Джеймс Ховард Кунстлер: Жазушы, сыншы және конспиролог

American writer, social critic, blogger

James Howard Kunstler is an American writer, social critic, public speaker, and blogger. He is best known for his books The Geography of Nowhere (1994), a history of American suburbia and urban development, The Long Emergency (2005), and Too Much Magic (2012). In The Long Emergency he imagines peak oil and oil depletion resulting in the end of industrialized society, forcing Americans to live in smaller scale, localized, agrarian (or semi agrarian) communities. In World Made by Hand he branches into a speculative fiction depiction of this future world.

Kunstler was born in New York City to Jewish parents, who divorced when he was eight. His family then moved to the suburbs on Long Island. His biological father was a middleman in the diamond trade. In 1975, he began writing books and lecturing full time. Kunstler's blog states that he has lectured at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Dartmouth, Cornell, MIT, RPI, and the University of Virginia, has appeared before professional organizations such as the AIA, the APA, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. and also the Democratic Party and their "underhanded attempts" to get rid of Donald Trump, a man whom Kunstler sees as showing "strength". He was also a promoter of the concept of a so called "deep state" working to overthrow and thwart Trump. He endorsed Trump for re election and declared that he intended to do "everything he can to prevent the Democrats from winning the election." In an interview with American Conservative, Kunstler attacked gay marriage, describing it as "cultural mischief" that would further damage "a struggling institution". He is a subscriber to the conspiracy theory that the 2020 United States presidential election was fraudulent, describing it as a "fraud inflected election" on his website, and he suggests that the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol was the work of left wing groups. In recent times, Kunstler has had financial problems, and was described as "seethingly angry" about his writing income falling to only a few thousand dollars annually because of "the tidal wave of free content on the web". In addition, his "lucrative college speaking fees" have disappeared, which he blames on "the rising hysteria on campus against threatening ideas". Kunstler now uses Patreon to crowdfund his writing. and on October 11 he published the debunked vaccine conspiracy theory that the vaccine would kill people "steadily over the weeks and months" and went on to name hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin as "effective" treatments.

Over the course of the first 14 years of his writing career (1979–1993), Kunstler wrote seven novels. Since the mid 1990s, he has written four non fiction books about suburban development and diminishing global oil supplies. According to the Columbia Journalism Review, his first work on the subject, The Geography of Nowhere, discussed the effects of "cartoon architecture, junked cities, and a ravaged countryside". The book was described as a jeremiad by The Washington Post. Kunstler is critical of suburbia and urban development trends throughout the United States, and is a proponent of the New Urbanism movement. According to Scott Carlson, reporter for The Chronicle of Higher Education, Kunstler's books on the subject have become "standard reading in architecture and urban planning courses". He describes America as a poorly planned and "tragic landscape of highway strips, parking lots, housing tracts, mega malls, junked cities, and ravaged countryside that makes up the everyday environment where most Americans live and work." In his books that followed, such as Home From Nowhere, The City in Mind, and The Long Emergency (2005), he discussed topics in the context of a coming post oil America. Kunstler says he wrote The Geography of Nowhere, "Because I believe a lot of people share my feelings about the tragic landscape of highway strips, parking lots, housing tracts, mega malls, junked cities, and ravaged countryside that makes up the everyday environment where most Americans live and work". In his social science fiction novel World Made by Hand (2008), he describes a future dependent on localized production and agriculture, with little reliance on imports. Three "World Made by Hand" sequels have followed: The Witch of Hebron (2010), A History of the Future (2015), and The Harrows of Spring (2016). Kunstler has written articles for the American Conservative magazine and syndicated weekly articles to the conservative Zero Hedge blog. In his writings and lectures, he contends that there is no other alternative energy source on the horizon that can replace petroleum. He therefore envisions a "low energy" world that will be radically different from today's. This has contributed to his becoming an outspoken advocate for one of his solutions, a more energy efficient rail system, and writes "we have to get cracking on the revival of the railroad system if we expect to remain a united country."

A 2020 article at NewGeography. com described one of Kunstler's essays in American Conservative as a "misanthropic, pessimistically aggressive Malthusian screed", and comments that Kunstler's "over the top act" shows him to be "survivalist masquerading as an urban geographer". The article points to Kunstler's growing appeal to conservatives due to the "overlap between libertarian conservatives and environmentalist zealots". In 2005, conservative writer Bill Kauffman called Kunstler the "scourge of suburbia," and a "slashingly witty Jeremiah." In a 2008 review of Kunstler's weekly audio podcast, the Columbia Journalism Review described the KunstlerCast as offering "some of the smartest, most honest urban commentary around—online or off." Critiquing The Long Emergency, journalist Chris Hayes claimed in 2010 that while Kunstler makes valid points about the consequences of peak oil, he undermines his credibility with rhetoric and perceived misanthropy. Joseph Romm, a climate change expert and Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, stated that accelerating shifts toward renewable energy will maintain suburban lifestyles and that, contrary to Kunstler's arguments, "suburbia won’t be destroyed by peak oil." Charles Bensinger, co founder of Renewable Energy Partners of New Mexico, describes Kunstler's views as "fashionably fear mongering" and uninformed regarding the potential of renewable energy resources to eliminate the need for fossil fuels. In 2005 David Ehrenfeld, writing for American Scientist, saw Kunstler delivering a "powerful integration of science, technology, economics, finance, international politics and social change" with a "lengthy discussion of the alternatives to cheap oil."