North Dakota only has 1/3 of the recoverable oil of Prudhoe Bay and that Alaskan production – the stuff coming down the Trans-Alaska Pipeline from the North Slope – is now only a trickle of what it was in the 1980s.
The kerogen in the Green River Formation is not conventional oil. It would require enormous inputs of water and energy to heat and process it. It just happens to be located in one of the most arid corners of the entire country.
(14) Chesapeake Energy, the herald of the shale oil and shale gas revolution in the United States, is now immersed in a thicket of scandals and is approaching bankruptcy as volatility in energy and capital markets disrupts its operations.
(15) “Shale oil” is oil that is trapped in source rock which was never able to collect in vast underground pools like conventional oil fields. Some of this oil is recoverable through hydraulic fracturing, but this process is expensive and like offshore drilling or drilling in the Arctic it is not remotely the same as drilling a conventional oil well.
The overarching message of this book is that Americans have too much faith in technology which leads to ever more complexity and to diminishing returns over time. The technology and prosperity of the oil age has lulled us into a dangerously false sense of security.
You go to the gas station and take for granted that the gas (which comes from imported oil from overseas) will always be there at an affordable price. You go to the supermarket and take for granted that the cheap food (which depends upon the depleting aquifers and the vast oil and phosphorus inputs) will always be there.
You to the Super Wal-Mart and take for granted that all the manufactured goods imported from the other side of the planet will always be there. You go to the bank and take for granted that your money will always be there.
Complex systems have a tendency to get into trouble in a crisis. Look no further than the catastrophic decline in material culture in the sixth century remnants of the Western Roman Empire following the barbarian invasions. The energy crisis represents the ultimate challenge to the perpetuation of global industrial civilization and the American standard of living.
Will our faith in technology fail us? Kunstler is betting that it will. Seven years from now we ought to know for sure. In the meantime, I plan to keep watching and blogging as history unfolds.
Note: In the book, Kunstler describes race as “America’s wild card” and anticipates widespread racial conflict as BRA collapses. He also thinks America might break apart along regional lines down the road.
Matt,
There is nothing anti-White about railroads, streetcars, trolleys, subways, or public buses – we had all those things in the Jim Crow South, we moved large numbers of people around with those systems, and we did it successfully without the vast personal automobile fleet, convenience stores, or our present extreme reliance on imported oil that transfers billions of dollars of capital out of our economy every year.
Of course it is true that Rosa Parks, the NAACP, the MSM, and the Supreme Court struck a devastating blow against Southern civilization in the Montgomery Bus Boycott, but the existence of the Union and the consolidation of power in DC is to blame for BRA, not railroads or electric streetcars.
In an independent South, we could ban African-Americans from accessing these systems and we would be much better off than we are now with the punitive living arrangement that exists under BRA which is very far from ideal.
Peak Oil doesn’t mean the price of oil will necessarily increase. It means there will be extreme volatility in the price of oil as the economy contracts and demand is destroyed.
I also agree that any expansion of public transportation is bad news for whites at this point.
Suppose Peak Oil were real.
If so, then the primary problem would be the personal automobile fleet, which depends upon cheap oil, not the generation of electricity, which comes more from wind, hydro, natural gas, and coal.
The primary problem would be moving large numbers of people around: that could be done with railroads, streetcars, and waterborne transportation. A lifestyle change is not synonymous with doomsday.
“but the existence of the Union and the consolidation of power in DC is to blame for BRA”
Exactly. Which is why secession, by whatever means we can find to bring it about, is the antidote to BRA. The South must take the lead in this, since we are the most opposed to BRA by any measure, and we do have past precedent.
If there is another approach with greater potential than this, I just don’t see it.
If whites have a future, it will be pioneered by Southerners before it spreads anywhere else.
Deo Vindice
“Forget oil, I’d be more worried about clean, drinkable water.”
And now all the people who trash Detroit and Michigan, might understand one reason why my home state and city are so important to me.
