JHK’s Three-Act Play
Something like a week remains before General Motors is
reduced to lunch meat on industrial-capital’s All-You-Can-Eat buffet
spread. The wish is that its deconstructed pieces will re-organize into
a “lean, mean machine” for producing “cars that Americans want to buy,”
and that, by extension, the American Dream of a Happy Motoring economy
may be extended a while longer.
This fantasy rests on some
assumptions that just don’t “pencil out.” One is that the broad
American car-owning public can continue to buy their cars the usual
way, on credit. The biggest emerging new class in America is the
“former middle class.” Credit kept the remnants of the middle class
going for decades after their incomes stopped growing in the 1970s.
Now, their incomes have stopped coming in altogether and they are
sinking into the swamp of entropy already occupied by the
tattoo-for-lunch-bunch. Of course, this has plenty of dire
sociopolitical implications.
Unfortunately, the big American
banks did their biggest volume business in their biggest loans at the
very time that that the middle class was on its way to becoming former.
Now that the former middle class is arriving at its destination, the
banks are so damaged by bad paper that they won’t make loans to even
the remnant of the remnant of the middle class. In other words, the
entire model for financing Happy Motoring is now out-of-order, probably
permanently.
Even assuming some Americans can continue buying
cars one way or another, I’m not convinced that we can make the kinds
we fantasize about. Notice, nobody talks about hydrogen-powered fuel
cell cars anymore. Why not? Because the technicalities and logistics
could not be overcome at the scale required — i.e. at the current
scale of mass highway motoring and commuting. Sure, you could build a
demonstration vehicle and run it around a test track a few times, but
could you build a mass production car by the tens of millions that
would run for 150,000 miles without a hugely expensive fuel cell
change-out? No, at least not within the time-window that the liquid
hydrocarbon fuel problem presented. Or could you construct a hydrogen
fuel station (and product delivery) network replacing the old gasoline
stations? Fuggeddabowdit. Hydrogen, as an element, was just too hard to
move and contain. It’s teeny-weeny atoms leaked out of valves and
gaskets remorselessly and you couldn’t pack enough into a tanker truck
to make the trip to its destination worthwhile. Schemes to generate
hydrogen on-board all ended up in the “perpetual motion” sink.
The
current wish is that the dregs of GM and Chrysler will hire low-paid
elves with no pension or health benefits and pump out hybrid and/or
electric cars. It’s conceivable that we could “reverse-engineer” a
Prius or an Insight, but considering what a lousy job American car
companies did on reverse-engineering everything that Japan or Germany
pumped out over the past thirty-five years, the odds are pretty high
that these new products will be just lame enough to fail against the
established competition. What’s more, they also present logistical and
technical problems. For the hybrid, gasoline is still an issue (and
Jevon’s Paradox comes into play: the more efficient you make a means for using a resource, the more of that resource you will use).
For both the hybrid and the electric car, the issue of how to get
enough lithium for the batteries obtains, at least for now, given the
current state-of-the-art battery technology. Most of this rare metal
now comes from one place, Bolivia, and everybody wants “a piece” of it.
Electric vehicles in large numbers depend on either coal or nuclear
powered electric generation, each presenting special hazards. Both
hybrids and electric cars would depend on the old installment loan
purchase system — at least to work in the current mode of suburban
living, long-range commuting, and interstate highway travel.
Boone
Pickens’s plan of last year for converting the US car fleet to natural
gas was another fantasy with wide appeal. But it depended on the
companion fantasy of building massive wind-farm infrastructure on the
great plains to shift natural gas use from power plants to vehicles,
and the financial crisis has destroyed the capital necessary to even
begin planning that project — it even destroyed a large part of Mr.
Pickens own capital reserves. Anyway, I would not be so sanguine about
the long-term future of the shale gas plays that this scheme was based
on. The depletion rates of these wells is horrendous and the amount of
steel needed to keep production up is not consistent with the realities
of the available infrastructure.
All the technologies under
consideration are not likely to extend the Happy Motoring era. A
prayerful reflection on them can only reinforce the specialness of oil
and its byproducts — cheap oil double-specially — as well as
reinforcing the reality that the cheap energy era itself is over. And,
of course, in the play of events over the past several years we can see
the relationship between cheap energy and easy credit, and how our
entire economy has run aground, one way or another, on resource limits.
The
implications of all this in the sociopolitical and geopolitical realms
are pretty daunting. As long as we maintain Happy Motoring as the
normal mode of existence in this country, we are going to see an
ever-growing class of very resentful citizens pissed off at being
foreclosed from it. In my oft-repeated scheme-of-things, this leads
very quickly to the trap of political extremism, perhaps even corn-pone
Naziism, as the system becomes increasingly difficult to prop up except
by force. In geopolitical terms it leads to ever more dangerous
international contests over the world’s remaining oil reserves.
All this leads to two conclusions.
One
is to accept the fact that the Happy Motoring era is over and to devote
our remaining resources to re-localization, walkable communities, and
public transit. It obviously requires a very drastic revision of our
current collective self-image, of what we aspire to and who we are. If
the car companies have any future at all, it should be based on making
the rolling stock for public transit — and for now the most
intelligent choice for us is to fix the existing passenger railroad
lines instead of venturing into grandiose new transit systems requiring
stupendous capital outlays. Let the car era wind down gracefully.
Triage and prioritize the highway maintenance agenda — we won’t be
affluent enough to keep repaving the whole existing system — and let
other nations meet the diminishing demand for cars in the USA. This
would be a “best case” scenario. (Other nations may decide to go
further up the Happy Motoring road at their own eventual peril.)
