Let's fix the cities now? (Ecocities review) |
by Jan Lundberg | |
21 May 2008 | |
This report contains the author's address at the Ecocity World Summit, April 25, 2008 in San Francisco. Richard Register, the Summit's co-convener and Ecocity Builders founder, responds to this report at the end.
Culture Change Letter #185, May 22, 2008
![]() Richard Register's New Orleans ![]() Richard Register (left) and Ecocity Summit speaker Paolo Soleri ![]() Ecotopia author Ernest Callenbach I've just returned from Mexico and Belize. In my six weeks there I did not see any homeless people or deranged people, whom I started seeing again only after crossing the border into the U.S. So, in our deliberations on cities, we should consider the challenge posed by the mental health of the population, which in this country is relatively sick. It's time to stop buying. Stop going to work. Bring down the system. This is because the crisis we find ourselves in is on all levels and out of control. Collapse, whether petrocollapse or from some other source such as financial meltdown or political upheaval, is better sooner rather than later because of the dislocation and pain guaranteed at some point. The longer it is put off the more wrenching will be our experience. And, there is something better to replace this system. This viewpoint is not fundable. But there are many doable things that bring people together and provide basic needs, such as permaculture and our Pedal Power Produce project, that we can delve into during the panel discussion and questions. These activities both counter instability in our lives and happily destabilize the global corporate economy. There has to be a rebellion if you believe our lives and the world are threatened. The revolution will not be televised or digitized. There is no solution to peak oil or climate change -- just a resolution, along with options for survival. I will summarize peak oil, prior to posing these questions: What is local? How big can a town be? If there will be petrocollapse, how can we escape massive hunger, as some of my colleagues on the San Francisco Peak Oil Preparedness Task Force assume the population can? Lastly, who really needs all this energy that people are trying so hard to provide when petroleum fails? Oil discoveries peaked decades ago, and the extraction peak follows, as predicted by M. King Hubbert in 1956. The world is at the point of using four barrels for every single barrel of oil found, and no one big find is going to change the downward trend of extraction. In fact the “production” data show the world peaked in 2005 for conventional (desirable) oil. We are on a short plateau of oil extraction. I disagree with Dr. Colin Campbell, peak oil geologist, that we are entering with peak the “Second Half of the Age of Oil.” My view involves my donning my oil-industry analyst hat and discussing the oil market. I formerly ran Lundberg Survey which predicted the Second Oil Shock in 1979. Peak oil is a geological concept that pictures the dwindling oil left in the ground after the maximum extraction is achieved. But the effects of peak oil mean a tightening shortage must impact the oil market. The curve of peak oil, with a mirror-image of the upswing of supply applying to post peak, no longer works if there is a cessation of global corporate economic activity due to a severe shortage of oil. First, there will be the sudden effects of sky-rocketing prices, panic buying and hording, the abrupt termination of mass employment, and the unavailability of products and services we have foolishly been taking for granted. Just-in-time delivery for businesses and institutions has become the energy-gluttonous rule of the day. What will happen is like a run on a bank: there is not enough cash if everyone wants it now. So when your cars’ tanks and commercial users’ tanks are topped off and vast amounts of product are moved over to “tertiary storage,” this makes unavailable most of the petroleum that had been in circulation. Second, the ability of the oil industry to scale down gradually to provide less and less product is not there. A refinery needs to operate at an ideal utilization of capacity, and there is also a balance required for the basic types of product output (light, medium and heavy). As to extraction, wells that don’t do well are permanently capped. The oil industry, like the whole economy, is built only on growth. So, orderly contraction is not contemplated, or even possible perhaps. When the effects of petrocollapse [e.g., die-off, which I only implied in this talk] hit, a gradual lessening of petroleum’s availability -- to allow renewable energy to somehow rush in -- is only a pipe dream. So, for these reasons, a transition to a renewable-energy future for anything like today's consumer economy, is just an assumption that is an article of faith for "fundable environmentalism." The substitutes for petroleum are not here on a scale necessary to maintain this economy or the petroleum infrastructure. Nor are the energy-profit ratios attractive compared to cheap oil that’s gone. Products from petroleum will no longer be abundant or even available. [This is consistent with "the final energy crisis" that a few peak oil analysts refer to.] Cities require vast energy and food production, so will we be able to live here when we have not wisely utilized the last supplies of fossil fuel to depave for food gardens? How can roof-top gardens be maximized on high buildings, and water be pumped? As we try to picture a sustainable future that acknowledges energy reality and overpopulation, Culture Change has offered localized programs that subvert the global corporate economy. Sail Transport Network is one of my