In an independent South, we could ban African-Americans from accessing these systems and we would be much better off than we are now with the punitive living arrangement that exists under BRA which is very far from ideal.”. Only under segregation could public transportation work and if segregation actually occurred I’d probably be so happy I’d ride my bike everywhere anyhow
The extreme car culture of the late twentieth century was a consequence of the Civil Rights Movement. The same is true of the hideously deformed residential patterns in cities like Birmingham and Atlanta.
If the Confederacy had won its independence, it is a safe assumption that public transportation wouldn’t have been devastated in the South, but would have matured into something vastly superior to what exists today.
I have nothing against the railroads. My great grandfather worked for a railroad and there used to be a railroad line in my front yard.
“barb,
Can I ask what do you think racialist-oriented Whites should do or not do as a result of PO?”
Kievsky over at MindweaponsinRagnarok.com has some excellent ideas. Basically everything you can to de-fund the Beast.
Get a cheap car with the best gas mileage you can get and / or car-share with other whites.
Figure out ways not to have to commute into the city to work:
Grow your own food, maybe buy a house with multiple other adults so you can save money to get your own business / buy a duplex to rent to other Whites.
Greatly reduce or eliminate your spending into the anti-White media: Get old movies from the library for free, check out books to read from the library for free (you paid for it, you might as well use it)
Buy silver. For a couple reasons: One, it’s going to be utterly necessary for the peak-oil mitigation infrastructure, assuming we build any, and it’s actually more rare now than gold, having been consumed by electronics and tossed out, and, two, Goldman Sachs and the other big banks have been manipulating the price by shorting it to suppress the price for fun and profit. Buy it and crash the big banks so they can’t fund anti-White propaganda.
Since energy (i.e., oil) is what allows our enemies to provide for the non-Whites to breed, energy shortage means they can’t do it any longer, unless brow-beaten Whites allow them to. Stopping the browbeating by defunding the Jews means Whites’ natural fellow-feelings towards fellow Whites can reemerge and we can use our might and wits to get the oil we need to make the successful transition to the Peak Oil world.
Since the non-Whites can’t do it without our help, there will be a massive die off affecting them, and WE will survive, if we only possess the will.
The unnatural social organization of BRA lead to the degradation of all forms of public infrastructure and resulted in the “hideously deformed residential patterns” we see before us now.
It is the natural outcome of elevating savages to the level of citizens, creating the “dead zones” that permeate our landscape. Burnt out inner cities go hand in hand with suburban whitopias. Opposite sides of the same coin.
Suburban DWLs in the suburbs with liberal illusions combine with the “community organizers” of savage strongholds to strangle out the fomer resilent, interdependent, sustainable, small towns. Just like so many weeds choking the growth of a garden.
With the late emphasis on minority housing via Section 8 and the ill-fated loans of the housing bubble, this unnatural social organization has entered its terminal phase.
It removes the possibility of escape for DWLs, while spreading the destruction once contained in the blighted urban areas. With the shifting demographics patterns created by mass immigration from third world countries, the stage has been set for genocide of the “wrong sorts of white people.” Poor whites, including former white members of the shrinking middle class. Basically all but the most affluent.
A shrinking middle class from free trade agreements designed to facilitate a global economy based on mass immigration and the resultant displacement/dispossession of peoples.
Among those unfortunate enough to live cheek by jowl with the diversity, the coming years will be excruciatingly hard. Especially once the “freedom of the open road” is but a receding memory.
Most other technology has only provided petty distractions from the gutting of our civilization. You’re certainly right, Hunter. Automobile culture is BRA culture.
Deo Vindice
In the big scope of things, world demand is being driven by world population. White nations have a negative population growth, which I believe in and of itself is a good thing and should signal a decrease in demand and everything should be honky-dory…except thanks to Marxist social engineering schemes all the government pensions and SS for the old folks can’t be paid, so the population is pumped up with the third world.
The third world hordes will continue to breed right up to the edge of the global petri dish. They don’t care, it’s how evolution has shaped the equatorial peoples. Now Thomas Friedman may want America to look like India, asshole to bellybutton with nearly 2 billion people. We don’t need that, it’s not what whites want for their children. We as a people need elbow room. Less population can provide that IF we control our border and cut ourselves off the sinking ship of globalism.