My
second conclusion is not so appetizing, namely that the bankruptcy of
General Motors may set in motion a chain of events that will accelerate
the destructive unwind of the bad credit economy, the damage to our
bond values, the loss of faith in our currency, and the authority and
legitimacy of our leaders. This last dire outcome might be allayed if,
say, President Obama directed his policy efforts to the items in the
paragraph above, that is, a reality-based agenda for true change in how
we live — but who can feel confident about that happening these days?
Maybe it will take a horrifying chain of events to get Mr. Obama there.
And then, tragically, he may be overwhelmed by the chain of events
itself. I hope not.
____________________________________?
My 2008 novel of the post-oil future, World Made By Hand, is available in paperback at all booksellers.
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Great post and I like the site makeover! Although I have to point out there is some technical issues with the top of this section. The “Comment on current events by author of Long Emergency” text seems to be overlapping with the title of the post “Wishes, Hopes and Fantasies” Just thought I would give you the heads up. Anyway, great commentary, keep it up.
First post?
Lucky me.
Pity I didn’t have anything new to say.
I hope you’re going to leave all the comments visible on this blog Jim.
Mr. Kunstler,
I’m sure you have heard about the new farm bill moving through congress H.R.875. The bill essentially, under the guise of public health, will make organic farming, and even growing in grandmas back yard, for as far as I can tell illegal, or at least so regulated as to put small farmers out of business. I am wondering if you have any feelings about how a bill such as this will fair in a low energy type future, with the mix of so many people out of work, and a re-emergence of organic farming and gardening. I should also add that Monsanto has a huge part in this legislation.
Thanks,
Travis
Dear Howard –
thanks a lot for the continuous weekly flow of Comments on Current Events, which I usually try to read as soon as they pop up on Mondays.
I am reading this from Munich in Germany, one of the home towns of gasoline swallowers, and … having done more than 30 years of hefty trans-world airline travel on business … being more than familiar with the BaltoWash, Midwest and SF and LA Happy Motoring setups.
At this point I do not envy all of you. However, as much as we have been slightly less messy about mileage performance around here, we are equally well stuck in the abyss – albeit almost nobody realizes it.
Europe is a grandious makeup for Happy Longdistance Trucking – for example: milk that originated from cows in Austria is being trucked overnight to Greece to make Yoghurt. According to the “Delivery Just in Time” trucks from Scandinavia have meanwhile traversed Europe diagonally to deliver the required plastic cups, which where produced in Finnland and labelled in Portugal. Also, the aluminum mylar lid is being hauled from GB through the tunnel and France and the Alps, not to forget that the aluminum itself came initially from a melter in Romania. In the end the properly packaged, wrapped and stamped Yoghurt from Greece is labelled BIO-Produce and trucked back to a central logistic station, say Frankfurt in Germany. From where it might end up through trucking on the shelf in Athens, Lisboa, London, and Helsinki — Why are you surprised ?
Although we do have a multinational highspeed rail network – almost all the consumer stuff is trucked – reason: on-time delivery and PRIME REASON: the motorways are a perfect logistic stock keeping system with minimum threshold AND the capital investment is federal (public) money, not company money.
Wholly Europe – the business part destined to go through the drain, and the political make-up to fall apart accordingly.
Greetings (as long as we have the web being powered)
Michael
I believe that the real hidden surprise this past week was the FBI claim of a terrorist threat prevention. A point that screams for attention, is that we are most likely just ONE major event away from a scale tipping. A single shoulder fired missile at a major American airport, an Iranian facility taken “out” by Israel, A North Korean bird finger, almost any single event will push the gas pedal to the floor on reccession, etc. Mr. Kunstler correctly points out the GM Bankruptcy as a possible tipping point on our way down the slide. But I would not be surprised at all to wake up one day soon, to find that our gradual downward path has suddenly reached a cliff edge without so much as a twig available to grab onto.
I certainly hope I am just being scared of the dark. And that greater good will ultimately carry the day. But each day is NOT like the previous one. New events with new directions now seem to happen with an acceleration unmatched during my lifetime. History is full of single events that changed everything. Some idiot is bound to do something soon. Perhaps “THAT” will wake us all up. Randy M.
First!
It should be a simple calculation to figure out how much it would/will cost to build a new energy system. A while back LLNL was hiring a economist to do just that calculation. But when I try to get the results from LLNL they have no knowledge of any such project 🙂
Test
Strange days indeed, as a resident of the far flung, overly car dependent, exurbs of Detroit, I find the car wreck that is the collapse of Chrysler and General Motors, both repulsive and engrossing. About once each week I’m running into former automotive engineers wondering how they are going to make a living, most put a brave face on things, and a lot are bragging about their buyout offers, not unlike the way they used to brag about their new 5.7liter turbo hemi trucks. I know it’s not their faults, but I’m having trouble finding sympathy.
Hey Howard, dig the new digs. I don’t take everything you say as the gospel but you do open my mind and bring up points of discussion between my friends and I. I look forward to my Monday morn’ fix. Keep up the great observations. -HC
First post?
Like the new look, Jim 🙂
Men using such sites have the right to choose and are not obliged to marry the girl they came into contact with. They don’t buy a mail order girl but pay to use the services they want. The how much are mail order brides cost of a mail order bride includes the subscription price, communication, gifts, arranging a meeting, and a date. That is, there is nothing illegal here. The sites also have their privacy policies and terms of use, making it easy to determine their reliability.