Kunstler suggests that “cheap abundant energy” has facilitated ever-increasing industrialization for centuries. But now that society is in a period of self-destructive capital accumulation, he expects debt to increase as abundance in energy drops. The tremendous amount of accumulated debt, “a by-product of cheap abundant energy,” will mean that in the future governments will be less able to make investments in socially-beneficial programs. *

Please have a look at our delicious link “Collapse” for an update on various thinkers who predict a dire post-Peak-Oil future.

Following is an excerpt from an interview with James Kunstler by Chris Martenson, author of the Long Emergency:

“The economy’s a mess. What’s the best possible outcome to this and how does it come about?

JHK: The best possible outcome would be a peaceful re-set to a lower scale of activity — the whole downscaling and re-localization package. It’s hard to see that happening smoothy.

It will be very painful because we’re talking about liquidation and de-leveraging beyond even Great Depression levels. We have to allow a clearing of mis-investment. Unfortunately, this means not just the “toxic” paper from the colossal frauds and swindles of Wall Street but much of the infrastructure of suburbia itself, which is losing value now even despite massive government efforts to prop up house prices and pretend that losses in commercial real estate haven’t occurred. That clearing process is so tremendous that it is hard to imagine a way that it could occur without leading to gross political disorder — including the possible breakup of the USA into smaller autonomous regions. We’re looking at institutional failure at never-before-imagined levels: pensions and social security lost, insurance companies and banks collapsing, the medical system in disarray, really the whole social safety net and beyond just dissolving. This is a comprehensive economic collapse beyond the scale even of the Soviet collapse which, Dmitry Orlov tells us, at least allowed people to stay in their homes and get around on public transit when all else failed.

One much-fretted-over outcome is authoritarian government in the USA. We can see the larval stage of that now with the tea baggers and the theocratic right-wing and a Republican Party that has made itself hostage to the John Birch Society — but I maintain, as I wrote in The Long Emergency, that it’s more likely the federal government will become impotent and ineffectual, and therefore unable to carry out a “corn-pone Nazi” program, even if such characters got a hold of the offices.

In any case, America will be faced with rebuilding all the major pieces of its economy at a lower scale: farming, commerce, transportation, education, banking, you name it. This re-set will occur naturally — if we don’t blow ourselves to Kingdom Come — but there’s no telling how long the process might take. We do know that following the collapse of Rome, Western Europe endured nearly a thousand years of relative hardship. I’d add that societies are essentially emergent organisms and that this economic re-set would therefore be an emergent phenomenon — not something that required centralized planning or anything like it.

One notable side effect of all this will be a “time out” from technological innovation, which is destroying the ecosystem of the planet Earth, our only home. The human race needs a time out from all this techno-magic-mischief, a period to reflect on what we’ve done and how we ought to behave with this stuff. I don’t even know for sure whether it’s a time out or a game-over for technology, and I’m not convinced that we need to know at this point.

What steps are you currently taking in preparations for the upcoming “post-peak” years? What do you advise to those simply looking to protect the purchasing power of their current wealth?

JHK: Well, at 62 I’ve already outlived Babe Ruth, Mozart, Abe Lincoln, and George Gershwin, so however long I go from here is “gravy.” But I do all I can to maintain good health. I eat mostly plants, as Michael Pollan would say. I get a lot of exercise. I lead a purposeful daily life. I stay current with the dentist. I made the formative decision of where-to-live over thirty years ago when I settled in a “main street” small town in upstate New York. My surplus wealth is invested for the moment in hard gold, the Sprott Physical fund, Australian and Canadian short term bond funds (cash equivalent), and Potash mining. I am renting my dwelling, sitting out the housing collapse. I acquired the NY State handgun permit (not so easy). I have some tubs of brown rice, lentils, and curry powder, etc., stashed away. Alas, I didn’t have the capital twenty years ago to get hold of forty acres and a mule — but that’s not a bad idea for other people.

Are you able to tell (either based on your website viewership or book sales, or from any other source) in which parts of the country/population your teachings are gaining the most traction?

JHK: My only index of that is the size and mood of audiences where I speak around the country. The Pacific Northwest is always a lively spot. The people who show up are intelligent, informed, and interested. In Southern California I seem to be utterly unknown. Parts of the Midwest, such as Wisconsin and Minnesota, seem to be organizing for a different economy, but other parts (rural Illinois, Indiana, Ohio) are sheer zombie-land. New York City and Washington exist in bubble-fantasylands of their own. Rural New England is pretty peak oil aware, though the Boston-Cambridge hub is locked into transports of techno-rapture, probably due to the techno-grandiose culture of MIT. The baleful influence of Harvard shows up in the urban design and architecture field, where they are preoccupied with narcissistic careerism rather than repairing the human habitat. Dixieland is hopeless, what with their thrall to the born-agains and the misfortunes of their demographic (namely, “Cracker Culture” which celebrates ignorance and violence).

It seems inevitable that the suburbs (with 60-mile commutes) and places like LA will suffer badly in a peak oil future. Do you still hold the view that some regions are going to fare substantially better than others?

JHK: It ought to be self-evident. I mean, compare Phoenix and Portland, Oregon. Phoenix is utterly toast in a few years. They can’t grow any food there without expensive and heroic irrigation. They have water problems. They’re slaves to their cars. They’re in a place where even the hamburger flippers need air-conditioning to survive. It’s quite hopeless there. Portland, on the other hand, has turned itself into one of the finest walkable cities in the USA and the Willamette River Valley is one of the most productive farming micro-regions in the world. Human beings will continue to live and thrive to some extent there. Similarly, I think the Great Lakes region is undervalued these days. It is whole lot of good ag land surrounded by the world’s most extensive inland sea — kind of a Mediterranean of fresh water. I remain pessimistic about Dixieland, which I think will be prone to violence and political disorder. In the longer run I believe it will become what it was before World War 2: an agricultural backwater. But, really, everybody in every region of the country will be touched by the problems of the long emergency.”

Watch this video:

(two follow up videos here)