James Howard Kunstler has no love for flashy, contemporary architecture. "These redundant monumental gestures are the last gasps of the cheap energy fiesta," he writes on his "Eyesore of the Month" page of his website, which regularly skewers images of skyscrapers, poor urban planning and futuristic buildings. "The closer we get to the end, the more soulless they get."
Kunstler is author of The Geography of Nowhere, Home From Nowhere, and The Long Emergency, among other books, which critique and offer solutions to America's "tragic landscape of highway strips, parking lots, housing tracts, mega-malls, junked cities, and ravaged countryside," symbols of disregard, he says, for an impending energy crisis.
In the keynote address of a spring semester lecture series on "Vermont's Energy Future," co-sponsored by the Center for Research on Vermont and the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, Kunstler will speak on "The End of Cheap Energy," Wednesday, March 14 at 7:30 p.m. in the Davis Center's Silver Maple Ballroom.
In this lecture, Kunstler will lay out a vision of a world dependent on cheap energy and approaching a devastating turning point that will return the nation to a place where community matters, where neighbors gather and people build places they value.
Kunstler, who lives in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., is also a novelist. His recent work of science fiction, World Made by Hand and its sequel The Witch of Hebron, imagine a post-oil future, where citizens must rely on local production and agriculture. He is also the creator of a weekly podcast on his website, kunstler.com, which the Columbia Journalism Review says "offers some of the smartest, most honest urban commentary around — online or off."
Four lectures, each free an open to the public, will follow Kunstler's in the series.
"Vermont's Energy Future" lecture series
March 14: “The End of Cheap Energy”
Silver Maple Ballroom, Davis Center, 7:30 p.m.
James Kunstler will deliver the inaugural lecture of the series.
March 21: "Public Meltdown: The Story of Vermont Yankee"
North Lounge, Billings. 7:30 p.m.
Richard Watts, UVM research professor in Community Development and Applied Economics and the Transportation Research Center, will review the very public debate around the decision to re-license the Vermont Yankee nuclear power point in Vernon. He charts the evolving discourse around the plant from when it was purchased by Entergy Corporation and the Vermont Senate's 2010 vote to close the plant. The plant's initial 40-year license expires March 21, 2012. Watts has recently completed a book by the same name.
March 28: “Diversify and Decentralize: Green Mountain Power's View of the Future”
North Lounge, Billings. 7:30 p.m.
Mary Powell, CEO and president, Green Mountain Power, will outline GMP’s strategic vision for their part of Vermont’s energy future – a vision that continues the company’s move towards clean energy, decentralized systems and a diversified power supply. Named CEO in 2008, Powell is one of only five female chief executives of investor-owned industrial utilities in the country.
April 4: “Clean Energy Equals Jobs”
John Dewey Lounge, Old Mill. 7:30 pm
David Blittersdorf, president and CEO of AllEarth Renewables and Beth Sachs, co-founder of Vermont Energy Investment Corporation, will discuss the successful Vermont enterprises they've built based on a new energy paradigm and outline their visions for Vermont’s energy future and how that can lead to economic vitality, job growth and cleaner energy. The Vermont Energy Investment Corporation manages electric efficiency programs around the country, employing more than 200 from offices in Burlington, New Jersey, Columbus, Ohio and Washington, DC. AllEarth Renewables is a maker of solar panels and wind turbines.
April 11: “Getting to 90 Percent Renewableby 2050”
North Lounge, Billings. 7:30 p.m.
Elizabeth Miller, commissioner, Vermont Department of Public Service, and Rep. Tony Klein, chair of the House Natural Resources and Energy Committee, will discuss Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin's aggressive goal of getting the state to 90 percent renewable energy by 2050 as well as and other state energy program and policy issues. Klein (D-East Montpelier) has served ten years in the Vermont State Legislature, eight years on House Natural Resources and Energy Committee and is in his fourth year as chair. Before joining the Department in 2011, Miller was a practicing lawyer and business owner with Spink & Miller PLC in Burlington. A graduate of Yale Law School, Miller has practiced energy law in California as well as Vermont.