JHK: Yeah, and people generally misunderstand what the implications are. A lot of people think it’s about running out of oil. It isn’t particularly about running out of oil. It’s about living in an industrial society that can no longer expect to have more energy but only remorselessly less energy.

RB: You talk about fuel as a platform.

JHK: I made that reference in a different context in the book. That was in the discussion of alternative energy. There is a lot of delusional thinking about how we are going to get out of this pickle. In fact, I like to think of it this way. There are two gigantic mental obstructions that’s preventing us from thinking coherently about where we are. One of them I call the Jiminy Cricket syndrome—the idea that when you wish upon a star, your dreams come true. There is a lot of wishful thinking in this culture. The other one is the Las Vegas-i-zation of the American mind, which is based on the idea that it is possible to get something for nothing. You combine those two ideas and you get a lot of delusional thinking.

RB: I wouldn’t call that thinking at all. These notions might be, if they obtain, subsumed values. If you asked people, they might affirm those things as their beliefs.

JHK: Yes, but you could also say it translates into forms of behavior, including doing things that bring extremely short-term benefits and a lot of long-term destruction.

Robert Birnbaum has an interview with James Howard Kunstler about his book:
The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastophes of the Twenty-First Century.

If I read one thing this weekend, this is it. Facinating conversation. More and more of my friends (and I) get this. Kunstler looks at suburbia, oil, cities, discontinuity, the delusion that technology can replace the energy we are losing…
More of Kunstler’s work is here.

via Jordon Cooper