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onlooker wrote:

asg70 wrote:

onlooker wrote:So you dispute "The project of the American suburbs is the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world."
I think I will keep you on ignore for awhile

That statement is by definition subjective. Those who live in and enjoy the suburbs and don't care about energy don't feel it was a misallocation of resources. I mean, there are anti-civvers that feel that agriculture was the greatest mis-step of mankind. There is no unanimity when it comes to these things.

Does not merit a reply

Then why did you supply one?

The fact of the matter is that the sustainability ship sailed 10,000 years ago when we abandoned hunter-gatherer life. Even Kunstler's vaunted world made by hand continues to rely on an 1800s style lifestyle that is still (in the long run) unsustainable. It's just less unsustainable than now. The behavior of humanity, time and again, favors short-term comfort over sustainability, and suburban life, to many, is the pinnacle, i.e. the proverbial white picket fence.

Okay you got my attention with the statement

asg70 wrote:Even Kunstler's vaunted world made by hand continues to rely on an 1800s style lifestyle that is still (in the long run) unsustainable. It's just less unsustainable than now.

What in your mind makes the World made By Hand unsustainable? The only thing that comes to my mind is the mining of garbage dumps, which is an admittedly limited resource like any other finite material. Other than that they are portrayed as living a low energy biofuel based technological level using renewable fibers and other materials for all their basic needs.

Tanada wrote:What in your mind makes the World made By Hand unsustainable?

All annual tilled agriculture is unsustainable due to soil depletion. It just doesn't seem that way since it takes longer to play out.

asg70 wrote:

Tanada wrote:What in your mind makes the World made By Hand unsustainable?

All annual tilled agriculture is unsustainable due to soil depletion. It just doesn't seem that way since it takes longer to play out.

I haven't read World made by hand yet, just some excerpts but I am familiar with Kunstler's work. I would say that tilled acreage that's properly handled in a way that mimics nature can be sustainable. Maybe not infinitely sustainable, but sustainable enough that it really makes no difference. Also in Kunstler's work I think the population was low enough to make soil depletion negligible as compared to the amount of acreage needed for a small disciplined agrarian society. I think these debates are subject to the wording and other constraints one puts on ones point of view. How sustainable are you talking about ,1000 years ?

Read Jared Diamond.

http://discovermagazine.com/1987/may/02 ... human-race

asg70 wrote:

Tanada wrote:What in your mind makes the World made By Hand unsustainable?

All annual tilled agriculture is unsustainable due to soil depletion. It just doesn't seem that way since it takes longer to play out.

While this claim gets repeated a lot in reports about soil it has no basis in evidence. Those regions where the climate has remained annual crop friendly that were farmed by the Roman Empire 2,000 ybp, or the ancient Chinese of the same era, are still in production as farmlands today. I specifically mean southern France in the first case and the Yangtze river valley in the latter. Farming in both regions began as much as a millennia before that period. Growing annual crops while maintaining healthy soils is a technology that modern big ag has forgone in search of maximizing short term profits with petroleum chemical inputs. Take away the chemicals and return to sustainable agriculture methods and the erosion problem is greatly diminished or eliminated completely.

.
suburbia was born from the rising standard of living of the working class
before the mid twentieth century if you were a worker You would be packed in inner city tenements , three rooms for six people were pretty common .
the post war boom gave the workers the great hope of having a bit of a garden , a tree and some feet square of lawn , an undreamed luxury until then .
the cleaning lady at work was ecstatic telling us they had bought a house
"it has a garden and a big kitchen" ..of such are modest dreams made of.

railing against Mc Mansions is just petit bourgeois snobbery
Now some idle thinkers want to pack them back into ghettos for esthetic reasons
why not lodge them underground and leave the manicured surface to their betters

asg70 wrote:Read Jared Diamond.

http://discovermagazine.com/1987/may/02 ... human-race

Not a bad article and thanks for posting it, but he offers no answer to his perceived problem. I agree that there are severe problems with diets of peoples that were recently hunter gathers that quickly change to a "modern diet". My wife's family from Central America are stricken with this. I just don't see us going back anytime soon without a massive die off. I also didn't see him say that agriculture in itself is unsustainable, he said agriculture as we know it has had many bad consequences. Sure, I agree with that, but it's in our power to make adjustments. Ok, we probably won't in a meaningful way anytime soon.

My family a couple of generations ago were trappers, hunters, small scale farmers, cattlemen, fishermen of many species of fish and shellfish and they also had somewhat of a gifting society. That list applies to all the things they did throughout the year not one profession for one person. Its all of those things for one person and his family.

onlooker wrote:

pstarr wrote:The United States is still sending its precious agriculture resource out the exhaust pipes of its automobiles . . . for no good reason

As Kunstler said "The project of the American suburbs is the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world."

With just a few regulatory changes, the suburbs could be actually pretty sustainable. Things like placing shops (pubs, grocery stores, coffee shops, etc) every few blocks.
The worst things about suburbia are caused by regulation. If you changed it so that people would not have to drive 5 miles to a coffee shop, you would automatically cut down on fuel use.
If you changed regulations to promote local shops, sidewalks, bike paths, and local parks, you would end up with the equivalent of many small villages instead of a "everybody hates their neighbors" slum.
And all those yards would make some dandy gardens.
All those people have to live somewhere - better a maximized suburb than a high rise ghetto.

wildbourgman wrote:

asg70 wrote:

Tanada wrote:What in your mind makes the World made By Hand unsustainable?

All annual tilled agriculture is unsustainable due to soil depletion. It just doesn't seem that way since it takes longer to play out.

I haven't read World made by hand yet, just some excerpts but I am familiar with Kunstler's work. I would say that tilled acreage that's properly handled in a way that mimics nature can be sustainable. Maybe not infinitely sustainable, but sustainable enough that it really makes no difference. Also in Kunstler's work I think the population was low enough to make soil depletion negligible as compared to the amount of acreage needed for a small disciplined agrarian society. I think these debates are subject to the wording and other constraints one puts on ones point of view. How sustainable are you talking about ,1000 years ?

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out how to grow stuff while increasing soil at the same time.

Care for the Earth
Care for people
Care for the future

Follow those ethics and it will be ok