Apeulius mentioned free trade agreements screwing us. “The entry into force of the U.S.-Korea trade agreement on March 15, 2012, means countless new opportunities for U.S. exporters to sell more made-in-America goods, services and agricultural products to Korean customers — and to support more good jobs here at home.”
Thus did the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative rhapsodize about the potential of our new trade treaty with South Korea.
And how has it worked out for Uncle Sam?
Well, courtesy of Martin Crutsinger of The Associated Press, the trade figures are in for April, the first full month under the trade deal with South Korea.
And, surprise! The U.S. trade deficit with Korea tripled in one month. Imports from South Korea jumped 15 percent to $5.5 billion in April, while U.S. exports to South Korea fell 12 percent to $3.7 billion. Suddenly, the U.S. trade deficit with Seoul surged to an annual rate of $22 billion. http://www.idealtaxes.com/post3539.shtml
“Less population can provide that IF we control our border and cut ourselves off the sinking ship of globalism.”
Which will never happen under this federal government, a government that has routinely used immigration as a wedge against its own people. A government that is more concerned with the rights of third world scum than its own citizens.
Break the power of the federal government and you end the march into the abyss that it currently mandates.
Deo Vindice
Whites should increase our birth rate. If any population needs to be reduced lets force the others to reduce theirs and keep our numbers high
I think folks will get over their nuclear reactor fears when no electricity slaps them in the face
Stonelifter: I agree that whites do need to increase their birthrate under the circumstances. The US population leveled off to healthy sustainable levels in the mid and late 60’s, before open borders.
I’m reading Heinberg’s Peak Everything now.
“I think folks will get over their nuclear reactor fears when no electricity slaps them in the face.”
I agree they will get over their fears and will forget to ask: Would you want a reactor built in YOUR county? What about a waste disposal in your county? What about the half-life, toxicity and carcinogenity of Plutonium and other elements and isotopes that WILL escape containment?
I’m not settled for or against nuclear power in general; not afraid, but consider each case carefully.
Peak oil is a divisive issue but we can all agree peak negro occurred in the 60’s and peak Mexican is taking place today.
Peak Negro was reached in November 2008 when Obama won the presidential election. Faith in BRA has declined somewhat since then. I don’t anticipate it ever recovering to those heady days of Hope and Change.
Re: the impact of “free trade” agreements aka “agreements” for extracting wealth from White middle class and transferring it to oligarchs …
I found this at The Economist the other day. Check out the map of the Earth’s economic “center of gravity.” It turns out that for about 1,950 years, the world’s “economic center” moved West with the rise of Western civilization. In just about the last 50 years, it has moved back East almost to where it was 2000 years ago. So in just 50 years, there has been massive shift in economic activity from West to East, with the harm falling on Whites of course. I know this is no surprise to anyone here, given globalization, outsourcing, etc. On a related point, would anyone care to guess whose venture capital firm was among the first to open shop in China?
www (DOT) economist (DOT) com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/06/daily-chart-19?fsrc=scn/fb/wl/dc/theworldsshiftingcentreofgravity
During the nearly 15 years that Romney was actively involved in running Bain, a private equity firm that he founded, it owned companies that were pioneers in the practice of shipping work from the United States to overseas call centers and factories making computer components, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
www (DOT) washingtonpost (DOT) com/business/economy/romneys-bain-capital-invested-in-companies-that-moved-jobs-overseas/2012/06/21/gJQAsD9ptV_story.html?wpisrc=nl_politics
dispose of it in africa or some such place; I lived by two nuke plants. Never lost a moments rest over it and one of them was an older plant, one of the 1st on the east cost.
“I’m not settled for or against nuclear power in general; not afraid, but consider each case carefully.”
Mosin, I highly recommend watching this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2vzotsvvkw
Liquid fluoride thorium-burning reactors is the answer to all the no-nukes’ objections.
