[SustainableTompkins] Fw: Wake Up, America. We're Driving Toward Disaster.

Mon May 26 11:14:21 PDT 2008

Thank you John for posting this attention demanding article.

I would like to highlight one particilarly important paragraph:

*So what are intelligent responses to our predicament? First, we'll
have to dramatically reorganize the everyday activities of
American life. We'll have to grow our food closer to home, in a
manner that will require more human attention. In fact,
agriculture needs to return to the center of economic life. We'll
have to restore local economic networks -- the very networks that
the big-box stores systematically destroyed -- made of
fine-grained layers of wholesalers, middlemen and retailers.*
*We'll also have to occupy the landscape differently, in
traditional towns, villages and small cities. Our giant
metroplexes are not going to make it, and the successful places
will be ones that encourage local farming.
*
How can we stress this enough..."The successful places will be ones that
encourage local farming."

What policies can be advanced and resources made available to dramatically
increase local growing?

      Local and Bioregionally Suitable Seed Bank
      Certified Community Kitchens and Emergency Food Preparedness
      No Local Taxes on Farmers and Tax Breaks for Folks buying local food
      Purchasing land for joint Renewable Energy / Sustainable Agriculture
development
      Free Tree Project for giving away edible landscaping species such as
fruit, nut, and berry for homeowners
      Heifer-style promotion of small animals such as rabits, chickens,
turkeys, pigs, goats, etc.

I am interested to know if anybody has done the arithmetic to calculate how
much food is grown locally (i.e. within 20 miles, within 50 miles, within
100 miles, within 200 miles) and what percentage of local consumption that
represents.

Thanks,

Ryan D. Hottle

On Mon, May 26, 2008 at 11:38 AM, Jon Bosak <bosak at ibiblio.org> wrote:

