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DrumBeat: March 30, 2008
Posted by threadbot on March 30, 2008 - 9:17am
Topic: Miscellaneous
In this round of the Great Game, energy shortage and global warming are reinforcing each another. The result can only be a growing risk of conflict. There were around 1.65 billion people in the world when the last round was played out. At the start of the 21st century, there are four times as many, struggling to secure their future in a world being changed out of recognition by climate change. It would be wise to plan for some more of history's rhymes.
March 28, 2008 | For more than a decade, a fierce debate about peak oil has been raging between those who think a peak in global oil production is at hand and those who think the world is not close to running out of oil. The debate is moot for two reasons. First, the growing threat of global warming requires deep reductions in national and globaloil consumption starting now, peak or no peak. Second, relying on unconventional oil like tar sands and liquid coal to make up a supply shortage, as the oilmen say we must, would be climate catastrophe. More supply is not the answer to either ouroil or our climate problem -- reducing consumption of oil is. And right now we have two feasible solutions: greatly increase our vehicle fuel economy and find alternative fuel sources that are abundant, low-carbon and affordable.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/points/stories/DN...
We left it all to become farmers
Getting back to the land has changed our lives, say Laurie Bostic and Kim Martin
Sunday, March 30, 2008
This is an interesting case history. I view these small farms on the edges of cities as win/win/win propositions: (1) They make business sense; (2) They will provide a source of food close to major population centers and (3) They will provide critically needed jobs, as we transition from an economy focused on meeting wants to one focused on meeting needs. My long time advice:
ELP Plan (April, 2007)
http://graphoilogy.blogspot.com/2007/04/elp-plan-economize-localize-prod...
Jeffrey J. Brown
Was thinking recently that most of the larger cities like Atlanta grew larger at the expense of surrounding farmland. What if those subdivisions were reverted back to farmland. Imagine some entrepreneurs buying up connecting subdivisions, removing most of the houses- leaving some strip malls or schoolhouses or suitable and suitable spaced buildings for warehouses and equipment sheds, retain some of the existing roads to move equipment and produce, modify the existing water systems for irrigation and developed vegetable farms. The existing subway systems could be used to transport workers from their new homes in the city. Each morning folks could hop on the subway and go to work as vegetable farmers and then return to their home in the city.
I assume that your plan for the greater Atlanta area rests on a return of normal rainfall amounts to the South East? Dry land farming is a different beast than truck-farms with normal rainfall, supplemented when necessary by limited irragation.
Second question: How would the 'city fathers' in Atlanta and surrounding counties feel about rezoning land to ag from residential?
Like growing old, it may beat the alternative. A good first start would be to permanently ban outdoor watering of ornamental plants and lawns.
What should be done and what will be done? The 'city fathers' are going to take a look at property tax collections on residential vs potential taxes on ag and say...'no brainer'! After all, the reason the properties were changed from ag to residential, not so long ago, was more property taxes could be collected.
If the owners of residences are forced to move and abandone their homes by lack of water or because they cannot pay their mortgage payments after resets or for some other reason, then the city fathers might move to condemn homes and bulldoze them, rather than let homes become free shelter for who ever.
In other words, the city fathers, like almost all US governments, will put off making a decision untill there is no decision left but the obvious one. Heaven forbid the city fathers take initative and fall victim of accusation that they made the wrong decision...and, since decisions can be interpreted or challenged, in hindsight, that is probably what would happen.
Meanwhile the citizens are caught in the web that was woven by...the citizens. We had a choice of voting for azz-hat one or azz-hat two. :)
Interesting story from Florida:
http://thehousingbubbleblog.com/?p=4333
They’re Going To Have To Give Them Away In Florida
Yes, they will have to give them away...or, bulldoze them. Another big problem are the huge condo projects that were started during the housing boom that are now nearing completion...Or, in some cases, work on the condo towers has ceased in mid construction.
Since local banks provide a lot of the construction loans for contractors to build these high rise condos, local banks are left holding the bag.
In some cases the new condos are being converted to rentals but that is not good for banks that were expecting the loans that they provided to be paid back in a lump sum upon completion of the condos.
Due to budget constraints in Volusia County seven school closing have already been announced...and that is merely the tip of the iceburg.
As Rosanne Rosanna Danna would say 'It's a real mess.'
I say they should bulldoze the ones near the coast and try to re-create the natural area's to give some better protection to the inside of the state till the rising sea floods it out. Though thats not going to happen in any real world, what will most likely happen is the area's will become the slums of the 21st century letting the rich move to higher ground.
Ayup - spittin' distance from where I live. Come on down - there's lots more of 'em too.
The crane accident in Miami last week? Still building those high six and seven digit condos on the shoreline. Mayeb we can use them to start the seawall we're gonna be needing.
