It’s the End of the World as We Know It

[Dissenting_Prole]

It’s the End of the World as We Know It
By Thomas Wheeler
Alternative Press Review

"Few people are aware of how their lives are dependent on cheap and abundant energy. Are these Americans in for a rude awakening? In a fascinating new documentary, The End of Suburbia – Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream, the central question is this: Does the suburban way of life have a future? The answer is a resounding no. "

"While The End of Suburbia doesn’t provide any easy answers, it does provide a much needed look at the reality of the situation many in North America will be facing in the coming years. For that reason, The End of Suburbia is one of the most important must-see documentaries of the year. "

http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=239&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0



http://endofsuburbia.com/

Yes, I have no shame.

[demnan]

1. Does this mean I won't be able to resell my condo?

Well seriously, I think that the commute into the city will probably be a thing of the past. Alternately more and more people are able to work from home, especially if they do computer-related work.

As far as the suburbs going away, I think there are too many people now to fit into the cities. However, I agree there is a lot of waste.

[brokensymmetry]

2. I just got the DVD -

It was well worth the cost. I encourage everyone to educate themselves on the issues.

[cprise]

3. An alternative to suburbia

http://www.carfree.com/

[Eurobabe]

4. Clusterfuck Nation by Kunstler

We read him in grad school for urban planning class in Architectural History. He is a great writer and pulls no punches. End of Suburbia has links to JHK's site: Clusterfuck Nation.

http://www.kunstler.com/index.html

[fedsron2us]

5. Cargo Karma

Kunstler's article 'Cargo Karma' which compares American attitudes to Walmart with the cargo cults of the Pacific islands is both hilarious and perceptive. Well worth a read

http://www.oriononline.org/pages/oo/curmudgeon/index_curmudgeon.html

[brokensymmetry]

8. Thanks for the link!

I hadn't read any of JHK's work before.

[Dogmudgeon]

6. This trivializes it

In a generation or so, our middle-class hipster hatred of Wal-Mart, suburbia, SUVs and bad architecture will seem like the 1950s panic over comic books and Rock-n-Roll.

I liked Kunstler's writings, and I liked the DVD, too, but they seem to trivialize the problem. What care I if Wal-Mart goes belly-up? I can take my cold comfort in mocking the death of ugly architecture and Suburbia while I'm watching the broadcasts (on a mass-produced $5 HDTV) of the die-off of four billion of my fellow human beings, from my humble abode in one of the National Emergency Management Administration's tent cities ... as the snow begins to fall ... on Independence Day, 2041.

Or, we can start right now to figure out how to get through the end of cheap energy. But I'm placing my bets living out my Golden Years in a tent.

--bkl

[fedsron2us]

7. I think Kunstler is deadly serious.

Behind the humour his picture of how we are all conspiring to hasten our own destruction is rather melancholy. I also think that he gets the message across that our current civilisation is not sustainable far better than most of the Peak Oil/Die Off polemicists. Before you can change peoples behaviour you have got to start by engaging their minds.

[TO Kid]

11. About as serious as the rest of them

Remember how they said that India (now a food exporter) would never feed itself? Or the prediction that there would be widespread famine in North America by 1990? Or my own personal favourite, the Greenpeace claim that pollution was causing global cooling.

[phantom power]

12. bear in mind, global warming isn't some theory from Greenpeace

it's essentially every climatologist. And, it's being measured. The effects are being observed.

As I recall, the "global cooling" theory was put forth back when there were essentially no particulate emission regulations. If we had continued to spew soot into the sky, some level of cooling might have resulted.

As for oil, the supply is clearly finite. The supply of cheap oil is running out. Do you question this?

[Name removed]

14. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[TO Kid]

15. Warming yes, greenhouse no

Most climatologists agree that the world is getting warmer (by about a degree over the past century), but there is little in the way of consensus over the cause. The world was a much warmer place in 1000 A.D. (extensive agriculture in Greenland, prosperity in Iceland and rising farm output in Europe) than it is now BTW.

