JAMES KUNSTLER: alt.brains

[Tace]

James Kunstler -- Clusterfuck Nation

The energy debate around the United States has taken a definite turn this spring, since oil prices stepped back up to the $70 zone, but the thinking around these issues has only gotten worse. That's because there is only one idea dominating the public discussion: how to keep our cars running by other means, at all costs.

We're certainly hearing more about energy from government and business. President Bush made the "addicted to oil" confession in January. Chevron and British Petroleum (or Beyond Petroleum, as BP wishfully styles itself) have both run ad campaigns acknowledging the oil-and-gas crunch, and the mainstream media has joined the campaign to pimp for bio-fuels. But all the talk is driven by the assumption that we will keep running WalMart, Disney World, and the interstate highway system just like we do now, only with other "alternative" liquid fuels.

The more naive members of the environmental sector have been suckered into this line of thinking, too -- especially the college kids, who imagine we can just divert x-amount of acreage from Cheez Doodle production and re-direct it to crops devoted to making liquid fuels for Honda Elements. They need to get some alt.brains.

Nobody is talking about the much more likely prospect that we'll have to reduce motoring drastically, and make other arrangements for virtually every aspect of daily life, from how we get food, to how we do business, to how we inhabit the landscape. The more we resist thinking about the larger agenda for comprehensively changing daily life, beyond our obsession with cars, the more likely we will veer into hardship, political trouble, and violence.

more

http://worldnewstrust.org/modules/AMS/article.php?storyid=3784

[orwell]

1. alt.brains...

...Where is that forum. Maybe we could pass it on to the White House...

Thanks for the article.

[Bamboo]

2. The atom becomes the mighty bomb.

Kunstler wrote "Home From Nowhere" with the thesis that suburbia is not worth protecting because it is not really a place just a smear of retail and cul-de-sacs.Who would fight for the ideals of warehouse clubs and dinner just like mom used to buy?

The article alt.brains goes against that thesis by wishing rebellion greater than the '60s from people he previously claimed were apathetic.Has he defrosted some and believes wishes really do come true?

The article linked below by Kunstler describes the American Century full of sound and fury.He expects us to go mushroom hunting with him after he has been poking us with his pipe.

http://www.kunstler.com/mags_lumpenleisure.html