(2004-07-19) Kunstler Prep For Future

James Howard Kunstler on preparing for the post-CheapOil world. The salient features of that world will be turbulence, economic systems failure, and falling standards of living. The greatest imperatives for Americans will be the reconstruction of local communities and economic networks of interdependency and the re-establishment of local agriculture... The suburbs will surely not survive the end of cheap oil and natural gas, but the big cities are going to be in trouble too. I doubt, for instance, that skyscrapers will be usable twenty-five years from now. Indeed anything over seven stories is liable to be a problem. Unless we undertake a massive program of building Nuclear Power generating plants, the electric grid is going to be very unreliable...There will be many more jobs in small-scale farming and gardening, in repairing things of all kinds, in the non-bureaucratic aspects of health care, local transport, local energy production (especially small hydro), and basic education... Think about living locally in a just community, being useful to your fellow citizens, and being a good neighbor.