[PeaceForever]

36. There is no dispute that CO2 is a greenhouse gas though.

Are you saying that we shouldn't try to stop taking liquid carbon that's buried underground and converting it into atmospheric carbon dioxide?

[PeaceForever]

37. BTW, *most* climatologists??

Can you name a profesional climatologists who doesn't agree that the Earth has a fever?

[wuushew]

20. The Green Revolution saved the third world

my understanding is that this so called revolution has been made possible by abundant petroleum based agricultural products, which when we run out of cheap oil will lead to sharp increases in prices for food.

[TO Kid]

21. More to it than that

What really kicked the green revolution into high gear was the development of a strain of wheat that was better able to withstand severe storms. This, along with other new hybrid crops, was instrumental in turning India into a food exporter.

[fedsron2us]

22. This may all be true

but I think that India was also greatly helped by the fact that it had thrown off British rule and embraced democracy. They are rather proud of the fact that they have not suffered a major famine since independence. Sadly, starvation is often as much the result of political decisions as it is of agricultural failures. The book 'Late Victorian Holocausts' by Mike Davis shows how Malthusian and free market mantras were used to justify allowing millions to perish. I suppose the die off enthusiasts might put this down to the population exceeding the carrying capacity of the land. Personally, I think its more akin to genocide.

[NNadir]

23. Um, there is no cheering for "die offs..."

...although you seem to want to claim otherwise. Many of us who state the FACT, that the human population has exceeded the planet's capacity for the ETHICAL maintenance of it, are less than thrilled by the consequences.

The fact is though that the carrying capacity of the entire planet has been exceeded, at least in the sense that non-renewable resources are being rapidly (and irreversibly) expended to maintain an unsustainable population.

This is not, "genocide." This is simply reality.

There is not one subject on this forum, from the depletion of species diversity, to the destruction of the atmosphere, to the creation of "dead zones," to the salinization (and desertification) of continents that is not tied to the artificial maintenance of an unsustainable human population on this planet.

Now, you might glibly maintain that people here are advocating "die offs" as a form of genocide, but this hardly qualifies as thinking so much as rhetoric. In fact, the deaths associated with environmental collapse will know no genetic boundaries, and the word "genocide" will have no specific meaning, unless you are referring to the human genome as a whole. We are all in this overloaded boat together, which is exactly why we need thinking as opposed to sloganeering. If you think that the planet can indefinitely maintain 6 billion + people, you need to engage in something quite different than name calling. Rather you need to describe how exactly, in the face of so many posts here describing the complete destruction of our environment, you will propose to maintain this population excess. Unless you can do this, your comments border on being meaningless.

[fedsron2us]

24. Um, I think you have rather missed my point

If you had read my earlier posts in this thread you will see that I agreed with Kunstler that our current civilization was unsustainable. I am not denying the existence of Peak oil or the resource issues that surround it. Equally I accept that the human race is rapidly degrading the environment in which it lives. You only have to see the disastrous impact of cotton farming in Northern China or around the Aral Sea to recognize this fact.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x11841

However, as Davis book so devastatingly exposes, famine is often used as a weapon by people who are pursuing their own political agendas. This applies equally to the British in 19th century India or to Stalinist Russia. Both cases come uncomfortably close to genocide. I do not know what is the true 'carrying capacity' of planet Earth for human beings or any other life forms. Nor I suspect does anybody else who posts on the DU. I am certain, however, that there are right wing ideologues who are even now thinking of ways of using the Malthusian arguments for their own ends. Anyone who thinks that any economic collapse associated with either Peak Oil or an environmental catastrophe linked to global warming is going to unfold in a political vacuum is naive. There are people out there who will quite happily see you and your loved ones dead so long as they can maintain their privileged life styles. I think that the we must attempt to find humane political, economic and scientific answers to the issues arising from the energy and environmental crises. If the only solution is to do nothing and watch 4 billion people die from disease and starvation then I for one would prefer not to be around for the event. After all even the survivors are not going to live forever.

