Some more realworld info on how rural areas get mauled by high gas prices:



I haven't looked it up again, but there was an article on TOD quite a while ago about gas stations closing in rural regions, forcing people to drive long distances for gas -- which can turn into a nasty EROEI situation. Here's some reporting in the same vein:



The above quotes are from another summer 2008 article, High gas prices threaten to shut down rural towns.

Here's still more reporting in the same vein:
from High Gas Prices Threaten to Drain Small Towns' Populations.

These are very serious problems caused by high oil prices, not in suburbs or exurbs (as Pstarr is misreading) but in the country, i.e. rural America, i.e. the sticks. If you think about it, it's just a straightforward extension of Kunstler's logic. The suburbs will die because they are too oil dependent. Therefore, the rural areas will die even quicker because they are even more oil dependent.

Here's more reporting:
Rural drivers feeling rise in gas prices more than their urban counterparts
Gas prices hit harder in rural areas: It's even worse in rural areas like Bickleton, where driving is a necessity
High Gas Prices Hit Rural Poor Hardest
Rural Residents Struggle with High Gas Tab[
Fuel prices rocket in rural areas

Ibon and Pops, I know you are idealistic well-intentioned people, but I think you're in denial about the realities described by these articles. I think it would be very valuable if guys like you actually read the articles I've cited, fully digested the problems, and then addressed them, rather than just trying to bluff your way through on idealism.

Naturally if you don't have to work or you're wealthy, then moving to a rural area may be a great response to peak oil. I'm not talking about such people. Likewise, if you can be extremely self-sufficient, and perhaps squat on some land, then my critique doesn't apply.

But if you're a working person who needs income to live or to build up a doomstead, it seems to me that going rural is jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

Pops, I read your link from "Community Solutions". Here's Megan's business plan for local food:



That's it. Unfortunately, as I showed above, all of these marketing structures are horrendously inefficient and car dependent, and in fact use as much or more fuel per pound of product than flying vegetables thousands of miles. I think you've conceded that point.

The issue isn't reducing carbon, or being green. I too don't really care about the carbon/environment angle, and apparently neither do you. However, logically speaking, I think you have to concede that -- if your business model (farmer's markets, farm tourism etc.) is at least as fuel intensive as the 3000 mile salad -- then peak oil is going to kill it straight off.

Now, there may be some idealistic endpoint, where the US looks more like rural Thailand. Unfortunately, you don't seem to have a real roadmap which solves the economic issues (e.g., in the 3rd world, subsistence farmers own their land hereditarily, while in the US land is private property and must be purchased or rented -- big difference). You seem to be mainly handwaving about how the rural US might work well someday, if it gets repopulated and undergoes an amazing transformation. Of course, you may be right, and that may happen in the long term.

But I'm talking about events in the near to medium future, like the next wave of high oil prices. The question isn't whether rural America will survive in the long term. Of course it will. The question is: Can working back-to-the-country POers survive a series of oil price spikes? I don't think they can because:

a) If they try the local food business model/dream, they'll get mauled by gasoline prices, just like the 3000 mile salad, and

b) if they try to work a job in the country, they'll get mauled by gasoline prices, due to low wages, lack of job opportunities, long commutes, and need to drive long distances for necessities.

Way back there when I said suburbs were just a veneer about as thick as asphalt I was really talking about the fact that although they do have infrastructure, in 'burbs it isn't nearly of the scale the big modern cities have so adapting a strip center intersection for example to higher density, mixed use, with light rail and within walking distance of homes could be very doable.

I had a great site showing depictions of various stages of retrofitting such a place but can't seem to find it now - here is a google search.


http://www.vestaviahills.net/vestaviahi ... NDIX_2.pdf
http://www.smartgrowth.org/about/princi ... e=4&type=4

If wheat, corn, beans etc. will continue to be grown, processed and transported large scale, what makes fruits and vegetables any different? Why will bulk transport be prohibitively expensive for f&v but not for other items, like beans?

I don't know if I'm hand-waving but that is exactly what I hope to see happen because I don't see much choice.



Well, John I don't get it, if people are going to survive in the country in the long term that pretty well means they need to survive in the medium and short term as well, correct? They aren't just going to wander out there in 30 years or however long horseback and start turning soil.

Come on john, because people need calories not salads.

BTW, thanks for all the links but it's pretty obvious people who commute long distances to work/school/etc. are going to have problems. At least 3 of my close neighbors went out and bought smaller vehicles last year and parked their big dually pickups. I don't see many full size pickups go by at commute times now.

Weren't you talking a while back about how easy it is to cut one's fuel bill in half or more by carpooling? We haven't even started to scratch the surface of conservation out here in Redneck land!


Sorry, I know that looks like a Blazer.gov...

Then either ignore him entirely or respond to him on point. Don't just resort to ad homs.



I think Boston is kind of nice too, as long as you stay out of Dorchester or Mattapan. I lived in the brownstones in the Back Bay when I was in college. I just saw the fireworks at the hatch shell. It's nice. I just don't think a hasty retreat to the city in the midst of energy descent is going to lead to any sort of paradise. I don't think there will be the kind of free-flowing capital to transform the cities in a way that allow them to accomodate all these people comfortably. There may also not be enough resources in general to support the infrastructure such an abrupt population spike would require.



