James Howard Kunstler ` S Essay Globalization's Time Is Up

An environmental author named James Howard Kunstler wrote the essay, “Globalisation’s Time Is Up”. This essay acknowledges that our social infrastructure hangs by a thread, which is cheap energy and global peace. As readers thoroughly break this essay down to find the deeper meaning, they are left with good and bad points to think about. Kunstler provides insight to different aspects of globalisation and the points are both strong and weak, which can be puzzling. First and foremost, during the essay, Kunstler notes that globalisation will drive humanity to war in the race for the worlds remaining oil. His argument leads to be strong there are many pieces of evidence that are left to be unaddressed. Business ethics, planned obsolescence are
According to Kunstler’s criteria, this business attitude is what will end globalisation, cheap energy; and consequently, global peace. The difference between la belle époque and the 21st century is that there was a transition from one type of fuel to another, as Kunstler mentions, but today, we have no other alternatives. Free energy is all around us, and ready to be harvested in a revolutionary way. Sustainable wind force, solar energy, tides and gravy (just to name a few) are just waiting to be collected. Everything is done to discredit revolutionary inventions in sustainability and one is left to wonder if those in power even care about discovering sustainable energies at all. Ironically, outrageous alternatives like James Cameron’s proposal to mine asteroids (1) or the consideration of mining the moon (2) are deemed realistic. It seems that only linear ideas are accepted while sustainable ones succumb to witch-hunting and
If we put all our eggs in the oil industry, the West is doomed for war with China and other contenders. As our past shows in la belle époque, history is destined to repeat itself, but it will be worse since we have no alternative energies to transition into. Serious efforts should be placed in finding sustainable energies instead of avoiding them. We can use science to prevent this catastrophe instead militarizing for it. Business ethics is the only thing that could rationalize such poor judgment in our resource dependencies. It is the practices of planned obsolescence, scarcity, and avoiding sustainable energy that are going to run globalisation and civilization itself to the ground, not oil. Laws should be placed so that corporations cannot cause and profit from a meltdown of this magnitude by instilling dependency on their linear product. If there was a day that we needed justice to save the world, today couldn’t possibly be a better day for it to present itself. If we do not change our attitude, it is business ethics that is going to drag us into the chaos of issues directed around this specific