[NNadir]

31. OK, I misread you to some extent.

It is certainly true that Stalin was responsible for famines, but I don't believe that in this case, unlike so many other cases involving his policies, Stalin was deliberately starving specific populations for primarily political, and even less for genocidal reasons. I also believe that his "political agenda" in this case (collectivization and destruction of the "kulaks" and other beneficiaries of Lenin's NEP) was secondary to his economic push for hard cash. He was starving people because he wanted the money that might have been spent feeding them. During the famines of the late twenties, the Soviet Union was exporting grain to raise capital for a program of massive industrialization. Specifically the Soviets needed machine tools, a need that persisted throughout the 1930's and was in fact one of the reasons for Molotov pursuing the Hitler Stalin Pact of 1939. I don't actually believe that Stalin, as depraved as he was, made a calculation that went like this, "I think I'll dispose of twenty million people who are in my way." I suspect his reasoning was more like, "I need to see so many millions of tons of grain, and I don't care who's hurt by it."

It also happens that famines do happen for Malthusian reasons, as we saw in parts of Africa in recent decades during droughts. I don't actually think that the Western world made a calculation like, "They're black in Africa, so let's let them starve." I think that some of these areas, plagued by poor infrastructure, war, and other hazards, simply became ultimately impossible to save.

Famines do not always have some deeper conspiratorial purpose behind them. Agricultural systems do collapse because of human actions and it doesn't necessarily result from the intentional actions of insensitive rich people. The most graphic example is the case of the Easter Islanders with the rich and poor alike resorted to cannibalism once the collapse of the Island's ecosystem resulted from human activities there. Some argue that the entire planet has become Easter Island on a grander scale. I think the poor and the rich alike on Easter Island burned wood to stay alive. Likewise rich and poor people on this planet embrace, albeit on different scales, in unsustainable practices in service to their own immediate self interest.

I would agree with the statement that political events have a role in environmental degradation, but it is not usually clear cut or unambiguous. I very much doubt for instance that the kings and their cults of statue making on Easter Island knew what they were getting into, but that the outcome was more a result of events that moved beyond their control.

Neither is it clear that "the champions" of sustainability have a clue about how to approach the task. In our own time, very recently, we had a cynical rather creepy character who was embraced by the (nominally) "Green Party" who had a primitive and completely ignorant self-serving approach to political solutions to the environmental issues, announcing for instance that an environmental Satan was exactly the same as a person with a realistic and nuanced view of environmental issues. We had millions of people in this country who embraced that incredibly stupid notion that this complete idiot's self serving totemic ideology was worthy of support. Moreover all of the millions who embraced this highly dubious notion regarded buying into this nonsense as being indicative of their own nobility.

I really don't think, my contempt for their arguments aside, that our 2000 "Green" voters really understood exactly what they were doing. Many of them probably regret it now that the consequences of their rigid and simplistic ideological approaches have become apparent. If, as may happen, the bulk of the planet's agricultural system collapses as a result of Greenhouse related events, we can hardly claim that this was a "design" of the American "Green" Party. There will be nonetheless famine in that case and many who were formerly rich (the bulk of the North American continent for instance) will be impoverished. Neither those who placed those events in motion nor those who had nothing to do with them will be able to control their outcomes. There is such a thing as overreaching.

[fedsron2us]

25. If you want to see how the issues surrounding population size

and Peak Oil are going to be exploited by right wing head cases take a look at the attached which was posted on the normally sane peakoil.com discussion group

http://peakoil.com/fortopic824.html

You can be sure that there will be other people of a similar ilk out there polishing their arguments. Some of them are going to make a far better job of it than this sad individual. Watch out for the first signs of this poison being articulated by commentators in the main stream right wing press.

[PeaceForever]

35. That doesn't make today's assertions untrue.

TO Kid,

You must have been a debate champ in high school. I admire that. I just wanted to point out though that, from a logical standpoint, you haven't refuted the assertions made in the parent post.

[brokensymmetry]

9. Hello, BareKnuckledLiberal!

I hope all is going well for you?