David Holmgren is a pretty strong proponent in reforming the suburbs rather than abandoning it. So I'm not so sure we should write off its potential. How practical that is, is another matter. I certainly don't see a lot of evidence of the right kind of things starting up in my town currently.

These debates always go around in circles and get very repetitive. I certainly don't think a growing population can afford not to fully utilitize all of the land area that is available. Certainly the suburbs will be used for something whether the people there now stay or leave.



Soil is not just this magic thing that nature created hundreds of years ago and can never be replaced.

How much cardboard is produced on a yearly basis? How much organic waste? How much humanure? How many tons of newspapers? How much yard waste compost? (visit my local dump and see the mountains of it) Soil can be created on a massive scale from our waste streams if we really want to do what it takes. Sharon Astyk goes so far as to promote "Soylent Fertilizer". She doesn't call it that, but that's pretty much what it amounts to. If the world is a closed system and human biomass is our main resource, then we're going to have to make better use of it.

JD, industrial bulk fruits and vegetables production is very energy intensive for few calories. One pound, a shopping bag full, of spinach has the calories of a slice of bread. But fruits and vegetables are nutritionally indispensable (no, you can not get bioflavonoids, antioxidants, etc. from pills)



Fragile vegetables such as lettuce, spinach, brocolli, etc. are harvested and packaged in the field on large moving conveyor belts, shipped in refrigerated trucks, sorted, sprayed, cooled, and hand bagged at retail. I don't believe this system can last.

I once saw an Igmar Bergman movie, Wild Strawberries, about folks in Scandinavia during the hardships of WWII. The scene that stood out was an old man digging through the snow for a few buried strawberries. It was heartbreaking.

Luckily the vegetable part of the mix is something doable in a small scale. It's the meat and staples that are the problem.

Someone a while back asked for a model. I suggest he look into Von Thunen. Working in the early-mid 1800's, he theorized a series of concentric circles of economic productivity around population centers. Food growing is one of the most inner circles. He was, of course, working long before cheap fossil fuel-driven transportation, so his model just might be valid for the post-peak world. One of the few things I have to show for that class in Economic Geography,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hei ... h%C3%BCnen

For my part, I grow on a few acres located about 5 miles from the city center where I sell at the downtown farmer's market. While I'm on the edge of the city limits, there is a lot of vacant land between me and the market. Market day is one day a week, and I would be happy to only come to town on that day. Bring in the produce, buy the week's supplies and socialize at the same time.

Now, I currently come into town more like 6 days a week rather than 1, usually for some needed supply or to get online. Still my "commute" is a lot shorter than when I lived in California. Pops has it exactly right. It's about doing what needs to be done now to set things up to have a more sustainable life when it gets more necessary. (Sorry if I incorrectly paraphrased you, Pops.) I already tried the self-sacrifice route and, while I don't regret trying to do the right thing back when it looked like there might be a chance of bringing society along, I'm done with that. I'll use whatever resources I have available to get up and running, and I'm not going to make myself or the people in my life miserable in the process.

JD set back this cause for years with his inflammatory trash. But since he rewrote his agenda (he added recently added a disclaimer to his debunk web site that he really does believe in peak oil, just not doomers. Screw him.)

Like I said top soil is removed from modern development and construction sites because it does not compact well and risks shifts and movements that would open the developer to future liability.

It takes 100 years to make 1 inch of topsoil.

One cubic foot top soil weights 75 pounds.
There are 44,000 cubic feet of top soil on an acre
One acre feeds one person
So to amend that acre for good production would require three million pounds and 162 (10 yard) truckloads and trips.

Unless David Holmgren knows something I do not then you must admit that the scale seems to be monumental and most likely impossible.

Actually, with just a couple of years at it so far, and a lot of hurdles still to overcome before I can get into anything more that experimental scale, I have the vegetable and protein parts about 50% whipped for me, with a surplus of vegetables to share at the market. I could probably fill all of my vegetable needs at least 10 months out of the year now, and protein is from various legumes, native pecans, and deer meat. Add chickens and goats to the mix, and my diet could be a lot less boring.

Carbs are still a problem, but Atkins tells us we don't need to eat all of that, anyway.

Maybe at the glacial pace of undisturbed nature. There is no need for that. Not when you can actively form it out of compost. Did you even look at the no-till article I sent you?

We need relatively few vegetables for nutrients but they are indispensable. Meat and staples, calories in short, are the crucial input. That requires land which does not exist in sufficient quantity in cities or suburbs. USDA says 1 acre per person, the organic crowd will argue 1/4 acre per person, and some studies suggest it is possible to grow enough calories in 2,000 sq. feet to feed a person for a year. (see jeavons et. al. in Mendocino)

Who in Boston, or even the suburbs, has a spare 8,000 sq. feet (a city lot) to feed a family of four?

There is only one solution and that is government mandated forced re-ruralization of the population as per Pol Pot and Chairman Mao.

Want to propose that at you next Transition Town meeting

Did you read the rest of my post? How long would it take you to make enough top soil to cover even 1000 sq. ft one foot deep?

That is three and one-half tons. I've composted for years and let me tell you a couple of pounds a season is an accomplishment, and very valuable as a soil amendment but not as a replacement for top soil that is gone.