This was just a short summary. There were some extensive postings (I was took the JHK was mostly right position). Trey Garrison took the opposite position. And we had a debate on the local NPR station in Dallas. Here is a link to the full discussion:

http://bookclubblog.dallasnews.com/

There is a public town hall meeting at 2:00 P.M. today in Dallas:

The Points Summer Book Club may be wrapping up, but you'll have one more chance to share your thoughts. You're invited to an in-person discussion of the book and themes discussed here on the blog:

Who: Book club discussion leaders Rod Dreher, Jeffrey Brown, Trey Garrison and Larry Allums -- and you.
What: The Points Summer Book Club town hall meeting, wrapping up discussion of James Howard Kunstler's The Long Emergency

When: 2 to 3:30 p.m. Sunday

Where: The Dallas Institute for Humanities and Culture, 2719 Routh St., in Uptown Dallas between McKinney Avenue and Cedar Springs Road

Here was my central theme:

Are you better off than you were four years ago, and what about four years from now?

I have previously described the position taken by Kunstler, et al, in the 2004 video, "End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion & the Collapse of the American Dream" (available on Netflix). The parties that were interviewed specifically warned about collapsing suburban housing values and rapidly rising food & energy prices.

I have also previously described the position taken by Daniel Yergin in 2004--that oil prices in late 2005 would be back down to a long term price of $38 per barrel, as rising oil production forced prices down. In June, 2007, he predicted that oil prices in 2008 would be back down to $60.

Time Magazine, in last week's issue, had a chart showing the year over year change in housing prices for the top 20 markets (Case-Shiller monthly index). The index has gone from up over 15% year over year in 2005 to down more than 15% year over year currently. Now, while I concede that the primary driver behind the mortgage meltdown was the huge buildup in debt, I believe that rapidly rising energy--and thus food--prices have acted as a trigger, and as an accelerant, for the mortgage meltdown.

Regarding food & energy prices, just compare what we are currently spending to what we were spending in 2004.

So, looking forward to 2012, who are you going to believe--Kunstler, who was correct about his predictions regarding suburban housing values and food & energy prices--or Daniel Yergin, who has been dead wrong?