You're omitting those of us who prefer our lives without the car and simply enjoy walkable cities. I can remember those fleeting exceptions where driving is still a pleasure, but I can't live in those exceptions. The only exception I can live in is a walkable city.
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Yes, "walkable cities" are great.
I happen to live in one. Philadelphia is one of the most walkable cities in the US. When I lived closer to downtown, I could get almost everything I needed without driving. Even now, when I live on the town's edge in an essentially suburban area the Philly sphere of walkability endures. I can still walk to a market, a bookstore a post office, etc. It's a little more of a hike than before but still quite do-able.
We all agree that walkable cities are nice. When Kunstler talks about things like walkable cities, I agree with him.
My disagreements come from his treatment of other topics. Which brings me to:
Shane Taylor wrote:
<snip>
Arguing against denial is exasperating. Jim is arguing with American's dream of cheap energy without end and faith that technology will save us from ourselves. So, I indulge the crankiness.
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This gets to the heart of my objections.
In defense of Kunstler, people usually start in about how America was built on cheap oil and JHK's crankiness is the result of our obstinacy, our foolish 'faith' in technology and our love of "cheap energy". He has to be this way, the argument goes, because we're so very difficult.
Whenever I criticize Kunstler, this is the inevitable reply and I disagree with it. I must tell you that as a black guy, when I read Kunstler's descriptions of the groups most likely to survive and thrive after his projected post "cheap energy" collapse (in, for example, "The Long Emergency", assorted essays and the novel "World Made By Hand") I feel a prickling on the back of my neck. I hear the unmistakable voice of an old white guy who isn't merely "cranky" but a cleverly entertaining style of soft bigot, passing judgment on people he's already inclined to dislike, but using unpreparedness for 'Peak Oil' as an excuse.
Somehow, his New England Yankees are the best prepared. Their small town virtues and do-it-yourself spirit make them ready for his world made by hand.
Maybe I'm misjudging the fellow but that's what I'm receiving and it makes me dislike him. A lot. I get that you dig at least part of his output. We disagree about how tolerable his "crankiness" is.
Beyond questions of racial, or even regional chauvinism there's something profoundly ass backwards about yelling at people for living in the world as they find it. All this talk about our stupidity and techno-fetishism and expectation of cheap energy supposes that everyone spends everyday questioning the world's fragile structures. Instead of what we actually do such as work, raise our kids, argue online and try to get laid.
Alright, America -- indeed, the world -- needs to wake up and smell the C02e and perhaps even the 'peak' (though informed minds clash on that last bit -- and by "informed" I don't mean clever writers processing second and fifth hand sources like Kunstler and his doomy, 'big die off' comrade, Richard 'The Party's Over' Heinberg).
Once you've said that, what comes next? More entertainingly doom-tastic lecturing? If that's all you've got maybe it's time to sit down for a while.
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Jordan often criticizes list members who get high horsey about SUV drivers.
The reason is that you shouldn't assume an air of moral superiority over people who, for the most part, thought they were simply buying a safe, affordable form of transportation. Yes, the vehicles are a problem, yes we need to do much better. But you don't encourage the required changes by acting as if you have all the answers and are morally superior to an entire civilization.
Only Old Testament prophets could swing that gig and it often didn't work out so well for them.
Besides all the above, I don't understand why so many lefties admire Kunstler when we have our own, much more comprehensive critique of modernity's problems, wasteful energy policies and the ugliness of the built environment.
.d.