A crash course

…Our country has squandered its post-World War II prosperity, much of it on investments unsuited to the 21st century. The United States overextended itself, building a system of interstate highways and smaller roads and bridges that neither the states nor the federal government can seem to find the money to maintain. When we’re lucky, locally vital bridges like the Route 2 bridge in Middlesex or the bridge in downtown Richmond are closed before they collapse. When we’re unlucky, as they were in Minneapolis last year, an 8-lane bridge collapses while filled with rush-hour traffic.

James Howard Kunstler, author of “The Long Emergency,” has called post-war sprawl “perhaps the greatest misallocation of resources the world has ever known.” Suburbs, and the isolated country homes that we have so many of in Vermont, require large infusions of oil. Oil moves people back and forth to work, play, shopping and worship. Oil brings in food and goods and carries away garbage.


As world oil production reaches a peak and then declines, Kunstler expects sprawl to leave a legacy of ghost suburbs and radically altered living arrangements. Those suburbs that are not abandoned will be sparsely occupied, with lawns turned into mini-farms. Proud family McMansions will be subdivided into apartments by owners who can’t afford to live in them alone. People will be concentrated along rail or bus lines, and those left living in the countryside will be isolated, their trips to town infrequent at best.

The collapse of the housing bubble and high energy prices are already starting to realize Kunstler’s expectation. Subdivisions are being abandoned, half-built. And home values are dropping faster in outlying areas than in or near city centers.

Robert Hirsch has a very different background than Kunstler, yet he’s arrived at similar conclusions. Kunstler’s background is in theater, journalism and writing novels and non-fiction books. Hirsch is a technocratic Washington insider, having worked for the Atomic Energy Commission, the U.S. Department of Energy, and prominent government contractors. He first became aware of peak oil while on contract to the Department of Energy, researching what causes oil price changes.

Hirsch carried out a more detailed study of peak oil’s economic effects, and his reaction was untechnocratic. When I listen to him describe his feelings during the research, it sounds like he came near to despair.

Rutland Herald