favorites. And, for raising awareness of petroleum in everyone’s daily life, we can look at plastics. We ban plastic bags but we must include plastic water bottles, as starters. As we do this locally -- and I urge you to do it in your hometowns -- we get the chance to bring up peak oil, war for oil, climate change, and consumerism enabled by technology that we can start to question. The oceans suffer from having up to six times as much plastic debris in them as zooplankton, and the plastic does not degrade; it concentrates up the food chain. It’s not just an ocean problem or coastal cities problem; in the middle of the continent where they don’t eat ocean fish, plastics threaten our health when we consider the chemicals in manufactured products containing fire retardants, for example, in our homes. Wipe the windowsills and find toxics. And we all have plastics in us. Bisphenol-A is a ubiquitous hard plastic in your Nalgene water bottles, babies' bottles, the inner lining of food cans, jar lids, bottle caps, and teeth sealants. It’s a powerful endocrine disrupter. The body reads it as estrogen, and .1 parts per billion can trigger a gene change to give the body cancer, diabetes, obesity, and cause birth defects. I look forward to discussing localization programs that use little energy. We must slash energy use now because of the ecological crisis. And what do we need all this energy for when we should be depaving and replanting?I yielded the floor warmly to David Room, who gave a graphic talk on how local (or not) are our products that we use every day without question. After that, Paul Fenn gave a presentation on Community Choice Aggregation. It was fun to hear PG&E ridiculed and exposed, and to imagine local control of electric power. But it was not directly about economic relocalization, and the questions that followed were not much about our assigned topic or the points Dave and I raised. ![]() David Room ![]() Richard's art: Culture Change mag ![]() JL's Ecocity Summit mugshot by Richard I don’t hold with the view of cities being the total wave of the future, partially because “cities” are so ill defined, and I’m talking about the built infrastructure of cities, towns and villages, all of which are disastrously distorted by cars where influenced by them and that’s practically everywhere. Some mountain villages in the Himalayas no, but not many places like that... You may have noticed I always have “ecovillages” in our conferences even though most of them are scattered infrastructures of single family houses and not based on the “traditional village structure” which is a good model for larger population towns and even cities. I think the viewpoint that collapse is inevitable and better-sooner-than-later is not only not fundable (mine doesn’t seem to be either) but also flawed in many ways. The population you recognize as over-scaled many times over won’t let even an early collapse be anything less that the worst experience of death and destruction the planet has seen if it is completely unmitigated by sane changes in peacefully reducing population, shifting to much less meat, reshaping cities and getting on to solar and wind. Biofuels are delusional as they compete with food and biodiversity for uses massively more energy consuming than needed for human nutrition. We also need to get on to ways of building that radically reduce energy demand and demand for land too. The chance of convincing many people of this -- with conferences, drawings, books and hands-on projects -- is pretty small, but Peak Oil people’s abandoning this message is a large part of the problem. The principles of permaculture are pretty profound, as I say in my book Ecocities. But they work even better applied at greater than the scale/density of the single house, which is unfortunately what 90% of the focus in permaculture circles is. Even permaculture villages are clusters of single houses. Will they rescue us? Fat chance! I don’t think you are doing your math and carrying capacity studies very well. Without massive subsidy of what cheap energy and oil based chemicals have provided, the number of people we have on the planet is way beyond sustainable in the all-rural mode of living you romanticize. We need to wean ourselves from that massive dependence with a whole systems approach of which population reduction, diet change and redesign of the built infrastructure are essential. This is the essence of a “powerdown” strategy that Heinberg seems to be calling for yet he always illustrates “life boats” instead, which like you assumes that rather than steering the Titanic away from the berg as best we can is to just anticipate an earlier collision being better than a later one and look around for the (insufficient) number of lifeboats and decide who can be on them – at gunpoint? I think my chances of success (getting my strategy off the dime) are slim but I won’t just watch the collapse come on without my version of a fight. In the Titanic analogy I’m struggling for the wheel with a lot of people trying to keep me from having anything to do with the steering. I don’t think your study of cultural collapse is very exhaustive or honest – the kind we are looking at is as total as many of them have been in the past. Not something easily swept under the rug with the notion the we will just have some “options for survival.” The only ones that make sense to me are the ones I’ve suggested above for a real powerdown strategy that makes some sense. Your approach of falling to the bottom then looking around for “options” among the rural disciplines of design and building (that need a context of peaceful society to execute) strike me as naïve to a bizarre degree. I agree