Peak-Oil Prophet James Howard Kunstler on Food, Fuel and Why He Became a Vegan

[Guest guest]

the Long Emergency was one of my favorite books from a few years ago. But, i'm a

doomer, so

 

 

 

Peak-Oil Prophet James Howard Kunstler on Food, Fuel and Why He Became

a Vegan

 

By Kerry Trueman, AlterNet. Posted May 7, 2009.

 

 

Kunstler dishes on the collapse of our institutions, why " recovery "

may never come and how to survive the fall of farming as we know it.

 

 

 

 

 

I grew up in Woodland Hills, Calif., a nominally pastoral,

petrocentric Los Angeles suburb, so peak oil prognosticator James

Howard Kunstler's dim view of our car-crazed culture really resonates

with me.

 

Kunstler's relentless skewering of suburbia, and his penchant for

apocalyptic predictions have landed him a reputation as a cranky

Cassandra. But as Ben McGrath observed while strolling around Saratoga

Springs with Kunstler for a recent New Yorker piece, " Far from the

image of the stereotypical Chicken Little, he was more like an amiable

town crier whom the citizenry regarded fondly, if a bit skeptically. "

 

So, when a friend and I found ourselves headed to Kunstler's neck of

the woods for a conference recently, we arranged to have dinner with

Saratoga Springs' resident soothsayer. Contrary to his contrarian

reputation, Kunstler proved to be an affable, upbeat guy.

 

We chatted about food, politics, urban planning, gardening and a dozen

other topics, but I'm not much of a note-taker; I'd rather eat than

tweet. So our dinner conversation was off the record, including,

mercifully, his ribald remarks about Alice Waters and Martha Stewart,

which decency should preclude me from even alluding to.

 

However, he graciously agreed to answer my questions via e-mail about

his conversion from carnivore to (mostly) vegan and other foodish and

fuelish topics.

 

Kerry Trueman: Let's get right to the meat of the matter -- or,

rather, the lack thereof. You used to enjoy eating " lots of meat, duck

fat, butter by the firkin. " What made you decide to go more or less

vegan in recent months? Was it hard to make the transition to a plant-

based diet?

 

James Howard Kunstler: It was as simple as a trip to the doctor's

office. My cholesterol and blood pressure were too high. I had to take

some radical action. I've enjoyed the challenge of cooking with a very

different range of ingredients. But I like cooking and am pretty good

at it -- I worked in many restaurant kitchens when I was a starving

bohemian -- and I figured a lot of things out.

 

For instance, that you can make stocks and sauces by braising onions

and aromatics without oil or butter. The only thing I really miss is

making really bravura dishes for company, like chicken pie with a

butter-saturated crust, duck-and-sausage gumbo, brownies ... you get

the picture. ... I'm still excited by the challenge of vegan (or

nearly vegan -- I use skim milk) cookery.

 

There are some excellent cookbooks out there, by the way, like Vegan

With a Vengeance by Isa Chandra Moskowitz, The Accidental Vegan by

Devra Gartenstein, and the Candle Cafe Cookbook by Joy Pierson and

Bart Potenza.

 

KT: A study has just come out showing that although the French spend

two hours eating each day -- roughly twice as long as we do -- they're

among the slimmest of the 18 nations in the study. Americans were the

fattest, with more than 1 in 3 Americans qualifying as obese. How

would you explain this phenomenon? What compels Americans to eat so

many of our meals in our cars?

 

JHK: Americans eat so many meals in cars because: 1) The

infrastructure of daily life is engineered for extreme car dependency,

and 2) because the paucity of decent quality public space and so-

called third places (gathering places) for the working classes (and

lower) -- and remember, it is the working classes and poor who are way

disproportionately obese. The people portrayed in Vanity Fair magazine

are not fat. I suspect that the amount of time Americans spend in

their cars is roughly proportionate to the amount of time French

people spend at the table.

 

Fast food is not a new phenomenon in the USA, however. Frances

Trollope's sensational travel book of the 1830s, The Domestic Manners

of the Americans dwells on the horrifying spectacle of our hotel

dining rooms, where people bolted their food with disgusting manners.

Americans have been in a tearing rush for 200 years.

 

KT: In The Long Emergency, published in 2005, you predicted with

astounding accuracy how the subprime mortgage meltdown would unfold.

Your latest novel, World Made By Hand, takes place in the near future

after a massive flu outbreak that originated in Mexico. Um, what

should we start worrying about next?

 

JHK: Worry about the " recovery " that never comes and the insidious

collapse of our institutions and arrangements that will proceed from

this. Worry about lost incomes and vocations that will never come back

(e.g. marketing exec for Target, Inc.) and the need to find new ways

to be useful to your fellow human beings (and incidentally perhaps

earn a living). Worry about finding a community to live in that is

cohesive enough to stave off anarchy at the local level. Worry about

building the best garden you can and making good compost. Worry about

how difficult it is to learn how to play a musical instrument at age

47.

 

KT: You recently wrote " there's no way we can continue the petro-

agriculture system of farming and the Cheez Doodle and Pepsi Cola diet

that it services. The public is absolutely zombified in the face of

this problem -- perhaps a result of the diet itself. " OK, so how will

we stock our post-peak-oil pantries? Do we really need to start

hoarding rice and beans?

 

JHK: Get some kind of a hand-cranked home grain mill. Personally, I

think it is indeed a good idea to lay in a supply of beans, lentils,

rice, oats, other grains and don't forget salt, boullion (soups can

sustain us with any number of ingredients), dried onion flakes, spices

(chilies and curries especially). Our just-in-time, three-day's-worth-

of-inventory supermarket system is very susceptible to disruption. And

we're very far from establishing workable local food networks in this

country.

 

The fragility of petro-ag is being aggravated by the collapse of bank

lending now. Farmers need borrowed money desperately. Capital is as

important an " input " as methane-based fertilizers. I think we could

see problems with food production and distribution anytime from here

on.

 

KT: You're an avid gardener -- do you grow much of your own food? Do

you worry that you'll have to guard your greens with a gun if our

collapsing economy sends the mall rats outdoors to forage after the

food courts run out of pretzel nuggets?

 

JHK: I don't grow any grains. I have successfully grown potatoes, but

won't this year (I'm renting my current house and its accompanying

property). This year, I'll be planting mostly leafy greens --

collards, kale, chard, lettuces, plus some peppers and tomatoes (pure

frivolity). It is not hard to imagine that food theft will become a

problem. The trouble, though, is that the sort of people liable to do

the thieving are exactly those with the poorest skills in cooking. You

have to know what to do with kale to make it worth stealing. It may be

more like kitchen theft: " ... what's that you got on the stove, pal? "

 

KT: You evidently enjoy cooking and entertaining. Who would your dream

dinner guests be (limiting your guest list to those folks who are

currently among the living)?

 

JHK: I have a pretty good revolving cast of characters among my

friends locally who make regular visits to my table. This week, a

farming couple who are renting 20 acres off a wealthy land-truster

(and doing a great job of market gardening) are coming over, along

with the Rolling Stone environmental reporter and his wife, who is

writing a gardening book. I don't need no steenkin' outatown

celebrities.