Kunstler book review at AlJazeera
September 29, 2012
Post Carbon Advisor James Howard Kunstlers book Too Much Magical Thinking was one of the books covered in this article by Robert Jenson.
From the article:
Kunstler avoids the popular term "collapse", which implies dramatic destruction, and prefers "contraction". But whatever the term, there’s no avoiding that we have "no credible model of a post-industrial economy that would permit our accustomed comfort and convenience to continue as is."
Borrowing from anthropologist Joseph Tainter, who argues that societal collapse often results from an over-investment in complexity that has diminishing marginal returns, he avoids rescue remedies that assume we can invent our way to paradise simply because we want that to be true. "Innovation cannot be an end in itself," he writes, "and we have made ourselves prisoners to a cult of innovation."