The answer to pollution and growth issues is right under our noses...

Everyone bitches about the same things:

-Too little open space
-Losing wildlands/farmlands
-ugly landscape
-too many people
-pollution
-global warming
-commutes
-communtiy


Really, these issues can be solved tomorrow. Yes, folks. Tomorrow.

How? Simple really.


Cities.....and oh yes, Subways!


Sorry, soccer moms, Sierra Club members, and highway buidlers. Hydrogen won't save you. Population reduction won't save you. Moving to Montana won't save you. Moving back into denser enviorments will.


Fact is, if measured on a per person basis, you're more likely to find clean air, safe water, and eco-friendly policies in NYC or inner-city Chicago than Lake Tahoe. If we all simply lived closer together, we'd have electric powered transit, more diverse schools, and more communtiy.


But no one here wants to do that. Shame really. Asia is the fastest growing area of affulance on the planet, Europe has one of the higest standards of living anywhere, and every great society that has come and gone has had one thing in common: Great cities.



Heck, want some divine revelation? In the Book of revelations, it is said Paradise will be a massive city of Jersuleum, not a garden.


Sorry peeps. You can either save humanity, or keep on chugging.....

2 problems:

1) Suburban sprawl and the infrastructure that supports it exists, and constitutes an enormous amount of real estate value that would have to be abandoned in a migration to densely populated cities.

2) Significant change requires significant public support, or a compelling impetus. Americans love their cars and their big houses with big back yards.

We're going to need a lot more farmland to grow anywhere enough food without petro fertilizers (as petrochemicals become very expensive and only sparingly used).

The compelling impetus will be that it costs too much to get to work, and to the store, etc... Plus, if an 'undeveloper' comes along and offers you money for the lot to sell it to a farmer, it might look pretty good, even if you lose your shirt on the house (that you can no longer afford to heat).

One can hope, anyway.

... that the compelling impetus will be economic necessity. Realistically, that is the compelling impetus behind most change -- good and bad.

However, when it comes to the environment and dwindling resources, I think we'd all be much better off with a more proactive approach. Many people still alive grew up during the Great Depression, but it doesn't dawn on most Americans that it can happen again.

At this point, I don't see us preparing for inevitable transition. I see a crash that, though it may bring necessary positive change in the long run, will cause much needless suffering because our leaders are so short-sighted.

...you can grow more food per acre without chemical fertilisers than you can with them. The trick is to use techniques like crop rotation, so the soil isn't depleted in one aspect year after year. Then you don't have to shovel a load of chemical shite on it to replenish it, introducing compounds that don't belong.

(so, what did the Romans do for us? err...)

These days it's far more popular - among farmers, at any rate - to use monoculture: "I'm a corn farmer, so I grow lots of corn, and this is what I shovel into the soil to make corn grow"...

AbE: Unfortunately, when you stop using chemical fertilisers and switch to crop rotation, you have to wait for 5 years or so for the soil to re-balance.

Why let it go to waste. Take out some highways and tinker with the street grid and suddenly you have prime real estate. Add some mulitple downtown cores interconnected by high-speed rail lines and you've got yourself a new age city.

As for Americans loving their cars, I doubt this is as prevailent as it may seem. People want space, so make apartments bigger (and ownable). People want good schools and safe streets too. Cities can offer this just as well with the right amount of intitive and funding. Many people have told me they'd ride trains if they were fast, cheap, comfortable and convenient.


For the 10% or so who simply have to have their "car space", they can pay the $10/gal prices...

In the Book of revelations, it is said Paradise will be a massive city of Jerusalem, not a garden.

I'm not sure you'd get planning permission for this. And the people over a thousand miles up might have air problems apart from pollution. The possibility for Heaven on Earth seems slightly restricted, in this respect.

Apart from that, the "great civilisations" weren't as great in terms of size as we have now - Constantinople, to pick a name at random, was smaller at the height of it's power than the average US shopping mall is now. It's not really a good comparison.

Rather than restrictive zoning. LVT encourages 'highest and best use', which in cities is a building. It also reduces the tax burden associated with improving a property. It's also the only tax that doesn't bear on wages.

So, implement an LVT to encourage the development of urban cores, especially abandoned and underbuilt properties. An LVT recaptures the value created by public spending on schools, transit, safety, etc.

An LVT encourages dense, land value based development: that is areas with high land values get more buildings, generally in city centers, near transportation nodes, and the like.

An LVT lowers housing costs by 1) encouraging the building of more housing units in an area and 2) reducing the tax associated with housing.

An LVT, if used to reduce the various taxes on labor, encourages a shift in agricultural processes. Current agricultural practices are designed to minimize labor inputs by using lots of mechanization (which generally requires a monoculture) as well as chemical inputs. A shift to LVT would tend to minimize LAND inputs, which would result in intensive, non-chemical agriculture.

I also think that cities should be designed around people, not automobiles - a good look at one design for such a city is at www.carfree.com

Unless we can keep all our heavy farm machinery running. Half our population will be employed in raising food and transporting it to the cities.

With hand tools, a 3 month growing season, and 1 acre of land, 1 person working 40h week during for 5 months can grow enough food to feed 8 people. With a 6 month growing season, that person can grow enough to feed 16 people. This is an organic, vegetarian diet. Even without oil, machinery could increase this per-person yield: wind powered irrigation, greenhouses, etc.

Assuming in the worst case, that food would have to be transported by pack animals, which gives us a daily transport round trip of roughly 20 miles, or 10 miles one way. I don't think it would come to this - but I do think that trips of all sorts will become more expensive and slower. With a 10 mile radius, an greater metropolitan area would have an area of 314 square miles, or 20.1 million acres. If 40% of this area is devoted to growing food, enough food could be grown here for more than 1 million people. Many forms of produce can be transported over longer distance without fear of spoilage: grains, dried beans, even potatoes, as well as livestock.

I would expect that post peak, more people will be employed raising food - maybe up to 1 in 10.

As for transportation, unless we revert to horse carts, more than likely the best post-oil freight transport would be an electric train - which would actually require less labor than the over the road trucks it would replace.

I was thinking of China currently using 40% of it's population in raising food. My concern is what will happen when we try to scale up your 1 acre garden.

but we are resourceful, and we have a wonderfully flexible economic system that generally allocates resources fairly well. The one failing we have in the allocation of resources through market means, and it is a HUGE failing - the root of all our failings if you ask me - is our inability to recoginize the inherent difference between 'natural' capital (LAND) and 'built' capital (CAPITAL).

When a particular form of CAPITAL is relatively scarce, it's price goes up. When it's price goes up, more of it is produced. Eventually, prices and production stabilize. An example here would be, hypothetically, Solar Charged Battery Powered Agricultural Tractors.

When a particular form of LAND is relatively scarce, it's price goes up. When it's price goes up, it's owners collect more money or accrue more wealth. No additional land is produced. In fact, while prices are rising, many owners of idle land decide NOT to sell, on the basis that prices are rising and they can hold out for a better price. This means that land becomes even more scarce, as more and more speculators withold land. An example of this type of speculation can be seen in just about any city or large town: it's that daily parking lot, or that small strip mall in the middle of highrises. It's that lot in the city worth millions that only has $100,000 worth of improvements on it.

LAND, while seemingly unimportant to a post agricultural economy is still vital: LAND includes Real Estate (bubble anyone?) and Oil. An increase in the price of oil is not going to produce more crude oil in the ground.