Kunstler: A Christmas Eve Story

Two things happened to me over this weekend before Christmas that jarred me a little. One was when an old friend said I sounded crazy, and the second was when I read the galley proof of Dmitry Orlov’s forthcoming book, Reinventing Collapse (New Society Press, Spring 2008).

I ran into my old friend “G” on our town’s main street, Broadway, on Saturday afternoon and we ducked out of the drizzle into a nearby coffee shop to catch up. G had worked the past twenty-five years in the software industry and recently bought the company that employed him. He was consumed now with plans for “growing” this company. I made a point not to antagonize him with my Long Emergency notions, since his obvious mental investment in the wish for a reliable “growth” economy was a bulwark of his current world view. But the conversation did get around to the various troubles in the capital markets and the possible connection of this with the global oil predicament.


G doesn’t believe we have a problem with oil. He said, if the fuel efficiency of every American vehicle on the road was increased five percent, we wouldn’t have to import any oil. This assertion was, shall we say, not consistent with anything I understood about the situation, and I said so, pretty much in those words, to avoid ramping rhetorically into debate mode. G said, “Do the math.” I suppose G had read this “formula” somewhere and was impressed by it. “The Market,” he said, would “take care” of our motor fuel problems. Just wait and see. We talked for a while about getting the railroads working again. G said it would never happen. “This isn’t Europe.”

I was content to let is drop, but G then said. “You know, you’ve been predicting all these catastrophes for years now, but we’re still here, the cars are all rolling down Broadway out there, and life is going on. You’re beginning to sound like a crazy person.” It didn’t bother me especially that G thought my my ideas were outlandish so much as being comprehensively written off by an old friend as a crazy person, someone who… I dunno… rummages through dumpsters and talks to himself on the street without any sign of a cell phone in hand. I didn’t hasten to defend myself. G obviously needed to feel that the world would continue functioning like a well-oil machine now that he was responsible for an operation that employed a hundred other people. We parted agreeing to acknowledge a difference in our view of things.

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