completely that hoarding fuels will usher in an exacerbated crisis of fuel supplies. One aspect of this that may spell quick catastrophe is that nations have been supporting cheap fuel prices by buying high and selling low, so their people could continue in their delusional excessive running about and mindless consumption with little equity and justice in mind. Now we are seeing angry words and maybe the first of the violent protests at simply not being able to afford gasoline any more in various parts of the world, while the national governments court bankruptcy -- spending billions in tax money just to sell fuel at ridiculously discounted prices. That alone could take down governments and release chaos in weeks rather than decades or even years. It could well be that ecocities may not be realized according to today’s optimistic visions. Those who foresee collapse see ecocities of poverty, ecologically healthy as villages in the deep future, with few metals and no fossil fuels to help at all – probably like small medieval towns, not really cities at all, and not likely to be very Gandhian given the added lesson that “high” civilizations go bust in violence. We didn’t learn those lessons after Hitler and so the notion that it is violence and dominance at the core of human relations at the core of the species will be stronger than ever and will imply nasty societies! That’s another reason I’d rather try as hard as I can for a powerdown. Regarding an optimum population size of 500,000: very provisionally and depending on variable factors. That’s anything but a solid figure in my mind. Strictly “gut feeling” and based on my sense of how much density can make sense covering how much land at extremely low requirements for energy. As for James Lovelock’s prediction, we shall see! JL says: I'm sorry to say I don't see how ecocities can realistically be created now. If they could be, I don't see how they could have anything but a fraction of today's megacity population sizes. I do not want to see the horrors of collapse, nor rely on humanity climbing up from a total fall (to locate "options" such as depaving). What I see happening today that suggests an unpleasant and iffy future -- until there may be a recovery through complete culture change -- requires an honest and open inquiry that seems to take place in very few places beyond Culturechange.org and our Petrocollapse Conferences of 2005-2006. Massive planning by Ecocity Builders, and by Mark Lakeman's City Repair to apply such concepts on a huge scale, to give humanity settlements beyond small ecovillages and narrow permaculture projects, would be fabulous. But if it's not happening now, can it happen when petrocollapse hits? Richard's last word: My mapping system breaks big metropolitan areas (megacities) into patterns of smaller cities. I don’t think you’ve bothered to look at my maps and think through the strategy for a “roll back sprawl” or you probably wouldn’t be saying that. (see Auto-Free Times article by Richard, "A Strategy to Roll Back Sprawl and Rebuild Civilization": culturechange.org) (City Repair) has almost nothing to do with the shifting of density from sprawl to development concentrated in smaller areas and opening up of the landscape. (City Repair) helps people “repair”... (W)ithout change in ownership patterns and real change in the basic land uses, can (City Repair) make an ecologically healthy contribution? They can’t! Not in that mode and style. You want to know the cultural change that can save our ass: recognizing that we need to evolve into more compassionate and creative people at the same time. I write about this also in my book. That’s the big answer, my man, and ecocities are only part of it. Gandhian non-violence and population reduction at the same time is where it’s at! * * * * * Further reading “Summitgoers push for sustainable cities” by Philip Wenz, San Francisco Chronicle, May 10, 2008: sfgate.com Support the work of Ecocity Builders, nonprofit founded by Richard Register: ecocitybuilders.org The Ecocity World Summit (needs its proceedings published; please support this!): ecocityworldsummit.org Depaving the World" by Richard Register, Auto-Free Times: culturechange.org Pedal Power Produce: culturechange.org Sail Transport Network: sailtransportnetwork.org City Repair, of Portland, Oregon: cityrepair.org “Confronting the inevitable: Population reduction, voluntary and otherwise,” by Ken Smail: culturechange.org Jan Lundberg's post-petroleum short stories: The Nature Revolution (2002): culturechange.org The Trojan Horse Sisters (2006): culturechange.org The Global Coolers (2008): culturechange.orgDavid Room's Energy Preparedness consultancy: energypreparedness.net Albert Bates, author of The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook, runs eco-village projects that have websites here: thefarm.org/ecovillages Announcement: THE BIG ONE is coming! June 21-22 in San Francisco. "The new me is We!" "Are you ready for culture change?" Endorsed by Matt Simmons, peak oil expert, THE BIG ONE is a convergence of activists and citizens interested in sustainable living and good health -- and fun. This could be perhaps one of the biggest pot lucks in history! Teach-ins, music, food, depaving, pedal power, and more. The location is Golden Gate Park, home of the Summer of Love, just west of Haight Ashbury. Jan Lundberg is one of the speakers, on peak oil, fasting and whatever else seems right. Come experience the huge tents for connecting with your tribe! See the website beautifulcommunities.org for more information, where you can also use WiserEarth for networking around the world and for THE BIG ONE!
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