The Get-Ready Men
technologyreview.com
Kunstler does not believe the United States will survive as we know it but will instead break down into autonomous, isolated regions. The fun is certainly over in the desert United States. According to Kunstler, cities like Las Vegas--dependent on cheap air conditioning, air travel, and good highways--will wither into dust. Around the country, a trip to town will become a day's excursion, a trip to the nearest large city a journey of several days, and a trip across the country nearly unthinkable.
The suburbs--which Kunstler calls "the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world," and for which he seems to reserve a special contempt--will become particularly miserable places, devolving into wastelands of abandoned McMansions, empty Wal-Marts, and disintegrating asphalt. We will not be able to heat our 5,000-square-foot houses, if we can get to them, and we will not be able to fill the box stores with Chinese goods, or to resurface the roads, which we won't be using much in any case. |