[indigobusiness]

10. And I feel fine.

Doomsayers are just realists, these days.

more links to end of oil etc on my blog...

[One_Life_To_Give]

13. End of Food too?

With modern agriculture and transport so dependent upon Oil. What happens to food suplies when it runs out?

Outside of rural area's how many people have the space to grow their own food? Process and store it for use during the winter? Grow enough timber to stay warm?

I wounder if the City as we know it is doomed by the lack of Oil.

[Dissenting_Prole]

16. Cities will fare better than the suburbs...

because businesses and residences are more concentrated. But certainly the central cores of most large cities will not be what they are today. How do you heat (or cool, there aren't a lot of windows) a 40-storey condo without natural gas or electricity?

Small towns will be where it's at. Moderate density, and near the food supply.

http://endofsuburbia.com/

[brokensymmetry]

17. Speaking of 40-story condos...

you speak of heating or cooling them. Let's look at a simpler problem - getting water. To get pressure, you need to have a water tower, or an elevated reservior. To use one of those, you need a pump...generally powered by electricty...

So, how to get water? Bike 5 miles to a pond? How does one purify the water?

[Indiana_Dem]

18. Go to.....

[e-mail]

They'll tell ya what to do!! lol

[One_Life_To_Give]

19. Modern Cities won't make it

I don't see how New York could be even a fraction of itself without oil or a substitute. 6 Million people in one place just won't cut it on 19th century technology.

[Dissenting_Prole]

28. Well, if New York is your idea of an average city

then I guess you're right, cities won't make it. But there are at least a few fairly civilized cities in North America, believe it or not.

[kestrel91316]

26. Re growing own food.......

Anybody with a yard of any size can grow most of their own vegetables, with the additional possibility of many dwarf fruit trees. Tear out the concrete patio and the driveway and you have that much more space. Raised beds, double-dug, solve the compacted soil problem, and composting humanure (mandatory when the sewer systems collapse) provides all the fertilizer we need. About the only thing hard to grow enough of in suburbia would be calorie crops like grains. But you would be absolutely amazed how much of our own food we could provide for ourselves with a little (gasp!!) manual labor. Those too lazy to try will just have to starve. Suits me fine.

[brokensymmetry]

27. Really?

That's great! Those fresh fruits and vegetables will be just wonderful. While they're growing, that is. Perhaps we should store some for the non-growing seasons?

Hmm. But canning them requires fuel, doesn't it? And equipment, including a supply of glass jars. And we'd better do a lot of canning so we can get through those non-growing months.

And, as you point out, there isn't space for "calorie crops like grains." This begs the question of what we are to use to replace those needed calories.

Water may be a problem too - water systems require pressurization, which requires some sort of pump, generally electric.

Well, I suppose we could dig our own well. And we could use a hand operated pump. We could depend on the rains to water our crops. Of course, if we ever guess wrong about when we plant the crops, or we get too much rain, or too little rain...well, we've got a problem, don't we?

Other than that, things should be just dandy!

And welcome to DU! :hi:

[indigobusiness]

29. Kestrel has a point...and so do you...

A shift in mentality from grocery store dependency and the taking it for granted that shelves will be full, would be a long leap in our evolution as an enlightened society. But the difficulties you list are serious and real. And what will pollenate the crops if the bees continue in their downward spiral?

[brokensymmetry]

30. It gets worse, you know...

The problem becomes one of survival in a starving world.

One solution is hoarding and defending. I once read that strategy described as "a one family Dien Bien Phu", and I agree with that analysis.

What about subsistence farming, as Kestrel suggests? It's a very different lifestyle, with a demand for profoundly different skills than most of us have. And it's going to take a great deal more land to grow sufficient crops than the majority of suburban lots offer.

Putting in some dwarf fruit trees is fine, but keeping the birds and bugs away from the fruit is hard. Plowing is problematic. Frankly, if you provided me with a mule, a plow, and the needed harness I wouldn't have a clue what to do; I doubt that makes me special!

