Island Homes is a suburb isn't it?

In the 21st Century, it is a downtown neighborhood in the urban core.

Urban suburb=good

Suburban suburb=bad

And who is the decider Heir Kunstler?

Thanks for posting this Joe. Now can you figure out how to get our local leadership to watch and understand? Especially some of our county commissioners and MPC folks who just don't get it?

how about the taxpayers funding all that sprawl?

I see, only noble people live in the inner hive, I mean core.

It is those land hording suburban power wasters that must be dealt with? To save the planet and keep us pure?

It is so interesting listening to social democrats try to justify why they should get the majority of the tax spoils.

500 Million dollars has been spent in downtown Knoxville. How much is returned in tax dollars? Was that a good investment for taxpayers?

The rocketsquirrel says 5 million allegedly was invested by taxpayers for Turkey Creek shopping complex. I thought the actual amount was closer to 10 million dollars. How much is returned in tax dollars? About 11 million a year. Pretty good return on taxpayer investment.

Let's review, vertical sprawl good. Horizontal sprawl bad.

Eventually, we're going to have to change the way we do what we do. The question isn't if, but when, and how quickly the transition will happen.

We once had a leader who saw this and put us on a reasonable course to make the transition. His successor scrapped all of those programs and forced us back to where we were. History bailed him out in the short term by a tempororary collapse of OPEC's dominance of oil supply and thus the ability to set its price.

The next time we had a chance was 8 years ago. Given all that's happened since, would-be President Gore was the perfect pick for a second chance.

The U.S. President is the critical link in effecting real change worldwide. How will we deal with our chance this fall and how many more chances do we have?

P.S. I love those old clips. Very nostalgic, even as wrongheaded as we know now that lifestyle was. Started watching this morning, but didn't have the time, so I hope to watch it all tonight. Anyway, when it started playing I couldn't help but think about Wall*E. Those who have seen the movie would understand.

He's the scourge of the new century, alright. From Radiant City. Highly recommended.

you propose to remove the Interstate Highway?

Did I propose that?

I fought the temptation to dive into this, partly because I find all this "death of suburbia" stuff way oversold (Kunstler is at least honest enough to admit that said end will be a painful - and perhaps bloody affair. Indeed he's disturbingly giddy about the prospect). But, then, I've always conceded that Kunstler was a bit of a crank (although he is in the business of selling books and speaking engagements, and bluster generates sales...) He's hardly cornered the market on cranky bluster, though. Have you ever stopped to consider, nine, that you and Kunstler both wear tinfoil hats?

They're just tuned to different frequencies.

But we listened to the flower children and stop drilling for oil and building refineries. ... How stupid was that?
...
People care more about their families than they do the planet. That is how we survive. Cue the virulent condemnations that we live on a living planet and it is the only place we have.
...
Coal gasification could provide our energy needs for a very long time.

How many non sequiturs and ignorant remarks can you possibly make in one post? I already addressed the first idiotic line. The answer to the end of affordable oil, not to mention global warming (your disbelief of which shows how screwed your mind is), is alternate, sustainable forms of energy.

Where have you Republicans been on alternate energy since the warning signs have been popping up for the last, oh, 35 years? Same place McBush still is. Keep drilling, Scotty. There's plenty of untapped oil in the U.S.!

"The answer to the end of affordable oil...is alternate, sustainable forms of energy."

Maybe. Although, as nine might be surprised to discover, Kunstler's mighty skeptical on that point (one point I tend to agree with him on). There's a distressing tendency, on both sides of the debate, to conflate technology and energy.

Here's an idea: let's lock Kuntsler and the digit in a room together with an exhaust fan and vent.

The resulting hot air could heat a small city for months.

There's a distressing tendency, on both sides of the debate, to conflate technology and energy.

Certainly there are some enviros who think we're going to have cheap solar everything very soon if we just invest enough. I think there are many more on the other side, though, who want to talk about yankee "technology" as our savior "someday"--whether fusion, "clean coal," or some other fantasy, which gives them a reason to insist on business as usual (ie, keep drilling and hoping) for the foreseeable future (McBush, Duncan, Alexander, et al). Meanwhile, if we just had leadership, there are current technologies such as CSP that we can employ now and they can close the energy shortage gap cheaper and faster than, say, drilling ANWR or starting new nuwkular plants.

Actually, I'm something of an agnostic on global warming (science, by definition, is never "settled").

I'm surprised at you. This science has been settled for a long time. What there is is uncertainty. But it's only a matter of where we fall within the extremes of we're pretty screwed but still have a few years to correct what we're doing to ourselves and we're totally screwed and far past the point of no return. That's the only debate between real climate scientists.

How sustainable is corn ethanol? How is that working for you?

What does that have to do with anything?

Why does it have to be sustainable? Where was that written on clay tablets?

Clay tablets? Who cares? It just depends on how long you want mankind to exist. Otherwise, you either have unintended long term effects that negate all the partying you can do now with cheap energy, which burdens future generations with diseases like asthma and with our cleanup bills, or at best, we subject them to the same type of painful transitions we're now going through. There are, unavoidably, some transitional energy sources we have to employ, such as ethanol of all kinds, but they are stop-gap and come with a price (like your beloved corn ethanol example).

But we listened to the flower children and stop drilling for oil and building refineries.

More on how screwed this thinking is.

I propose that cities like Knoxville should postpone road projects for a few years and focus on sidewalks.