What it presupposes is that we aren't addressing problems that will be harder to resolve the longer we avoid them. The problems require collective action and can *not* be solved by the lonely choices of disparate atoms, because those choices are interdependent. The entire point of talking to people about these problems is to make some sense of what solutions are both feasible and desirable. At least, that should be the point.
....
All of which is true.
But as I wrote earlier, this isn't what I get from Kunstler. Although he mentions the need for collective action it's usually in passing as he hurries on to the next delicious doomsaying. There are no solutions in Kunstler's world, only the "Long Emergency".
Now perhaps over cocktails he's open to the idea that our challenges can be addressed. But in his public persona and writing it's doom all the way down. After awhile, that ceases to be a critique, if it ever was.
I've already discussed the veiled bigotry I detect.
I understand that you like his stuff -- at least to some extent. I don't want a repeat of the Pollan threads where my (and shag's) dissection of the weaknesses of Pollan's view led to charges of loving agri-business and not caring about the Earth.
I get everything you're saying. I just think you're giving Kunstler far too much credit because he's a good writer and says things which roast American complacency. All well and good. But we should not confuse that with an actual analysis.
I think 'HMFJ' put it well when he or she wrote:
<snip>
It'd be interesting to examine the ways the doom-based, resource-based, technological and non-social critique of peak oil allows a completely clear-eyed critique of the social ills of modern society, while permitting an explanation which never confronts social inequity and allows quite scurrilous realist selfish opinions.
.d.