From “The Long Emergency and the Destiny of Cities”

On Tuesday, February 20, James Howard Kunstler presented his lecture titled “The Long Emergency and the Destiny of Cities,” which was also the keynote address for the 2007 Humanities Symposium of Loyola College in Maryland. Most of what Kunstler addressed in his talk came from his most recent book, The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century. The book and his lecture focused on the oil crisis and the importance of the new urbanism in cities.

The first topic that Kunstler addressed was the national or global oil predicament. Not only are we in trouble with decreasing national production of oil, but more importantly the world is being affected by increasing production. One of the most obvious effects of increased production is the change in climate. James Kunstler only sees these problems getting worse. Mainly, instead of the United States looking for alternative fuels, they look for alternative ways to import different sources of oil, even though it may be of low quality. Lower quality fuels produce more hazardous chemicals in the world’s atmosphere. A new approach needs to be taken.

Unfortunately, taking new approaches to situations does not come easy for Americans. One interesting quote that Kunstler gave was one of the Vice President Dick Cheney, saying that “the American way of life is non-negotiable.” This just shows where the American mindset is at. Instead of putting a real effort into finding a better solution, we are stubborn and want to live the comfortable lives that we currently preside in.

Kunstler later went on to discuss the reasons why we as Americans have impediments to thinking outside the box. One impediment is the belief that dreams come true when you wish upon a star. Problems do not just go away when you ask them to. Therefore, it is our responsibility to deal with the problems at hand as a mature adult would. Another impediment is the worship of unearned riches, or in other words, the belief that one can get something for nothing. One important life lesson that I have learned is that there is only one sure-way path to success, and that is though hard work. Sure you can get lucky once in a while, but nothing can replace or have an equivalent value to hard work.

If we work hard and seriously as Americans, we can overcome the obstacles at large. Even if this may mean the downscaling of America, or making daily life more local, changes need to be made. We can not just sit around and hope that “technology” will fix everything for us. For example, one real-world improvement that can be worked on is the railroad systems. Making this system faster and more efficient is a problem that we are capable of completing.

James Kunstler did not leave the audience with much hope until he put the crowd into action. He said that the hope has to be generated by us, particularly since we are college students. We the students have the ability to make a difference and can make things happen since we are the future of the world. To sum it all up, I will end as Kunstler did by saying, “Go forth and do good things!”