No plutonium needed, no nuclear weapons proliferation, no high pressure needed, passive shutdown so no meltdown, little requirement for scarce water and it can be recaptured and reused, thorium is abundant — so abundant it’s currently considered a nuisance waste product, thorium can burn up currently existing nuclear waste, and a power plant can be built for much less initial capital than light water cooled uranium-burning reactors.
Speaking of videos.
A far greater threat than nuclear reactors exists, as many here already know:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LW6lOdxqSUE
Negrification destroys everything it touches. Far worse than any nuclear threat.
The Nips were able to rebuild Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Detroit…gone for good.
Saw this at SBPDL, just wanted to share.
Deo Vindice
Sad video.
Niggers in SA inherit untold riches and destroy it.
Afrikaners buy a shantytown and turn it into a cultural and economic center.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orania,_Northern_Cape
—
“Don’t Feed The Animals” is the solution to the Nigger problem, not “Whites Only”.
why not both?
“White” presupposes “Black”.
The implicature being that “Blacks” are human.
One thing, if you study railroad history, the South had far fewer of the ridiculously redundant lines that were so common in the North and the granger Midwest. The fed had to bail out New England railroads twice in the 60s and 70s, culminating in Conrail, who was then bought by the resurgent Norfolk Southern.
That we are “seperate but equal”
Which is false.
*separate
As far as Fukushima, according to all I’ve read about it, the cause of the disaster was not because of the engineering, it was because the Japanese lied about the location and its dynamics.
Basically, when a buyer, especially a foreign buyer, wishes to have a nuclear power plant, they contract one of the few firms that handle nuclear power generation. It is the responsibility of the buyer to supply all data concerning the construction site location. Data like if the area is prone to earthquakes, and if so, all information pertinent to that. Data like soil sample analysis, etc.
The buyer then supplies this information and all design and engineering is done according to specifications dictated by this buyer supplied information. The engineering and design firms rely on honest and accurate information. The engineering firms do some onsite evaluation, of course, but they can only do so much. They must rely on the buyer to know all or as many details as possible that the engineering firm cannot evaluate or uncover.
In the case of the owners of Fukushima, they did not supply all of the needed information that was known about that location. They did not accurately convey the full magnitude of the storms and earthquakes that had been recorded there in the past. The result was the reactors were not built to comply with such extreme conditions. If you are supplied with information that an area only experiences earthquakes of magnitude two on the Richter Scale and you design a reactor to withstand up to maybe five or six, that will not be enough if in fact the location is known to actually have earthquakes of magnitude six and up from time to time. The reactor can be extremely well engineered and even far exceed specifications, but if the supplied specifications are way off right from the start, then you will be courting disaster, and it is not the fault of the design or engineering or construction.
There was nothing wrong with the engineering or construction of the reactors at Fukushima, they actually exceeded specifications. But the Japanese lied. If they had not lied, the reactors would have been designed and engineered to withstand what happened there.
Great points on Fukushima Brutus.
“Garbage in; Garbage out”
It needs to also be pointed out, the number of deaths from radiation from Fukushima: 0
It has now been confirmed that even the deaths that did result from the disaster were not caused by radiation.
Responsible medical authorities say their *may* eventually be *up to*100 deaths from cancer over the next generation as a result of the radiation.
In other words, it was not and is not going to be a nuclear nightmare of radiation deaths.
It is just not what many try to claim.
Thanks for the intell Brutus
I just checked it again the other night. I saw on some other forum site where somebody posted a year old article about radiation levels being so high a robot stopped working. The poster cited a source that made it look like that was the situation right now. Then it went on to claim that hundreds of thousands of people were going to get radiation sickness and die here in America, in just a few weeks(!) it was implied.
This is all nonsense.
“Responsible medical authorities say their *may* eventually be *up to*100 deaths from cancer over the next generation as a result of the radiation. ”
And meanwhile.. the deaths caused by black people over that same generation…
Blacks: Worse for your city than a nuclear meltdown.
I believe it took years before they could examine Three Mile Island by robot, and I believe they are full of shit when it comes to Fukashima. What little I know of physics I can still comprehend entropy and even if the cores have lost their geometry and water there still is a no go zone that is still spewing particles the cores can create.
