During the 1970s and 1980s, Kunstler worked "a lot of odd jobs, from orderly in the psychiatric wing of the hospital to digging holes for percolation tests in housing subdivisions".

Kunstler's blog states that he has lectured at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Dartmouth, Cornell, MIT, RPI, and the University of Virginia and has appeared before professional organizations such as the AIA, the APA, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

[4] Kunstler lectured on topics related to suburbia, urban development, and the challenges of what he calls "the global oil predicament", and a resultant change in the "American Way of Life."

[citation needed] As a journalist, Kunstler wrote articles for The Atlantic, Slate, Rolling Stone, The New York Times Magazine, and its op-ed page where he covered environmental and economic issues.

[citation needed] Kunstler is a harsh critic of both the Republican Party, describing them as "a gang of hypocritical, pietistic sadists, seeking pleasure in the suffering of others while pretending to be Christians, devoid of sympathy, empathy, or any inclination to simple human kindness, constant breakers of the Golden Rule, enemies of the common good.

[10] In recent times, Kunstler has had financial problems[11] and was described as "seethingly angry" about his writing income falling to only a few thousand dollars annually because of "the tidal wave of free content on the web".

According to Scott Carlson, reporter for The Chronicle of Higher Education, Kunstler's books on the subject have become "standard reading in architecture and urban planning courses".

[16] He describes America as a poorly planned and "tragic landscape of highway strips, parking lots, housing tracts, mega-malls, junked cities, and ravaged countryside that makes up the everyday environment where most Americans live and work.

"[23] Critiquing The Long Emergency, journalist Chris Hayes claimed in 2010 that while Kunstler makes valid points about the consequences of peak oil, he undermines his credibility with rhetoric and perceived misanthropy.

[24] Joseph Romm, a climate change expert and Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, stated that accelerating shifts toward renewable energy will maintain suburban lifestyles and that, contrary to Kunstler's arguments, "suburbia won't be destroyed by peak oil.

[26] In 2005, David Ehrenfeld, writing for American Scientist, saw Kunstler delivering a "powerful integration of science, technology, economics, finance, international politics and social change" with a "lengthy discussion of the alternatives to cheap oil.