KunstlerCast - Conversations: Converging Catastrophes of the 21st Century

JHK and Duncan visit The Sanctuary for Independent Media , an old church in North Central Troy NY which has been repurposed as community media space. After a public lecture, JHK takes questions from the audience on a variety of urban planning and energy topics. Sponsor: http://cnu19.org

The 2010 U.S. Census figures have led to a newly empowered suburban electorate. But the figures also indicate that several major U.S. cities are increasing in population at their cores. JHK offers some analysis. Sponsor: The Congress for the New Urbanism CNU 19, http://cnu19.org

JHK has said many times that he's allergic to conspiracy theories. Yet his own ideas about peak oil sort of sound like a conspiracy theory since he believes that the U.S. government has a dependency-enabling relationship with the American public regarding our energy consumption habits and reality. JHK concedes that there may be a "soft conspiracy" at play.

James Howard Kunstler believes Americans and their leaders are lying to themselves about our current energy predicament. There is a tremendous body of fantasy about how much energy Americans can harvest from shale gas, shale oil, tar sands, running the American truck fleet on natural gas and other forms of alternative fuel for motoring. There is even one fantasy that an endless supply of abiotic oil is located in the earth’s core. Kunstler runs down the list and gives us the score.

James Howard Kunstler reacts to a recent article from Rustwire.com titled "Michigan CEO: Soul-Crushing Sprawl Killing Business." Kunstler believes that the diminishing returns of suburbia are becoming self-evident to people of all walks of life, and this piece of writing is yet another example. He also corrects some of his previous comments about Detroit and the Eminem Chrysler ad. At the end of the program, Duncan plays some music by Michigan-based band Frontier Ruckus from their album "Deadmalls&Nightfalls."

JHK and Duncan apply an urbanist lens to a recent string of drunken St. Paddy's Parade Day riots in three U.S. cities: Newport, RI, Hoboken, NJ, and Albany, NY. Topics covered in this discussion include: monocultures, transient populations, the ghettoization of the generations, self-regulating social scenes, swarm behavior and social networking technology, Glenn Beck, open container laws in cities and The Broken Windows Theory.

After the recent earthquake and tsunami, James Howard Kunstler believes that Japan may be propelled into a much different society very quickly -- one that somewhat resemble his World Made By Hand vision. But JHK thinks that using less fossil fuel and dexomplexifying their society might be a good thing for Japan as it may give them a headstart down the road that other complex societies like the U.S. are heading anyway. Sponsor: http://postpeakliving.com

In this mini episode, Leisureville author Andrew Blechman talks with Jim and Duncan about pigeons, the fascinating subject of his other book Pigeons.

Author Andrew Blechman discusses his book Leisureville, a tragicomic report on The Villages, America's largest planned retirement community. In this version of suburbia, everyone drives golf carts, no one works and children aren't allowed. Sponsor: PostPeakLiving.com

JHK and Duncan get caught up on questions from listener callers. Topics include post-petroleum education, the homogenization of America, Vancouver and light pollution. Sponsor: http://www.postpeakliving.com