It is helpful to remember that much of the hysteria over nuclear power is the product of the corrupt news media and entertainment industry. These are same people who in their devotion to truth gave us St. Trayvon of Skittles and the movie Redtails.
Negrification has killed far more people than both atomic bombs and all nuclear power “incidents” combined. It represents a far greater danger than nuclear power ever will, media lies, distortion, and sensationalism notwithstanding.
Technology has only failed us in that it has not yet given us a quick and easy way to eradicate the negro problem. Then again, perhaps as in the case of nuclear power, media lies, distortion, and sensationalism have simply prevented us from implementing an effective solution using available technology.
Deo Vindice
Barb wrote: “Liquid fluoride thorium-burning reactors is the answer to all the no-nukes’ objections. No plutonium needed, no nuclear weapons proliferation, no high pressure needed, passive shutdown so no meltdown, little requirement for scarce water and it can be recaptured and reused, thorium is abundant — so abundant it’s currently considered a nuisance waste product, thorium can burn up currently existing nuclear waste, and a power plant can be built for much less initial capital than light water cooled uranium-burning reactors.”
Thorium has been used in reactors in India for years, and it was used along WITH uranium in many early reactors. There IS waste, and it is much “hotter” than that from uranium reactors, though it doesn’t require storage indefinitely (“10,000 years”) but for only “300 years.” Also, weapon-grade uranium CAN be obtained but requires the most highly advanced separation equipment/technology. I KNOW Thorium is more abundant than uranium in the earth’s crust but for whatever reason, probably location or cost of separation, it hasn’t been less expensive than uranium. There is a lot of thorium in the phosphate deposits mined for fertiliser in Florida, not economical to remove — so a lot of it is spread (along with the uranium and radium and rare earth elements naturally present in the phosphate rock) on our farm fields. I really should wear a mask when spreading.
I still think “Do we REALLY need to use so much electricity?” needs to be asked in each case, before deciding to build another nuclear plant, whether thorium-powered or not. It was suggested (above) that we could ship our nuclear waste to Africa, but couldn’t it over the next +10,000 years diffuse quite far from there? I don’t accept that it is entirely innocuous or causes “almost no” harmful mutations or cancer cases. But I hope thorium reactor technology can be implemented where nuclear power is needed, and of course we still hope for hydrogen fusion.
launch into space. I’ve lived with out electricity for log stretches of time. most people do not want to live that way
Thanks for the kind words and excellent recapitulation of my ideas. I just wanted to add one small thing.
Doing all the things like car sharing, house sharing, and general penny pinching and local production/trade, is all for a single goal:
Don’t get mortgages or car loans. Live without loans and debts, as interest is the parasitism that maintains the YKW System.
It’s that simple. If we don’t borrow money, YKW loses power. If we get rich, we can function as massively distributed local bank for deserving and capable of repaying fellow Whites.
If you have nothing better to do, go to North Dakota, work in the oil fields until you save up about 100,000 (should take you about 3 years, if the System keeps going) and you’ll be able to get a multifamily property with no mortgage in the Kalispell or Montrose PLE. Beware of renting to WN’s, whom you do not know well, many people are drawn to WNism because they have nothing to lose. Just rent to people who seem reliable, and be ruthless and judgmental, because you’re going to be stuck with them. Alternatively, you can hire a property management company to take care of this for you. You won’t make quite as much income, but you’ll have peace of mind.
What stonelifter said.
Nothing that cannot be fixed with a carrier group and a division of marines.
All the resources we need are sitting there in Africa. Sat upon by useless Africans.
Re his mentioning of thorium: I checked. It looked like he gave it all of a paragraph. ~100 words. Not strikingly thorough.