If we had a flock of chickens, and decided to kill and eat one - how would we do it? How would we begin to prepare it? And - here's the rub - could we do it with a wood stove? Assuming, of course, we had one.

Well, forget the chickie. How about some nice boiled grain? No, I'm not talking about those steel cut oats - I'm talking about whole grain. It takes a lot of fuel over time to cook it. One can grind it of course...but...that takes a grinder...and something to power it.

My point is that an entire complex of skills that most of us don't have is required. A lot of equipment that is fairly obscure now, and likely to be rare and costly later, might be needed. It's no good saying we'll think about it later, 'cause that may not be practical.

Now, a nastier point - what do you do when your neighbors are starving? Help them, by all means - but what if the less provident among them decide to raid the peach crop? Or the chicken coop?

I think a better way to look at the problem is to become part of a mutually supporting community that can help each other. I suspect that rugged individuals, with a very few exceptions, may find a lot of problems with their strategy.

Your mileage may vary. Standard disclaimers apply. Void where prohibited.

[indigobusiness]

32. Even if there were total agreement

and cooperation, the sudden shift in life-style would be problematic if not impossible. Third world countries, in rural areas live fairly well off the grid, and can subsist. But pampered America would have few pockets of sustainability, and it would be a dog fight for every resource.

What book was your reference from?

[brokensymmetry]

33. I'm sorry, but...

I can't find the book to save my life! I've rummaged through the books I thought it might come from, but I either loaned it out or it's stuck in an odd nook or cranny somewhere.

It had an amusing little cartoon, with such things as an assault rifle with every accessory known to man (and some not yet known!), and a picture of a family dressed in camouflage, with the hat emblazoned with the word "murk", as a play on the term "merc" and a hint that their thinking was clouded.

I hate it when I lose a book! :(

[kestrel91316]

39. These skills are far from dead.......................

I am one of MANY Americans who practices, to one degree or another, the new "homesteading". I make most of my own soap, grow (in a good year) most of my own fresh vegetables and can/freeze/dry/pickle them too. I know, through reading books like Carla Emery's 9th edition of the Encyclopedia of Country Living, how to raise and butcher chickens, rabbits, goats, sheep, pigs, and cattle. I spin wool by hand (drop spindle) and crochet lovely triangular shawls. I have chosen to take control of my life by producing as much of my needs myself. I make wine and could make beer if I wished to. I know how to dig a cistern to store rainwater, and I know how to construct a sawdust bucket toilet so I don't ever have to worry about sanitation if I lack water. No one taught me these things, I took it upon myself to learn. So can the rest of you.

[kestrel91316]

38. Re declining bees to pollinate................

well, the honeybee is a European import so it has managed to be decimated by a mite living in the US. Not so many of our native pollinators, like the orchard mason bee. In my garden I see countless varieties of little bugs going from flower to flower, happily pollinating. If I want more squash or corn or okra I can use manual labor and do a little hand-pollinating to supplemant the bees. If we grow most of our own fruits and vegetables as a nation, then the farmers only need to be growing the calorie crops like wheat, rice, whatever. It is also easy to grow and hand-harvest enough corn (to dry and grind) to meet one's own needs but it takes a bit of land. I do not envision a total collapse of civilization, but rather a serious diminishment of circumstances, like back to the 1800s. i can cope with that.

[The Wielding Truth]

34. Not according to Exxon

Head of Exxon on Charlie Rose has much confidence oil reserves a plenty in world .Enough for generations to come. Especially in Russian areas. Humm...

[kestrel91316]

40. Some of us choose to see the glass as half-full.......................

rather than half-empty. I could not wake up every morning if I did not have essential optimism. I know I can deal with the consequences of losing oil. I have to wonder about those who throw up their hands and say all is lost.

[meow mix]

41. yeah, billions will die miserable deaths. but not me i can deal with it!

screw all the starving wretches who cannot deal with the consequences.

and shame on all you hand-thowers for being so frustrated that we are currently blowing our last good chances. -(sarcasm off)