Actively Participating

An urban garden. Having a local, self-sustaining food system is just one aspect of Transition. (source)

"Transition is a challenge to be an active participant in the unfolding of our collective future."

What is Transition? We start out by asking people to see the world as it exists, rather than as they'd like it to exist. Then we invite them to imagine the best possible future, for the whole community, within that reality. Third, we challenge them to figure out how to get there. And finally, we say: go there, it's up to you.

What's actually occurring in most of the world is exactly the opposite. Most of us are fed a media diet of the world as they — or someone, anyway — wants it to be, rather than as it is. Then, there is no vision for their future, but rather a passive and thought-destroying extrapolation of present perceived trends. The only challenge we are expected to face is surviving the daily grind with enough cash or credit left over to buy the latest iToys, whose only purpose is to provide a distraction from the soul-crushing weight of the meanness and meaninglessness of most of modern life. And, finally, we are not encouraged to go anywhere or do anything. Life is "a ride," which we are "along for." We are told to "enjoy it", "it" presumably being allowing someone or something else to control, determine and direct the greater course of our Earthly existence.

It is pathetic and sad what we've come to accept; and the corollary is that, as playthings of the power elite, our only remaining "freedom" is the freedom to be thrown away, just like Woody and his gang, when we're all used up or out-grown. It is no wonder so many of us are apathetic, even in the face of the most Earth-shaking changes ever to occur in human history. This is the necessary result of the triumphant marriage of our disposable culture with the "ownership society."

So these are our choices: to passively accept our lot as throwaway commodities with no more ultimate value than our precious electronica, or step up, as adults, to the challenge of collectively determining the course of our future.

Rainy Days in May

I'd like to propose a a new metric by which to measure extreme rain events: the number of times the sewer backs up into my basement in any given month. Usually this number equals 0. This month, May 2011, this number equals 2 (so far).

Last night, with up to 2" of rain falling in an hour and a half in Lancaster City, the sewer main that runs through my basement backed up -- again -- and filled it with about 8" of brackish water.

Figure 1. Note the firehose-like quality of the water gushing into my basement.

And here I thought I was clever building heavy duty shelves after the last sewer overflow. I know the water hit the 8" mark because my lowest shelf weighed in at exactly 7.5". 8" of water can really float some stuff, let me tell you....

Hopefully, this time, there will be no actual sewage. Crossing my fingers as the water recedes.

UPDATE: Someone just brought to my attention a column by Jack Brubaker ("The Scribbler") headlined "Lancaster built on a wolf-infested swamp?", in which the Scribbler says that yes, in fact, downtown Lancaster City was once a wolf-infested swamp. Explains a lot, doesn't it? They drained the swamp and cut down all the trees in order to expand the city way back in 1745. Quoting from the column:

"But central Lancaster remained filled with a considerable amount of water. Substantial streams ran down Queen and Water streets. Springs proliferated; some of them are still flowing."

Yeah, through my basement!

I humbly suggest that filling in wetlands (what they used to call "land reclamation", as if the wetland snuck in in the dark of the night) is a really bad idea. Flooding basements with sewage is the least of it. This bad idea points to the root cause of our troubles with water these days: we think we can control it, when ultimately it has much more to say about the nature of our existence than we have to say about its. This is why filling in wetlands is "land reclamation," why modern human settlements are built like shields rather than sponges, why we cover up streams and springs rather than accepting them as an ineluctable feature of the landscape, and why we mix our effluent (human [shit], non-human animal [shit] and industrial [toxic waste]) with water, rather than recycling it, as the rest of nature does.

Both Damned and Saved; or, The Inner Transition

I hope not. (source)

There are many types of transition we must go through to reach the better world we all believe -- or want to believe -- is out there. I consistently return to the conclusion that the most important, most fundamental transition, is the internal (psychological) one. Using less energy, walking and bicycling instead of driving, eating locally and more efficiently (i.e., having a higher vegetable/meat ratio), reducing waste, and composting (etc.) are all important, yet they're all insufficient. Completely. Even all together, they will not even come close to sufficing in the face of everything we know is happening in the world. To me, the true value in these actions lies not in the actions themselves, but in the mindsets or worldviews these actions help to foster. Riding a bicycle, while valuable as a money-saving, pollution-avoiding and health-promoting endeavor, to me finds its true worth in re-introducing us to the joy of using our own bodies and the beauty of the changing seasons -- and to the understanding that the fundamental crime of driving a motorized vehicle is its quiet theft of these experiences from us. It's theft, in essence, of our humanity.

When you know the joy of bicycling, the inner tranquility that a healthy diet promotes, the satisfaction of a near-empty garbage can, you begin to realize how unnecessary are so many modern "conveniences". Not just unnecessary, but actively obstructionist towards a fulfilling life. And that is when Transition becomes truly possible.

Part of the transition is facing up to very difficult facts. In an ideal world, we would have no urgency and could simply amble along the road towards a better world for the simple fact we saw it as a better world. But in the world as it is, we must, in fact, run towards this better world because the one we're leaving behind is crumbling, and threatening to take us with it. I speak, of course, of the twin drivers of the Transition Towns Movement: peak oil and climate change (with a dash of economic crisis thrown in for fun).

