a Post-oil Society
Bigger must give way to smaller,
today’s average college graduate. One thing
for sure: Teaching children is not liable to
become an obsolete line of work, compared
smarter. A novelist tries his hand at
with endeavors such as public relations and
sports marketing. Lots to do in education,
some doable proposals.
and lots to think about. Get busy, future
teachers of America.
The great harbor towns, such as make things on a smaller scale by other
Baltimore, Boston, and New York, no longer means. Perhaps we will have to use more
can devote their waterfronts to condo sites water power. The truth is, we don’t know yet
9
We have to reorganize the medical
system. The skein of
and bikeways. We have to put the piers and how we’re going to make anything.
intertwined rackets based
warehouses back in place (not to mention
on endless Ponzi buck-
the accommodations for sailors).
passing scams will not
Programs are under way to restore 7
The age of canned entertainment
is coming to an end. It was fun for
survive the discontinuities
maritime shipping based on wind — yes, a while. We liked Citizen Kane and The
to come. We probably will
sailing ships. Beatles. But we’re going to have to make
have to return to a model
our own music and our own drama down
of service much closer
to what used to be called “doctoring.”
5
We have to transform retail trade. the road. We’re going to need playhouses
The national chains that have used the and live performance halls. We’re going to
Fewer doctors of the 21st century will
high tide of fossil fuels to contrive predatory need violin and banjo players, playwrights
drive German cars, and there will be fewer
economies of scale are going down. Wal- and scenery makers, and singers. We’ll need
opportunities in the cosmetic surgery fi eld.
Mart and the other outfi ts will not survive theater managers and stagehands.
Let’s hope that we don’t slide so far back
the coming era of scarce, expensive oil. They The Internet is not going to save canned
that we forget the germ theory of disease,
will not be able to run their “warehouses entertainment. The Internet will not work so
or the need to wash our hands, or the
on wheels,” those tractor-trailers rumbling well if the electricity is on the fritz half the
fundamentals of pharmaceutical science.
incessantly along our interstates. Their time.
12,000-mile supply lines to Asia also are
endangered as the United States and China
10
Life in the USA will have to
become much more local, and
compete for Middle East and African oil. 8
We’ll have to reorganize the
education system. The centralized
virtually all the activities of everyday
The local networks of commercial secondary school systems based on the
life will have to be re-scaled. You can
interdependency that these chain stores yellow school bus fl eets will not survive. The
state categorically that any enterprise now
destroyed will have to be rebuilt brick by huge investments we have made in these
supersized is likely to fail — everything from
brick. This will require rich, fi ne-grained, facilities will impede the transition out of
the federal government to big corporations
multilayered networks of people who make, them, but they will fail anyway. Since we will
to huge institutions. If you can fi nd a way
distribute, and sell stuff. be a less affl uent society,
to do something practical and useful on a
Don’t be fooled into thinking that we probably won’t be able
smaller scale than it is being done now, you
the Internet will replace local retail to replace these centralized
are likely to have food in your cupboard and
economies. Internet shopping depends facilities with smaller and
people who admire you.
on cheap delivery, and delivery no longer more equitably distributed
An entire social infrastructure of
will be cheap. It also is predicated schools, at least not right
voluntary associations, co-opted by the
on electric power systems that are away.
narcotic of television, needs to be
completely reliable. That is something we Personally, I believe
reconstructed. Local institutions for care of
are unlikely to enjoy in the years ahead. that the next incarnation
the helpless will have to be organized. Local
of education will grow
politics will be much more meaningful as
state governments and federal agencies
6
We will have to make things again out of the home-schooling movement, as
in America. However, we will make those efforts gather locally into units of
slide into complete impotence. Lots of jobs
AP IMAGES
less stuff. We will have fewer things to more than one family. God knows what
here for local heroes.
TLER/
UNS
buy, fewer choices of things. The curtain happens beyond secondary ed. The
is coming down on the endless blue-light- big universities, both public and
special shopping frenzy that has occupied private, may not be salvageable.
James Howard Kunstler is the
C
OM / K
T
.
author, most recently, of World
AR the forefront of daily life in America for And the activity of higher education
Made By Hand, a novel of post-
/
CLIP decades. But we still will need household itself may engender huge
oil America. His essays have
goods and things to wear. resentment among those blocked
been published in the Atlantic
Y
ONS
As a practical matter, we are not going from it. Monthly, New York Times
to relive the 20th century. The factories But anyone who learns to Magazine, Rolling Stone, and
OM / CRA
from America’s heyday of manufacturing do long division and write a
many other periodicals. He
T
.
C
AR
(1900-1970) were designed for massive coherent paragraph will be at a
was an editor at Rolling Stone
CLIP
inputs of fossil fuel, and many of them have great advantage — and, in any
in the 1970s.
G/
A
B
been demolished. We’re going to have to case, probably will outperform
DECEMBER 2008 / NEWSMAX 29
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