LF295 James Howard Kunstler – Living in the Long Emergency

James Howard Kunstler and I discuss the current coronavirus crisis and his latest book Living in the Long Emergency: Global Crisis, the Failure of the Futurists, and the Early Adapters Who Are Showing Us the Way Forward.

In his 2005 book, The Long Emergency, Kunstler described the global predicaments that would pitch industrial civilization into political and economic turmoil in the 21st century – the end of affordable oil, climate irregularities, and flagging economic growth, to name a few. Now, he returns with a book that takes an up-close-and-personal approach to how real people are living now – surviving The Long Emergency as it happens.

Living in the Long Emergency could hardly have been published at a more opportune moment, as governments worldwide and billions of citizens grapple with an unprecedented global crisis. Despite constant words of warning from Kunstler and others with a similarly keen sense of history and proclivity for joined-up thinking, we remain woefully unprepared for any disruption to the complex systems on which industrial civilization depends. More likely than not, however, we will eventually emerge blinking into the glaring light of an uncertain new dawn. Whether we then change our ways or simply fall back into our former slow-death spiral remains to be seen.

Previous interviews with James Howard Kunstler.

Bumper music: Cliff Martinez ‘Traffic OST’
John Carpenter ‘Escape From New York’ OST

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