<So they all knew it was a bubble, now?The Oil DrumHurricane Dean Update and Resource Aggregation Post>
<DrumBeat: August 18, 2007DrumBeatDrumBeat: August 20, 2007>

132 comments on DrumBeat: August 19, 2007

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

NeverLNG on August 19, 2007 - 11:34am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Bigotry and fear were used to promote and justify the suburban life, but they were only tools, not the founding principles. I think the real driver was simply the energy gradient created by the discovery and development of fossil fuel. Here, suddenly, was all this potential energy-- locked up in the ground-- that could be turned into money if people could be harnessed to that purpose.

The achievements of the media and advertising industry have been absolutely remarkable in convincing us of the absolute necessity of the stupidest things-- all to the purpose of moving electrons in a giant redox scheme that piles up money in the bank by oxidizing all the reduced carbon formed by hundreds of millions of years of plant life on Earth in a just a few decades.

The gradient is decreasing, and themodynamic equilibrium is approaching. Things will work out (though possibly not in a nice way.)

0
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
BKhere on August 19, 2007 - 1:09pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

"Bigotry and fear were used to promote and justify the suburban life, but they were only tools, not the founding principles. I think the real driver was simply the energy gradient created by the discovery and development of fossil fuel."

There is also a less insidious reason. Don't forget GIs following WWII: They returned "home" - but they didn't actually go home to the farm. After they'd seen Paree, thousands of people settled in big cities and the newly developing suburbs. It was the "modern" thing to do at the time.

0
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
AlanfromBigEasy on August 19, 2007 - 2:15pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Yes, the herd instinct. Do as the rest are doing.

Although there was no modern Suburbia in WW II Europe.

Alan

0
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
nelsone on August 19, 2007 - 2:45pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Seldom have I laughed so hard at a statement encapsulating such bitter doom, NLNG. Kudos from a fellow physical chemist.

0
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
super390 on August 19, 2007 - 4:30pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I think you're right here. During the '30s and early '40s the big propaganda for the idea of mass suburbanization came from progressives who wanted to improve the lives of the workers packed into tenements. They, in turn, could be said to be following in the footsteps of that Nazi, Henry Ford, who built Greenfield Village as his reactionary vision of how the working class should live. Both the left and right were wrestling with the bad conditions of cities at that time because it was turning workers into potential revolutionaries. If gas is cheap, and I want to head off a revolution, I want to disperse the disgruntled masses and equip them with cheap V-8s.

What I found interesting in the New Deal propaganda films is that no one thought that urban neighborhoods could be revitalized by rising incomes. Instead, we've gone through one bizarre urban scheme after another, dispersal, high-rise slums, now back to two-floor buildings. Something seems to be missing in our beliefs about cities.

0
Comments can no longer be added to this story.