Too lazy to grab the link, but a few weeks ago there was an article about how the population was declining in Broward County (one county North of Miami) and the same in general in Florida. Couple that with talk about - ahem - property tax reform (FOR THE THIRD TIME) only this time it's really about moving some tax sources from property tax to sales tax. Now population decline is not necessarily a bad thing to a Peak Everythinger - like me - 'casue after all we aren't exactly swimming in potabale water down here (we pump good rainfall - when it happens - into the freaking ocean. But the impact on (sales) taxes...
And we ain't even started to hurt...wait until the cruise line industry collapses. Airlines are already cutting back. Long time "bigger" industry like Motorola will shrink even more if not disappear all together.
Even Shaq left!
Pete
Those of us living in Florida 'Are Freakin' Doomed'. We are represented in Tallahasse by a bunch of usedtobe realtors and real estate promoters. Now that RE is dying they don't have a clue. Yeah, raise the sales tax...again...That'll fix everything. My guess is their next move will be to legalize gambling casinos anywhere in the state...It would have already happened if not for the various hard shell protestants protesting.
Ptommes, I noticed recently that lots of cruise ships have moved from S Fl ports to Canaveral Seaport. Reason given was to be nearer Dizzy World and take advantage of people visiting Dizzy that want to go on a cruise. The cruise ship operators might want to consider drilling holes to the keels and stepping masts for sail power.
Daytona Int Air Port is losing flights almost daily. Meanwhile the kids at Embry Riddle AU are flying their little Cessna 172s to death, trying for enough hours to solo cross country and take their FAA written. I wonder how many of the students will ever get a berth as pilot of a major airline? The airlines are howling for more pilots but only because they fired the well paid senior pilots to hire younger lower paid pilots. Now passengers are being flown around by greenies. Not me.
Meanwhile, shrub and vader seem to think an attack on Iran will solve all problems for the US. I shouldda' built that bomb shelter.
It seems to me the state legislatures are typically populated with developers. In a shrinking economy that is going to be entirely *illegitimate*; they won't be representative of anyone.
cfm in Gray, ME
Florida is on the path to soon be a Dead Zone. I'm outta here ASAP. If you stay, keep the Zombies south of Georgia please.....
The World turns, with or without U.S.
BZ
"Meanwhile, shrub and vader seem to think an attack on Iran will solve all problems for the US."
Is this some recent news over the last week or so, or are you referring to past comments? Any links if recent?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7311565.stm
According to General Petraeus, Iran may have been behind the Green Zone attack on March 23.
http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=1342
US military option on Iran is back on the table.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_richard__080328_saudi_newspaper_...
Saudi newspaper warns to protect against radioactive fallout from US nuclear attack on Iran.
Cheers
Once most municipalities have gone bankrupt, they might be restructured to continue operations, but it will have to be at a much lower level than previously. They just possibly might be able to maintain a minimal building inspection department at best (re-engineered from a "nit-pick mode" to a "what really matters mode", i.e., just keep the structure from collapsing or catching on fire, otherwise pretty much anything goes), but zoning will have to go by the wayside. Regardless of whether the ordinances remain on the books or not, they will be unenforced and increasingly unenforceable.
Municipalities might very well shrink and de-annex territories that they can no longer economically service. If there are large swaths of depopulated land around their periphery that they are not actually managing to collect any property taxes on, then why bother keeping it in the city limits? Many municipalities might have to limit themselves to that extent of territory that their police force can patrol on foot - fuel for police cars being too expensive to use except for calls for backup, and certainly too expensive for drives way out into the boonies. The same considerations apply with fire departments.
Water utilities will be increasingly expensive to operate and maintain, and cities will only be able to afford to supply water to their densely populated centers, not the sparsely populated peripheries (which could, after all, supply their own water with wells).
We all know that the private passenger automobile and commutes in it from the suburbs is unsustainable, and that people are going to eventually have to go to urban mass transit (or bicycles, or feet). The trouble, though, is that in many metro areas we are talking about multiple municipal jurisdictions that mostly don't like to cooperate with each other. In only a few areas has this tendency been overcome and regional transit systems successfully established. For many places, this regional cooperation will not happen quickly enough, and once most municipalities are under severe fiscal stress, the window of opportunity to develop regional transit systems will have closed. Shrinking municipalities will look only toward serving their own citizenry, and very much on the cheap at that. The last thing they will want to do is to extend a bus or tram line out into the sparsely populated periphery. If anything, what little service already exists out into the suburbs will probably be cut back, effectively stranding the people left out there, and hastening their abandonment of the suburbs. It would actually be to the advantage of shrinking municipalities to provoke and encourage this trend, as this would create more denser (and more economically serviceable) populations within the shrunken city limits, and would likely increase the economic activity within the city limits (thus increasing tax revenues). (I wonder if Kunstler has anticipated this side of things?)
