James Howard Kunstler on Why Technology Won't Save Us
Jeff Goodell, Rolling Stone
James Howard Kunstler is a novelist and critic who made his name trashing suburbia. The Geography of Nowhere, published in 1994, is a wildly entertaining rant against strip malls, fast food, and America’s "happy motoring utopia." A decade later, he followed up with The Long Emergency, in which he argued persuasively that the decline of cheap oil will bring an end to civilized life as we know it.
In his latest book, Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation, Kunstler zeroes in on the central narrative of our time: that we are a highly evolved and technologically sophisticated civilization that will use our ingenuity and engineering expertise to come up with a solution to all the problems we face, from the end of cheap oil to the arrival of extreme climate change. In other words, we're not going to collapse into the dust bin of history like the Mayans or the Easter Islanders, because we have iPads and antibiotics.
In Kunstler's view, this is a childish fantasy. "I’m serenely convinced that we are heading into what will amount to a 'time out' from technological progress as we know it," Kunstler, who is 63, told me from his home in upstate New York. "A lot of these intoxications and deliriums and beliefs about technology are going to run into a wall of serious disappointment." In short, Kunstler believes we are living on borrowed time – our banking and political systems are corrupt, our fossil fuel reserves are dwindling, the seas are rising – but we’re still partying like it's 1959. "Reality itself is very uncomfortable with fraud and untruths. Sooner or later, accounts really do have to be settled."
Why Is your book called Too Much Magic?
It's part of the ongoing story of what's turning out to be a crisis of civilization. I tried to describe the first part of the crisis in The Long Emergency. Since that time, it has become self-evident that we have a range of very difficult problems facing us, and we are taking refuge in wishful thinking, telling ourselves a story that we can continue to live the way that we’re living now. We desperately want reassurance that we can keep this hyper-complex engine of an advanced American Dream economy going – despite all the signs that are telling us that we probably have to make new and different arrangements for everyday life.
http://energybulletin.net/stories/2012-07-26/energy-july-26
Jeff Goodell, Rolling Stone
James Howard Kunstler is a novelist and critic who made his name trashing suburbia. The Geography of Nowhere, published in 1994, is a wildly entertaining rant against strip malls, fast food, and America’s "happy motoring utopia." A decade later, he followed up with The Long Emergency, in which he argued persuasively that the decline of cheap oil will bring an end to civilized life as we know it.
In his latest book, Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation, Kunstler zeroes in on the central narrative of our time: that we are a highly evolved and technologically sophisticated civilization that will use our ingenuity and engineering expertise to come up with a solution to all the problems we face, from the end of cheap oil to the arrival of extreme climate change. In other words, we're not going to collapse into the dust bin of history like the Mayans or the Easter Islanders, because we have iPads and antibiotics.
In Kunstler's view, this is a childish fantasy. "I’m serenely convinced that we are heading into what will amount to a 'time out' from technological progress as we know it," Kunstler, who is 63, told me from his home in upstate New York. "A lot of these intoxications and deliriums and beliefs about technology are going to run into a wall of serious disappointment." In short, Kunstler believes we are living on borrowed time – our banking and political systems are corrupt, our fossil fuel reserves are dwindling, the seas are rising – but we’re still partying like it's 1959. "Reality itself is very uncomfortable with fraud and untruths. Sooner or later, accounts really do have to be settled."
Why Is your book called Too Much Magic?
It's part of the ongoing story of what's turning out to be a crisis of civilization. I tried to describe the first part of the crisis in The Long Emergency. Since that time, it has become self-evident that we have a range of very difficult problems facing us, and we are taking refuge in wishful thinking, telling ourselves a story that we can continue to live the way that we’re living now. We desperately want reassurance that we can keep this hyper-complex engine of an advanced American Dream economy going – despite all the signs that are telling us that we probably have to make new and different arrangements for everyday life.
http://energybulletin.net/stories/2012-07-26/energy-july-26
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