SFCC panel discusses future of energy
The “dirty secret” about the U.S. economy, according to social commentator and former Rolling Stone editor James Howard Kunstler, is that it is dependent on unsustainable development, and Americans cannot afford it anymore.
Author of “The Long Emergency,” about what the future will look like after the era of cheap fossil fuels, Kunstler joined regional academicians, planners and activists in a panel discussion Thursday on “sustainability” at Spokane Falls Community College.
About 200 people heard five speakers, moderated by SFCC English professor Paul Haeder, discuss sustainability issues such as population, oil, water and agriculture at the college’s Student Union Building.
Take trains, for example – a subject that really gets Kunstler rolling.
Nothing would have a greater impact on reducing America’s dependence on foreign oil than restoring our nation’s railways, he said.
“The fact we are not doing that is a disgrace,” he said. “We have a rail system the Bulgarians would be ashamed of.”
It is ridiculous that the one passenger train linking Washington’s two biggest cities leaves Spokane before daylight, he said. As a registered Democrat, he bemoaned his party’s refusal to make restoration of the nation’s railway system a political issue, and took the opportunity to describe former presidential candidate John Kerry as “a haircut in search of a brain.”
“We don’t have to worry about the Republicans,” Kunstler added, “because they are about to get Hooverized” due to poor economic conditions.
Taking questions from the audience, he described what he sees as an imminent global disaster or the long emergency: Few Americans realize that they don’t have to run out of oil before industrial civilization comes crashing down. That will happen sometime before 2010, he predicted, after world oil production peaks.
When that happens, the oil that is left will be harder to get and in places where the people hate us, he said.
The United States reached its peak domestic oil production, about 11 million barrels a day, in the 1970s, Kunstler said. Last year the nation produced about 5 million barrels a day while consuming about 20 million barrels. Since 1999, non-OPEC oil, such as that from the North Sea, has been declining as global discovery of new fields has become insignificant.
There is also reason to believe that Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil reserve, has passed peak production, Kunstler said. That country has failed to increase production despite repeated pleas by the United States over the past two years.
As if this were not enough bad news, another panelist, Gabor Zovayni, EWU professor of planning and author of “Growth Management for a Sustainable Future,” weighed in with more.
China’s 12 percent rate of economic growth has put that nation on a course to surpass the U.S. economy by 2020, Zovayni said. In the process, China is consuming ever more of the world’s energy and making environmental sustainability more unlikely. Instead of exporting grain, China now imports it, he noted.
Other panelists Thursday were Glen Crosby, a Community Colleges of Spokane philosophy instructor, who spoke of the ethics of sustainability; Paul Lindholdt, who serves on the board of the Northwest Fund for the Environment; and Christy Lafayette of the Selkirk Conservation Alliance for Outreach, who spoke about urban sprawl and water protection.
Kunstler also spoke Wednesday at SFCC and Whitworth College and Thursday night at Gonzaga University as part of SFCC’s “Sustainability Symposia,” which continues through Nov. 16.