In this manner will the suburban periphery eventually become abandoned, untaxed, and suitable for restoration to small-scale agricultural use.
Removing all those houses is a lot of energy.
The New Deal is 75 years old right about now and it may be "born again". We can put demolition of all those houses on the list of things to do for the re-tooled CCC.
Suburbs will not be converted back to farmland as the topsoil is destroyed in the development process, organic production from former suburbs is even more unlikely. I have converted regular, chemically farmed agricultural land to an organic system and this takes about 10 years to get the land back to a dynamic state.
But if there are horses or cows (grazing on this vacant ex-suburban land) whose manure enriches the soil, couldn't the process of returning the land to its farming potential be done sooner?
If this scenario was true, the vast, degraded rangeland of the western US would be fertile farm land by now instead of degraded rangeland.
Western rangeland is very different, apparently the main soil turners are harvester ants, not earthworms as in more fertile areas. It can be very lush looking, but is actually very delicate. Probably what the West needs most is a lot less people and a lot more buffalo. And a lot of time to recover.
In many cases NOT since it isn't only the top soil that was ruined but the subsoil... long process of renewal. Compact the subsoil into hardpan and messing up the drainage will take for than a few years of horse poop to rectify.
I disagree with you here. Not about what your saying but your assuming a traditional field.
Inner city gardens on old building sites are quite common and successful. Generally they use some sort of raised bed intensive growing method. So although I think your right about returning to general agriculture using the land for intensive gardening and say aquaculture in old road beds is possible.
Another use case is grazing land. Burning the houses either intentionally or by accident may eventually solve some of the clearing problems and dynamite can turn a foundation to rubble that could be used for the raised beds. Although the smoke from a burning house is full of crap I'd think the residue would only be enriched with melted plastic. In general its a variant of slash and burn so you should enrich the soil from the ash. Stone and brick can of course be reused. Whats actually happening in New Orleans with the destroyed houses how is Mother Nature responding ?
I'd assume the copper would be stripped out along with most of the aluminum. So its really the remaining plastics that are problematic but not a huge deal. We are not talking about pristine organic farming but simply food.
With orchards, you only need to put good compost & organic amendments into the planting holes, the rest of the land can be left as is.
As others have mentioned, all that nice, well-tended lawn will make great grazing for livestock. Pigs don't much care what kind of soil they wallow in.
Again, as others have mentioned, raised beds and greenhouses can go in anywhere.
The basic problem with these discussion is the implicit assumption that people are going to want to start growing field crops in these locations. They are not. What we are really talking about is a reversion to the same type of orchards, dairy farms, market gardens, and other small-scale agriculture that have traditionally surrounded cities. Grains are going to be grown in the same places that they are now -- IF they continue to get enough water, and it is still possible to move the grains to the cities.
During WW II, civilian city workers were drafted for part-time farm work. They took the tram or electric RR to the end of the line, or a good stop, and then walked/bicycled to the farm that they were assigned to.
The USA does not have enough Urban Rail, etc. for this to be viable here.
Alan
If this entrepreneur bought the houses, streets and land for about $100,000 an acre, extremely cheap considering that there are two to three houses per acre, then it would take him at least 100 years to recoup his expenses. And that is not even counting the $10,000 to $20,000 or so per acre it would cost him to remove the houses, driveways and streets.
Ron Patterson
Things sho can change fast. Look up above at the post by Westexas about a housing and land auction in Fla that fizzled altogether.
Oh, I don't know: "Come and get it!" might get the job done in a few weeks, if not days or hours.
Appliances and copper would be gone in hours. Bricks and concrete would take just a leeetle bit longer to disappear.
Kinda depends on how far along we are in this deal.
Anyway, it was kinda tongue-in-cheek... but it would help to get some of it gone.
:)
I am predicting that eventually there will be people in the demolition and salvage business. They will have teams of people that roam the country from one worksite to another, living in RVs. There will be a good market in the cities for salvaged building materials from the suburbs, as city housing densities need to increase. Single family houses will be remodeled into duplexes, or accessory apartments built in to basements or attics or garages or in the back yard. Infill development will take advantage of every empty lot. All of this will require building materials, and new ones will be extremely expensive; used materials will be much less costly, and thus in high demand. I'm not sure that it will be necessary for the property owners (banks or municipalities) to have to pay very much for this demolition service - these entrepreneurs might do the work for very little, or even pay for the opportunity, making most of their money off of the resale of the salvaged materials.
