This is a letter I wrote on June 7, 2006 toMonday Magazine in response to a particularly annoying set of articles the magazine published about James Kunstler's impending visit to Victoria, where he was the invited keynote speaker at a "sustainability" conference. One needs to understand that Monday Magazine has a special talent for adopting the puerile tone of petulance, wherein the "a pox on all your houses" one-off becomes the mantra du jour. It does make one think that they're a bunch of otherworldly spoiled brats over there who have never gone anywhere else or had the shit kicked out of them in any way shape or form. In regard to Kunstler, one of the journalists got particularly vile, suggesting that, in keeping with Mr. God-Allah-Messiah Kunstler's directives, it would probably be a good idea if we didn't "breed," for example.example, and that maybe a world-wide pandemic would be a good thing in terms of bringing the population numbers down. This is typical, of course, of the type of "thinking"cynicism that goespasses onfor "thinking" at Monday, for while certain parts of the world are overpopulated, Canada isn't one of them, and we in fact can't afford to go into the negative birthrate numbers.numbers; and while pandemics certainly would cut population numbers everywhere, the sheer human misery and destabilisation brought about by anything like a pandemic would make a limited nuclear war look like a picnic. But that sort of higher thinking entirely escapes these ..."journalists." My letter, needless to say, was not published:

June 7, 2006 to Monday Magazine (not published):
Re. "Future Imperfect" on James Kunstler, and your June 8-14 issue's "sustainability" theme:

Dear Editor,

James Kunstler tells us that he hates cities (the "scale" of New York "disturbed" him), and on the basis of this antipathy he has designated the "small town" as the ideal. Also on the basis of his hatred of cities, he foretells the doom of those who live in them and in their suburban spawn. Verily, urban highrise dwellers and suburban roadhogs will be cast down.

I think what Kunstler really hates is complexity: see his interview with Jane Jacobs (2000, online http://www.kunstler.com/mags_jacobs1.htm), wherein he repeatedly tries to get her to agree with the conclusions he draws from the "end of oil" thesis, which Jacobs in turn repeatedly deflects as too simplistic. Reality is more complex, she tells him.

Another interesting difference between Jacobs and Kunstler is this: the former loved people in all their messy , unpredictable permutations. She distrusted the planners and futurists with their endless attempts to direct, order, and predict human behaviour and ingenuity.

Kunstler's vision is blinkered by his essential misanthropy, and it's amply played up by Monday 's "Some Sustainable Solutions" sidebar. Your magazine's puerile suggestions that "global pandemics" and "not reproducing" might offer "sustainable" solutions reveals just how hateful and essentially myopic -- indeed blindingly stupid -- the mindset undergirding catastrophe predictions can often be. The destabilization wrought by pandemics anywhere or by negative birthrates in established democracies (particularly if they're also subject, at the same time, to historically new immigration intakes) is as economically and socially disastrous as $8-per-gallon gasoline. Yet the latter is called "staggering."

Do I think we need to address the energy and environmental crises we're facing? You bet. Do I think Kunstler's small-town rural vision offers anything of value to Victoria? Not particularly.

Monday gives two pages to Kunstler's "futurism," which seems often to boil down to a nostalgia for the 19th century. Meanwhile, you give barely two columns to the far more immediately pertinent -- and above all: locally applicable -- ideas in "Terms of Discussion," which are focussed on the irreversible fact that we are a city, and not a small town.

And by the way, inquiring minds want to know: what is it exactly that makes the "Gaining Ground" conference's admission price at nearly $700 so ...well, staggering? I hope it isn't Mr. Kunstler's speaker's fee...

Regards,
Yule Heibel