> Nothing new in Kunstler's message, but it's great to see the
> exposure (the Sunday Washington Post).  Maybe someone in the
> government will start to pay attention.
>
> Jon
>
> ==================================================================
>
> washingtonpost.com
> Wake Up, America. We're Driving Toward Disaster.
> By James Howard Kunstler
> Sunday, May 25, 2008; B03
>
> Everywhere I go these days, talking about the global energy
> predicament on the college lecture circuit or at environmental
> conferences, I hear an increasingly shrill cry for "solutions."
> This is just another symptom of the delusional thinking that now
> grips the nation, especially among the educated and
> well-intentioned.
>
> I say this because I detect in this strident plea the desperate
> wish to keep our "Happy Motoring" utopia running by means other
> than oil and its byproducts. But the truth is that no combination
> of solar, wind and nuclear power, ethanol, biodiesel, tar sands
> and used French-fry oil will allow us to power Wal-Mart, Disney
> World and the interstate highway system -- or even a fraction of
> these things -- in the future. We have to make other arrangements.
>
> The public, and especially the mainstream media, misunderstands
> the "peak oil" story. It's not about running out of oil. It's
> about the instabilities that will shake the complex systems of
> daily life as soon as the global demand for oil exceeds the global
> supply. These systems can be listed concisely:
>
> The way we produce food
>
> The way we conduct commerce and trade
>
> The way we travel
>
> The way we occupy the land
>
> The way we acquire and spend capital
>
> And there are others: governance, health care, education and more.
>
> As the world passes the all-time oil production high and watches
> as the price of a barrel of oil busts another record, as it did
> last week, these systems will run into trouble. Instability in one
> sector will bleed into another. Shocks to the oil markets will
> hurt trucking, which will slow commerce and food distribution,
> manufacturing and the tourist industry in a chain of cascading
> effects. Problems in finance will squeeze any enterprise that
> requires capital, including oil exploration and production, as
> well as government spending. These systems are all
> interrelated. They all face a crisis. What's more, the stress
> induced by the failure of these systems will only increase the
> wishful thinking across our nation.
>
> And that's the worst part of our quandary: the American public's
> narrow focus on keeping all our cars running at any cost. Even the
> environmental community is hung up on this. The Rocky Mountain
> Institute has been pushing for the development of a "Hypercar" for
> years -- inadvertently promoting the idea that we really don't
> need to change.
>
> Years ago, U.S. negotiators at a U.N. environmental conference
> told their interlocutors that the American lifestyle is "not up
> for negotiation." This stance is, unfortunately, related to two
> pernicious beliefs that have become common in the United States in
> recent decades. The first is the idea that when you wish upon a
> star, your dreams come true. (Oprah Winfrey advanced this notion
> last year with her promotion of a pop book called "The Secret,"
> which said, in effect, that if you wish hard enough for something,
> it will come to you.) One of the basic differences between a child
> and an adult is the ability to know the difference between wishing
> for things and actually making them happen through earnest effort.
>
> The companion belief to "wishing upon a star" is the idea that one
> can get something for nothing. This derives from America's new
> favorite religion: not evangelical Christianity but the worship of
> unearned riches. (The holy shrine to this tragic belief is Las
> Vegas.) When you combine these two beliefs, the result is the
> notion that when you wish upon a star, you'll get something for
> nothing. This is what underlies our current fantasy, as well as
> our inability to respond intelligently to the energy crisis.
>
> These beliefs also explain why the presidential campaign is devoid
> of meaningful discussion about our energy predicament and its
> implications. The idea that we can become "energy independent" and
> maintain our current lifestyle is absurd. So is the gas-tax
> holiday. (Which politician wants to tell voters on Labor Day that
> the holiday is over?) The pie-in-the-sky plan to turn grain into
> fuel came to grief, too, when we saw its disruptive effect on
> global grain prices and the food shortages around the world, even
> in the United States. In recent weeks, the rice and cooking-oil
> shelves in my upstate New York supermarket have been stripped
> clean.
>
> So what are intelligent responses to our predicament? First, we'll
> have to dramatically reorganize the everyday activities of
> American life. We'll have to grow our food closer to home, in a
> manner that will require more human attention. In fact,
> agriculture needs to return to the center of economic life. We'll
> have to restore local economic networks -- the very networks that
> the big-box stores systematically destroyed -- made of
> fine-grained layers of wholesalers, middlemen and retailers.
>
> We'll also have to occupy the landscape differently, in
> traditional towns, villages and small cities. Our giant
> metroplexes are not going to make it, and the successful places
> will be ones that encourage local farming.
>
> Fixing the U.S. passenger railroad system is probably the one
> project we could undertake right away that would have the greatest
> impact on the country's oil consumption. The fact that we're not
> talking about it -- especially in the presidential campaign --
> shows how confused we are. The airline industry is disintegrating
> under the enormous pressure of fuel costs. Airlines cannot fire
> any more employees and have already offloaded their pension
> obligations and outsourced their repairs. At least five small
> airlines have filed for bankruptcy protection in the past two
> months. If we don't get the passenger trains running again,
> Americans will be going nowhere five years from now.
>
> We don't have time to be crybabies about this. The talk on the
> presidential campaign trail about "hope" has its purpose. We
> cannot afford to remain befuddled and demoralized. But we must
> understand that hope is not something applied externally. Real
> hope resides within us. We generate it -- by proving that we are
> competent, earnest individuals who can discern between wishing and
> doing, who don't figure on getting something for nothing and who
> can be honest about the way the universe really works.
>
> --
>
> James Howard Kunstler is the author, most recently, of "World Made
> by Hand," a novel about America's post-oil future.
>
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-- 
Ryan Darrell Hottle,
Climate Change Solutions Thinker

Performance Systems Contracting,
Building Performance Analyst

Global Climate Solutions
www.GlobalClimateSolutions.org
(coming soon!)

Ohio Peak Oil Action (OPOA)
Co-Founder, Director
www.ohiopeakoilaction.org

803 Coddington Road,
Ithaca, New York 14850

(740) 258 8450