The future career opportunity for a lot of people presently working in the construction industry will be working in the de-construction industry. In some cases, guys might end up dismantling the same houses they built a few years ago.
Imagine some entrepreneurs buying up connecting subdivisions, removing most of the houses- leaving some strip malls or schoolhouses or
Ok - so you have an economic model that has land and food SO valuable that housing would be taken down, then rebuild the soil to farm it?
Exactly HOW will these numbers work out?
Bill Mollison, co-founder of the Permaculture concept, has stated that there is great potential in suburbia for partial local food self-sufficiency, as it represents a unique environment where the majority of individuals own enough land to contribute significantly to their food needs. Without doubt, there are massive problems associated with suburbia and its more recent relative "exurbia," but there does seem to be *potential* for a seamless transition between an urban hub and a true "rural" farming periphery. Suburbanites can realistically grow a significant proportion of their food requirements, and given the sunk cost of infrastructure and housing in this zone, there may be sufficient incentive to get Americans and suburbanites elsewhere to actually do so in the relatively near future. Even something as "simple" as a dozen semi-dwarf fruit and nut trees, something possible for most suburbanites, can contribute a sizable chunk of a family's food needs. Exurbia, while currently even more problematic from an energy descent perspective, has even greater potential for small commercial farming. Right now, expensive labor and cheap energy & transport is the key impediment to viable commercial farming on areas as small as 5 acres, but as this article shows, that is already changing to some degree, and will likely continue to change. There may always be some crops and regions (e.g. wheat or ranching) that don't translate well to small acreage, but it seems *possible* that America's currently unwieldy urban/suburban/exurban/rural mix could transition to a seamless and sustainable food production geography.
"Possible" and "likely/easy" being entirely different things, of course.
Jeff - I have never heard the term "Exurbia". When I searched for it in Wikipedia it re-directed me to Commuter Town or Bedroom Community. This means essentially that the people who live there commute to where they work. I thought that was what suburbia was. Am I wrong?
I'd define "exurbia" as that area beyond the suburbs, essentially people living on 1 to 5+ acre "ranchettes," but where the vast majority still commute into the city every day for work. I think it's differentiated from "Commuter Town" or "Bedroom Community" in the sense that it has a superficially rural look, but not the rural (ag-based) economy to match. I'm sure this manifests differently in every location--in Colorado where I live this would be "Castle Pines" or "Black Forest."
Basically, if you raise llamas or keep a few horses on your property but work in the city, you live in "exurbia."
Thanks - Got it.
That's EXACTLY what this is here. Pure unadulterated Exurbia. Horses, llamas, 25 miles min to get to jobs, yeppers.
It's great, your kids can grow up learning to barrel-race, and rope steers. Everyone can have a horse. But the money, food, everything's coming in from somewhere else. Actual self-sufficiency would be very hard here - the population would have to go down to 1/20 or even 1/50 of what it is now. There'd be droughts and possibly famines. In fact true sustainability here is a problem probably worked out best by the original inhabitants, who were wide-ranging hunter-gatherers, with a few precarious settlements that had a tendency to fizzle out.
My definition is similar but a bit more general in that I extend yours to include anyone living on a acre or more that does not make a living off the land. I'm concerned that a lot of people trying to ELP may be misguided because they will end up with a few acres of land with a long expensive commute to a job that may not exist in the future.
Basically you have three sustainable ways to live in the country.
1.) Own a productive profitable farm.
2.) Work on a farm as a laborer potentially owing your own smaller plot nearby.
3.) Retired/Wealthy or a few people who can work at home. Writers/Artists/Programmers etc.
Now we have a diverse group of people living in the exurbs that depend on daily commutes.
For some the cost of gasoline and job loss will cause them to leave. For others such as doctors who probably and absorb the rising costs the decline in road quality and housing deflation will cause them to leave. Generally this is what I call the horse farm crowd.
Now the denser suburbs have problems with conversion back to agriculture but the exurbs have a lot lower density normally 1-5 acres for each house. Conversion back to farmland makes sense.
For most of the US, a good delimiter between "suburbia" and "exurbia" is a county line. Most large cities are in the center of their county, but occupy only a part of that county. Much of the remaining space in the home county is taken up with suburbs immediately adjacent to the central city or to each other. Things tend to thin out as you approach the county line. Once you are in the next county, you tend to be mostly in what was farm land, dotted with small towns. It is those small towns that have become exurbia, along with increasing conversions of the farm land into residential developments. People discovered bak in the 80s and 90s that by driving just a few more minutes on the interstate, they could find much cheaper property values and taxes the next county over; this is what started to transform these places from traditional rural areas into "exurbia".
The above doesn't apply to every city, of course, especially not the largest ones. For example, while the above might have worked for Chicago & Cook county back a half century ago, yo