One of the writers I've been paying attention to for years now is James Howard Kunstler. I first ran across him when I read a book written by him my son Nathan had at home with him from college. It was The Geography of Nowhere, and it dealt with the great mistake that America had made in the way it structured its housing and other property since the beginning of the auto era. It was really an eye-opener for me.
More recently, I've been reading his work on Peak Oil, which is the theory that the global supply of oil has, or soon will, peak and start declining, leading to all kinds of problems. His book, The Long Emergency, goes into the global ramifications of peak oil.
Kunstler is always a bit of a gloomy, almost apocalyptic read. His knee-jerk reaction to events seems to be to put the worst possible spin on it, from his perspective. I think he is often correct in what he says, but he doesn't allow much room for innovation, new ideas, and new inventions, it seems to me.
He also publishes a weekly 'essay' on his website, called 'The Clusterfuck Nation Chronicle'. It is always an interesting perspective on the current events, and I want to quote a brief paragraph from it here. I don't necessarily agree with him, though I find him both interesting and sometimes persuasive.
The broad American public voted for "change" but they thought that meant a "changing of the guard." Out with the feckless Bush; in with the charismatic Obama... and may this American life now continue just as it ever was. The change actually coming will be much more than they bargained for, namely our transition from a wealthy society to a hardship society. The sharp break is a product of our years-long failure to reckon with the energy realities of our time. We're still confused about that, but it's hard, otherwise, to ignore the massive disappearance of capital, asset values, livelihoods, domiciles, comforts, and necessities.
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