retail per person

Jim Kunstler’s heard the latest data on oil exports/imports, and he sees trouble a’comin’:

The implication in [the coming dropoff in oil imports] is that the activities that have become “normal” for us during the post World War Two era will very shortly become untenable. An economy based on suburban expansion and incessant motoring is on the top of the list of supposedly “normal” activities that will not be able to continue. …

This new information is consistent with my view that we had better prepare to make other arrangements for living in this country, by which I mean specifically re-localizing, de-globalizing, with an emphasis on local agriculture wherever possible, the emergency restoration of passenger railroad service and related modes of public transit, the rebuilding of local commercial infrastructures, and a radical rethinking of how we inhabit the landscape under New Urbanist lines.

But really I just wanted to share the graph.