Further, I think he mixed apples and oranges in that he, in parentheses, expressed doubts about a couple of the major claims of the thorium advocates. For example, if I have the quote correctly, he wrote that LFTR’s would produce less waste than the uranium reactors we are familiar with, then added, in parentheses “probably not true.” This strikes me as, at best, mixing apples and oranges –the apples of material, proven physical facts, i.e. what processes ABC on materials XYZ yield, with the oranges of political or social fact, i.e. the odds or probability that under current and foreseeable political, financial, social, educational, etc. conditions, said processes will be able to be uniformly, extensively, and/or thoroughly introduced such that the claim ostensibly debunked could be true; and at worst an ignorant attempt at deception so as not to weaken the overall argument of the book.
“I believe it took years before they could examine Three Mile Island by robot, and I believe they are full of shit when it comes to Fukashima. What little I know of physics I can still comprehend entropy and even if the cores have lost their geometry and water there still is a no go zone that is still spewing particles the cores can create.”
No. Each line here is incorrect.
There are plenty of resources available today, and I am talking about straightforward technical resources, that will explain how a nuclear reactor used for power generation works. Ditto information about Three Mile Island. It was never abandoned and within days many people were there.
If we don’t embrace nuclear we will be burning lignite and sub-bituminous coal. America sits on a giant mound of coal. When oil is too pricey, the green “revolution” will be exposed as the petroleum dependent fraud that it is. People will have two choices: freeze or coal. Because just about anybody with a shovel and a bulldozer can mine coal in many areas, you can guess what will happen. All the protests by the greenies will disappear because they will be right there with the rest of us.
Well, no, it’s not so clear. That’s the point.
And “boondoggles”? Either they’re producing energy or they’re not. If they are, boondoggle schmoondoggle, you’ve got yourself an energy source.
Btw, I wanted to say this on the other thread, how can you compare a living legend like Ray Kurzweil to a worm like James Kunstler? Kurzweil’s predictions may turn out to be incorrect, but his record of innovation speaks for itself. What has Kunstler ever produced besides paens to pessimism?
Barb,
I don’t know that you’re as well informed as you claim. It seems to me more like you’ve read the same book ten times over than ten different books. Ever thought about checking what the “opposition” thinks (and why they think it)?
I suggest that you read another book called TOO MUCH MAGIC that came out a year before Kunstler’s book. It is called “TOO MUCH MAGIC: Pulling the Plug on the Cult of Tech by Jason Benlevi.”
I understood the Neanderthals were extinct, guess I was wrong, they all moved to the southern USA. Perhaps t won’t such a loss when the human species becomes extinct if you people are considered part of it.
As a woman blessed with access to an excellent education, politically informed and active parents, friends, church members I am shocked by the hostile comments. Did none of you ever take U.S. history? This is not a caucasian nation. Scandinavians and Spaniards discovered it inhabited by descendants of immigrants from Mongolia, and with Europeans committed genocide. Since that time it has become a nation of immigrants seeking welcome, safety and equal opportunity from every continent on earth. We now share common gene pools with most of the earth’s peoples. The ideas shared here are deeply “un-american”. Please consider our history. Our founding fathers designed a nation open to all, with no governmental limits on who might immigrate. kal4ever.
I can assure you that you don’t have 1,000th of my knowledge as it relates to American history.
Marcia Dunn says:
August 27, 2012 at 10:58 pm
“This is not a caucasian nation. ”
You anti-whites say that, about all white countries and only white countries, even in Europe you anti-whites say these things about their countries.
“with Europeans committed genocide.”
And what about those Africans that sold their own kind into slavery and what about the GeNOcide the blacks committed against the Hottentots in Southern Africa? And what about those Red Indians that scalped the white immigrants, coming to America? No need to scalp anyone,they were just coming for a better life. And what about Genghis Khan?
As an anti-white, do you hate those peoples’ ancestors and incite against them, or is it only white children you are against?
“Since that time it has become a nation of immigrants seeking welcome, safety and equal opportunity from every continent on earth.”
All nations are nations of immigrants. All nations are created by immigration. All nations are destroyed by immigration.
Anti-whites say, Asia for Asians, Africa for Africans, white countries for everyone. That is genocide for white people.
Marcia, I suggest you familiarize yourself with the UN Genocide Laws, you are in breach of them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide
“Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups.”