Tuesday, November 24, 2009

KUNSTLER: What is our future economically? Compressive Contraction, Convulsion

Kunstler: Our destination is the same: the absolute necessity to reorganize how we live. Among the many elements of this is the fact that "globalism," in the Thomas Friedman sense of the word, is over. The urgent need to re-localize economies makes this self-evident. As a practical matter for us, this means committing to import replacement - making things we need in the US, probably much more regionally. "Globalism" now joins the many other fantasies that we can no longer indulge in.

SHOOT: Some of the things we take advantage in terms of globalisation are:
- long distance air travel [in fact air travel period]
- supermarkets with oysters from China and mussels from New Zealand
- multinational companies
- courier companies
- getting cheap stuff from China
- getting cheap labour
- driving around a lot
clipped from kunstler.com
     We are seeing a comprehensive failure of leadership in every sector and every level of American life - in politics, business, banking, education, news media, medicine, and the clergy. All are determined to pretend that we can somehow continue the habits and behaviors of the pre peak oil era. They are all unwilling to face reality, and are all engaged in mutually supporting each other's dangerous fantasies.
If we don't attend to the transformation of American life by downscaling our activities and changing the way they are carried out, and re-localizing them, we will see our society disintegrate - and I use the word "dis-integrate" with purposeful precision. Everything will come apart - our political arrangements, our households, our health and well-being.
At the moment, banking is disintegrating.
 blog it

No comments: