James Howard Kunstler

James Howard Kunstler is perhaps best known for The Long Emergency, which predicted the financial meltdown and the implications of the peak oil problem. The Geography of Nowhere , about the fiasco of suburbia, is a campus cult classic among the architecture and urban planning students. It was followed by a sequel, Home From Nowhere and The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition . Mr. Kunstler has also authored 10 novels including World Made By Hand, a story set in America’s post-oil future. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Rolling Stone and The Atlantic Monthly.

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View articles by James Howard Kunstler

Overpopulation in the USA and the Fate of the Yeast People

Nov 17th, 2009 | By James Howard Kunstler | Category: Economics, Featured

Every time I do a Q and A after a college lecture, somebody says (with a fanfare of indignation) — so as to reveal their own brilliance in contrast to my foolishness — “You haven’t said anything about overpopulation!” Right. I usually don’t bother. Their complaint, of course, implies that we ...read more

Tags: carrying capacity, overpopulation, overshoot
Posted in Economics, Featured | 13 comments

Hypercomplex Systems Will Fail Due to Scarcity of Energy and Credit

Nov 11th, 2009 | By James Howard Kunstler | Category: Economics, Featured

In The Long Emergency (2005, Atlantic Monthly Press), I said that we ought to expect the federal government to become increasingly impotent and ineffectual - that this would be a hallmark of the times. In fact, I said that any enterprise organized at the colossal scale would function poorly in ...read more

Tags: credit, Energy, government, reality
Posted in Economics, Featured | 21 comments

Iran Fidgets in the Middle East: World War III Anybody?

Oct 6th, 2009 | By James Howard Kunstler | Category: Featured, International, Politics

When Alan Greenspan predicted three percent economic growth showing up in the reported figures for the third quarter of 2009, did he mean executive compensation packages? Maybe the lesson here is: don't ask a crackhead to predict the future supply of crack. Greenspan's greatest success may be to drive economics ...read more

Tags: Energy, Middle East, World War III
Posted in Featured, International, Politics | 4 comments

Inflation, Deflation, Peak Oil and Complex Systems

Sep 29th, 2009 | By James Howard Kunstler | Category: Featured, Macro Economics

In my father's house are many mansions. Surely one of them has a room with no elephants in it.... Not to crunch too many metaphors right here at the top, but a consensus seems to be firming up in the animate jello of the Internet that we have entered the Season ...read more

Tags: deflation, Gold, great depression, inflation
Posted in Featured, Macro Economics | 5 comments

Ruinous Debt to Create Futureless Suburbia

Sep 25th, 2009 | By James Howard Kunstler | Category: Featured, Macro Economics

In our history, the American nation committed obvious sins against select groups of people, and we've paid bitterly for some of that. But now it's our sins against the land itself that threaten to sink the USA as a viable enterprise. It's odd, that in his otherwise excellent blow-by-blow account ("Eight ...read more

Tags: car-dependence, debt, Oil, suburbia
Posted in Featured, Macro Economics | 11 comments

Reality Receding Across America

Sep 17th, 2009 | By James Howard Kunstler | Category: Featured, Macro Economics

Now that everybody in the USA, from the janitors in their man-caves to the president addressing congress, has declared the "recession" over, is exactly the moment when what's left of the so-called economy is most likely to implode. If there were still shoeshine boys on Wall Street, they'd be starting ...read more

Tags: America, civilization, economy
Posted in Featured, Macro Economics | 19 comments

Cars, Wishes and the Apocalypse

Sep 9th, 2009 | By James Howard Kunstler | Category: Featured, Macro Economics

In my larval, pre-blogging days, I always faced the back-to-school moment with abject dread. It meant returning to a program of the most severe, mind-numbing regimentation in the ghastly New York City public schools after a summer of idyllic unreality in the New Hampshire woods, where I went to a ...read more

Tags: American life, apocalypse, cars
Posted in Featured, Macro Economics | 3 comments

Debt and the Fog of Numbers

Aug 11th, 2009 | By James Howard Kunstler | Category: Featured, Macro Economics

One of main reasons behind the vast confusion now reigning in the USA, our failure to construct a coherent consensus about what is happening to us (or what to do about it), is our foolish obsession with econometrics -- viewing the world solely through the "lens" of mathematical models. We ...read more

Tags: debt, econometrics, suburbia
Posted in Featured, Macro Economics | 16 comments

Monumentally Tragic Disappointment on the Horizon

Aug 4th, 2009 | By James Howard Kunstler | Category: Featured, Macro Economics

Whenever the herd mentality lines up along a compass point leading to "permanent prosperity," or a yellow brick road lined with green shoots, or something like that, I tend to see the edge of a cliff up ahead. We are now completely in the grips of the deadly diminishing returns ...read more

Tags: easy credit, unsustainable
Posted in Featured, Macro Economics | 16 comments

Contraction and Electric Car Whimsy

Jul 16th, 2009 | By James Howard Kunstler | Category: Featured, Macro Economics

The cat coming out of the bag this week -- a frazzled, flaming, rabid, death-dealing cat -- is the news that Goldman Sachs will announce impressive second-quarter profits, and set aside $18 billion or so for employee bonuses averaging $600,000 per head (though, of course, not evenly distributed among them). ...read more

Tags: America, economic contraction, suburbs
Posted in Featured, Macro Economics | 6 comments