No problemo? Rochester and the decline of cheap oil

When James Howard Kunstler’s first book, “The Geography of Nowhere,” came out in 1994, talk about running out of oil was akin to talk about that fake moon landing. Crackpots, oil executives, and every undergraduate geology student in the county knew we were approaching the peak of worldwide oil production, but most people had better things to worry about. Most still do.

Almost immediately after his book was published, Kunstler become the go-to guy for biting criticism of America’s built environment. His four non-fiction books and popular blog (The Clusterfuck Nation Chronicle) have focused on the unsustainable aspects of our culture. Like a revival preacher, he has railed against what he sees as our asinine insistence on constructing car-dependent sprawl and our blindness toward our impending energy problems. His message is to repent while there is still time.

Extreme, maybe. Wrong, maybe not. Increasingly, the concept of an end of the cheap oil era has been percolating into the mainstream culture on the wings of Iraqi war critics. Major media outlets including Time, National Geographic, and “60 Minutes” have weighed in, but none have taken Kunstler’s view that the results will be an end to globalism, suburbs, and easy motoring. Kunstler sees a wholesale change in every aspect of our lives.

Kunstler has become the kind of lecturer that groups bring in when they want to stir up debate about planning for our collective future. Locally, the RochesterRegionalCommunityDesignCenter and the Rochester chapter of the American Institute of Architects will host a lecture by Kunstler at the German House on April 11.

Rochester City News