JAMES KUNSTLER: Two Peckerheads

[Tace]

by James Kunstler -- World News Trust

I'm fond of saying that I'm allergic to conspiracy theories. Behind our country's dismaying governance, cluelessness really rules, not plotting or scheming. Take, for example, these astounding remarks made Friday by former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich on NPR's "Marketplace" show:

"As China grows -- at the current rate it's growing, in twenty or thirty years -- and becomes the number one largest economy in the world, I think China may become our nemesis."

One would think that Mr. Reich is a pretty smart guy -- former Rhodes Scholar (same class as Bill Clinton), Harvard faculty, cabinet secretary. Now, why on earth would Mr. Reich believe that China can possibly keep behaving the way it does for another two or three decades? China faces energy starvation along with the rest of the world. China has less oil left than the United States (and the United States would have roughly four years worth of oil if we were deprived of imports -- 26 billion barrels used at the rate of 7 billion a year).

There is no way that China can put another one half percent of its population behind the wheel of a car without sending its army and navy out to seize foreign oil fields -- let alone continue manufacturing toasters and Christmas tree ornaments for Americans. And Americans are not going to have the the cash to buy those things, whether or not we are actively engaged in a war for the world's remaining oil. And all this trouble is going to play out in the next decade, not in "twenty or thirty years." Near the end of the segment, Reich repeated this inanity:

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[Coastie for Truth]

1. Been reading Kunstler for some time

and attending his local presentations.

He is a good writer (in the mechanical and creative sense) and has been able to join several threads

1. A general unease about "peak oil."
2. A feeling - finally coming to the fore - that we are in Iraq for oil.
3. A feeling that we are at fault for spoiling our environment, over building, and global warming.
4. The general Malthusian gut feeling.

He has done this while being cavalierly dismissive (dismissively cavalier?) of scientific fixes, technological fixes, and even conservation (all of which he dismisses as "cornucopia-ism" and "utopianism" - and compares to the ). I have had the urge to debate him on his next visit - but he is so glibly incorrect - or incorrectly glib. I'll stick with Lovins.

[yurbud]

2. Was there any serious doubt we were in there for oil?

[Coastie for Truth]

3. Some question what they perceive as the "cheerleaders" NT

[depakid]

4. Consensus trances

of one sort or another have generally preceded the collapses of most complex societies.

The elites just can't come to grips with the fact that the efforts to maintain- much less expand- their "way of life" has come to the point of diminishing returns, and their systems cannot be sustained by any amount of effort, absent a new energy subsidy and sufficient ecological services. Their colleagues and competitors alike reinforce each other- and so they barrel ahead toward disaster, heedless of the obvious warnings.

Classic overshoot.

One society noted in the literature actually did "powerdown." The Byzantine empire of the 7th Century engaged in a systematic decentralization and land distribution process known as "themes," which were precursers to later Feudal society. With this less complex and less "costly" system in place, Byzantium rose from near ruin to once again become the premier power in Europe.

Unfortunately, elites rarely are willing to give up their spoils- due to greed, shortsightedness (or simply not giving a damn about their children and grandchildren) and also a phenomena Kunstler has noted before called "the psychology of prior investment."

I don't agree with a lot of Kunstler's jeremiads, but I think he'll eventually be proven right about this predicition- neither of the two major political parties are incapable of dealing with the upcoming problems, and won't survive another couple of decades- expecially not in their present forms.