Too Much Magic

In Too Much Magic, Kunstler builds on the core arguments of The Long Emergency and argues there is now compelling evidence that the long emergency - a period of increasing resource shortfalls, gradual economic decline, and a forced change to humanity’s lifestyle - has now begun. Forces including the economic depression, decreasing oil production, and increasingly dramatic climate change are combining to - as Kunstler puts it - "reset the fundamental terms of everyday life.”

In Chapter One, "Where We’re At”, Kunstler lays out the bleak situation that the world currently finds itself in. Not only have we surpassed peak oil (the point at which global oil production peaks and begins to fall), we are living in the wake of recent hurricanes, tsunamis, droughts and other natural disasters, and the havoc they have wreaked (just think of Fukushima). Governments seem powerless to stop the economic rot, and yet there appears to still be a lot of what Kunstler terms 'wishful thinking’ going on - the idea that technology will somehow deliver us from our myriad problems. What’s more, much of this wishful thinking manifests itself in techno-grandiosity: ideas of flying cars, cheap food for all, and alternative energy sources that will more than cover any shortfall from dried up oil or burned out gas. Kunstler argues compellingly that we need to get real with the situation that we’re in, and suggests concrete plans that are focused on getting rid of our dependence on a high-energy lifestyle. He advocates investing in passenger trains for example, which consumers will not use until they are at least as convenient and cost-effective as the car. Kunstler argues that we’ve had 'too much magic’ - who thinks about the technology involved in flight when they’re on an airplane, or gets a thrill out of turning on a flat-screen TV? We need to stop taking technology for granted, and get used to living with less.

In Chapter Two, "Farewell to the Drive-in Utopia”, Kunstler discusses one of the topics in which he is most well-versed: suburbia and how it is destined to erode and decay. Suburbia, Kunstler argues, is by its nature criminally inefficient: impossible to traverse except by car, and filled with houses that are too large and extravagant to make sense in a lower-energy future. The recent falling out of the bottom of the property market, and the spate of foreclosures and deflation of property prices are indicative that American suburbia’s days are numbered. Kunstler forecasts the imminent end of what he calls the 'suburban spralwl-building economy’ (as opposed to the 'post-industrial’, 'information’ or 'service’ economy - epithets that the government applies to an economy that has in large part been rolling along on inflating property prices) and argues that the demographic shift and mass migration that will ensue from the death of suburbia will be one of the defining features of America’s experience of the long emergency.

Chapter Three, "Cities of the Future”, looks at a different - but equally inefficient - way of housing humans: in skyscrapers. Since the ¿s, one of the dominant tropes in visions of the future has been tall, glass-clad buildings that will house humans in clean, beautifully landscaped environments, far above the city streets themselves. These visions are still dominant today, in books like Greg Lindsay’s Aerotropolis (which Kunstler singles out with particular ire), and Kunstler also rails against grandiose technological chimerae like vertical farms (humans have farmed horizontally for hundreds of thousands of years, and there’s a good reason for this) and Modernist architecture (which often fails to accomplish critical tasks expected of buildings like keeping the rain out). Kunstler also points out that skyscrapers, of all buildings, have the shortest shelf lives - most only last a generation, and require frequent and expensive repair. So he argues that we will have to return to traditional ways of occupying the landscape: walkable cities, towns and villages, located on waterways and - if things don’t go too badly - connected by railway lines.

In Chapter Four, "The Dangers of Techno-Narcissism”, Kunstler demolishes the myths surrounding technologies like genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and the abolition of aging and death. In particular, he looks at the ideas delineated in futurist Ray Kurzweil’s book The Singularity Is Here. Kunstler analyses Kurzweil’s visions of future war (nanobots, dust-sized aircraft, "smart weapons” like guns that can shoot around corners). He sees these futuristic ideas as completely out of line with reality: each gallon of gasoline used by American forces in Afghanistan cost $400 - where will the Defence department get the money to invest in new technologies when it’s going to become even more overstretched with rising oil and commodity prices? Kunstler also rails against Kurzweil’s ideas that new sources of energy (shale oil, clean coal, shale gas) will arise just in time to make up for the sources we deplete.

In Chapter Five, "The Futility of Party Politics in the Long Emergency”, Kunstler turns his attention to politics. He traces the fall of Democratic liberalism and analyses how average Americans lost their love for progressive liberalism, and how the economy morphed into its current bizarre state under Nixon, Carter, Clinton and the Bushes. He also looks at how the financial crisis dominated the 2008 election and how Obama’s moves to attempt to tame it, and to institute real regulation, have all but failed.

Chapter Six, "Going Broke the Hard Way: the End of Wall Street.”, Kunstler examines the banking industry in the wake of the financial crisis, analyzing step-by-step what went wrong with the banks, the regulators, and the other key players involved, and identifying the hubris which directed much of the banking sector’s behavior. Kunstler traces the changes in America’s economy and financial sector from the end of World War II, examining how we got into the mess we’re in, and giving a blow-by-blow account of the key early moments of the financial crisis. He criticizes Obama for his failure to bring real change to the financial industry, and argues that we are very much still living in the aftermath of the crisis - nothing has been resolved, no perversions of the system have been rectified, and no senior bank officials have been charged or called on to answer for their actions in a profound way. And given that the whole financial crisis hinged on mortgages and on a collapsing property market, Kunstler does not see the economy improving any time soon - indeed, he argues that the endless financial crisis could be viewed as an extension of peak oil, climate change and population overshoot, coinciding with cycles of history predispose to change (the millennial generation).

In Chapter Seven, "The Energy Spector: Oil and Gas, Alternative Energy, and Waiting for Santa Claus”, Kunstler analyzes the various peaks and troughs in oil production to date and showing how we reached a peak in 2006 that will never truly be surpassed. Global demand for oil is now hovering above total oil production - and this gap is set to get wider and wider. Kunstler also looks at other sources of fossil fuels: biodiesel, tar sands, shale oil, and looks in detail at fracking, but firmly believes that these sources will not be able to close the gap. In this oil-poor climate, energy-intense sectors such as the airline industry are struggling dramatically - just look at the recent news from American Airlines. Kunstler also a