emergent ink

The wake up call that James Howard Kunstler delivered in the May 25 Washington Post (Wake Up, America. We’re Driving Toward Disaster) explained how we got ourselves into the current situation this way:

Years ago, U.S. negotiators at a U.N. environmental conference told their interlocutors that the American lifestyle is “not up for negotiation.” This stance is, unfortunately, related to two pernicious beliefs that have become common in the United States in recent decades. The first is the idea that when you wish upon a star, your dreams come true. (Oprah Winfrey advanced this notion last year with her promotion of a pop book called “The Secret,” which said, in effect, that if you wish hard enough for something, it will come to you.) One of the basic differences between a child and an adult is the ability to know the difference between wishing for things and actually making them happen through earnest effort.

The companion belief to “wishing upon a star” is the idea that one can get something for nothing. This derives from America’s new favorite religion: not evangelical Christianity but the worship of unearned riches. (The holy shrine to this tragic belief is Las Vegas.) When you combine these two beliefs, the result is the notion that when you wish upon a star, you’ll get something for nothing. This is what underlies our current fantasy, as well as our inability to respond intelligently to the energy crisis.

Kunstler sometimes leaves people stumped and frustrated when he warns them about what’s coming. What most people want to hear, once Peak Oil starts to sink in, is this: what are we supposed to do about it? The point he tries to make with them is that there are no easy solutions. We need to realize that Santa isn’t going to leave hybrids under our trees. The hybrids are not the answer. We are going to have to change the way we live.

The lifestyle many Americans have grown accustomed to is not going to be up for negotiation; it is going to be taken from us. Drilling in ANWR or off Florida is not going to stop this; the Bakken Shale is not going to stop this (see ASPO’s The Illusion of Vast Undeveloped U.S. Oil Resources). Suing OPEC (or going to war to secure our oil supply) is not going to stop this. We won’t be able to supply the amount of energy we have in the past to keep this place running. If we can’t maintain supply, then we will have no choice but to reduce demand.

There has been an almost 5% drop in gasoline consumption as gasoline topped $4 a gallon. If our politicians were serious about ending our dependence on foreign oil, they would be talking about sacrifices Americans are going to have to make, like a reduction in demand of around 65%. We’re not just talking about the occasional backyard barbeque instead of a trip to the beach.

In his Washington Post piece, Kunstler did talk about some possible actions we should be taking, like trying to get the railroads running again, growing our food closer to home, and reconsidering the way we live. He added this at the end:

We don’t have time to be crybabies about this. The talk on the presidential campaign trail about “hope” has its purpose. We cannot afford to remain befuddled and demoralized. But we must understand that hope is not something applied externally. Real hope resides within us. We generate it — by proving that we are competent, earnest individuals who can discern between wishing and doing, who don’t figure on getting something for nothing and who can be honest about the way the universe really works.

I’ve watched Barack Obama talk, and tried to get people to listen to what he was saying, and some of them say, “That’s great, to talk about hope, but that’s all it is.” No, it is not. Obama is talking about exactly the kind of hope that Kunstler says we need in order to face this crisis that most of us don’t even realize is coming. He is trying to get us to believe again, like generations of Americans before us, that we can make things happen. That is the point of saying “Yes, we can.” And Obama never talks about hope without also talking about the hard work needed to bring about real change. Never. The thing is, I’m not sure many people realize that.

His opponents never got what Obama was saying, and still don’t. They think they are appealing to our realism by saying that Obama is just speaking words, as if words were just collections of vowels and consonents and held no power. Hillary Clinton spoke about “Yes we will” instead of “Yes we can” and some people thought that was clever, but that was just a collection of vowels and consonents. It also showed a lack of recognition of the importance of the message Obama was delivering, and how hungry America is for that message. Hillary didn’t get that, because she is a political creature.

John McCain, too, is afraid of “Yes we can”. He is not opposed to the message. He wants the American people to have hope, too. But his message is this: Yes, you can, but you need me to lead you. And that is not the same thing. McCain was a pilot. Obama was a community organizer. They have different ways of looking at the world.

We’ve acted like children, expecting our government to provide and to protect us, demanding attention. We’ve turned our government into a doting, overprotective parent, and it refuses to face hard truths or come to hard decisions because “our way of life is not negotiable.” Americans are sheltered and spoiled.

We need to act like adults. Real hope lies within us, and by now most of us recognize that it certainly does not come from our government. We can make things happen. We don’t get something for nothing. That is not the way the universe works.