Peak Oil Optimism In The Face Of 'Cultural Inertia'

"I think Kunstler was dead right -- many of the ideas and practices about how we can make other arrangements are already in existence, but there isn't a wide demand for them. There must be a language that competes with the standing fantasies in our consumer society that makes people want to ditch their cars, stop their consumptive impulses, and make our standing commercialized social narratives as appealing as the idea of taking a bath with a corpse.

But I wonder if the winning rhetoric involves direct insults, like calling middle Americans who live in suburbia 'craven f**kups' to their face. I wouldn't write it off instantly, given the popularity of serial insult artists like Dr. Phil. Kunstler also emphasized that talking about peak oil and automobile dependency just once to someone isn't going to make any converts. 'You're going to have to employ repetition...to an uncomfortable degree.'"