This particular post derives much of its motivation from two forces: a speech by Mari Margil of the PA-based Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) on the harsh reality of the state of the global biosphere, as well as a recent special issue of the Royal Society (the world's first scientific body) on the effects of a mere 4°C (7.2°F) of global warming, which could happen as early as 2060. As a practicing planner with an undergrad degree in math and physics, I am well aware of (a) the stark scientific case for why we're all (almost) screwed and (b) the pathetic political case for why (almost) nothing can be done about it. In a fit of depression, I wrote a short, sarcasm-rich version of this post which I have since deleted. I had made the cardinal sin of forgetting to look at things holistically -- looking only at our collapsing biosphere, I had forgotten about peak oil! You see, most of the worst-case scenarios with respect to climate change and global ocean death require something called "business-as-usual" emissions, which rely on a business-as-usual economy. Thank God for peak oil! Without growing oil consumption, the economy can't grow, and without a growing economy, emissions can't grow -- and, in fact, the prime likelihood is for some deepening economic depression that leads to global economic decline if not outright collapse; in this tangled web we call the global economy, the collapse of one major player can only lead to the collapse, sooner or later, of all the others. So we're saved! By collapse. But maybe there are other options....

It is fitting that we should be both damned and saved by our profligate use of polluting fossil fuels, particularly oil. But the extent to which we are saved rather than damned depends utterly on our willingness to make smart decisions now, while other options remain, rather than wait for the unsympathetic laws of physics to decide for us. It is a guarantee that we will not like the ways in which Mother Nature unilaterally restores the natural balance of things. I would like to believe she'd prefer us as active partners in that restoration, rather than passive victims of our own malign neglect. I know I would.

We have fallen under the influence of the strange conception that "sustainable" means "what I'm doing now, but better", where "better" means "more." What we're doing now -- collectively -- is the problem. What we desire is inconspicuous, painless incrementalism, where what we need is radical transformation. 4°C warming by 2060 -- that's a death sentence for the human race. And the fact that the only politically feasible option we have for averting that cataclysm is political collapse points to the extreme level of dysfunction we have reached as a people.

So what are the other options? I return to where I began with the imperative of the internal transition. The major problem is our expectations for the future, which are out of all sync with reality. They are also all out of sync with ourselves -- our hidden humanity. We've allowed ourselves (collectively) to be lulled into false notions of how the world is. The extent to which we are saved rather than damned depends on our ability to make this internal transition, to deny what we think we know and accept the truths of the world as it is. All else follows.

Transition Lancaster Newsletter #51, with much interesting news.

Renting a Home

Is your mortgage underwater? (source)

 I'd like in this post to address what's turned out to be a topic of major importance. As many of you are probably aware, from reading or listening to or watching the news, home purchases are way down. Many mortgages are underwater. The housing bubble is collapsing as we speak (I say "collapsing" instead of "collapsed" because many of the commentators I read believe it's still got a ways to go). These trends affect many of us personally, in addition to being powerful macroeconomic drivers.

For decades, the federal government has pushed homeownership as a means of growing the economy. This despite the fact that, as of 2000 (the last published US Census), in Pennsylvania alone there was a glut of 500,000 homes. In other words, the commonwealth had 500,000 unoccupied residences, probably many of those in urban cores. For the nation as a whole, that number was 10.4 million. Also according to the 2000 Census, 13.6 million housing units were built between 1990 and 2000... apparently 10.4 million in excess of what the nation actually needed.

In other words, our economic growth, at least from 1990 on, insofar as it was built on housing and homeownership, was phantom growth. We chopped down endless acres of forests, poured endless of acres of concrete, put up endlessly hideous square feet of vinyl siding... so that well over 10 million homes could sit empty. What were we thinking?

But that's not what I want to write about today. Taking all the foregoing as necessary background, how do we move forward? If we accept as fact that home values have much further down to go (and how can they not, with such a glut on the market?), what sensible person, not already a homeowner, would make the decision to enter those ranks? For the first time in decades, it seems, it is not financially rational to purchase a home: you are practically guaranteed to lose money (on the other hand, if you have the cash to purchase one outright, you might prefer to do so for the security of tenure you'll be granting yourself).

I think the way forward is to return to renting as the major mode of home occupation. There are many benefits to renting, from increased mobility (less debt and no need to find a buyer before moving), to fewer maintenance costs, even to the ability of the savvy renter to negotiate lower monthly payments in return for services rendered (e.g., mowing the lawn). Many people think of renting as "temporary", as some sort of phase between living with one's parents and finally "growing up" and "owning" a home. I put owning in quotation marks because I think its arguable whether you or your bank really own the home you purportedly purchased. You might say you own it, but wait till you've lost your job and your unemployment runs out: that knock on the front door is the sheriff. At least, with renting, ownership is unambiguous: it's definitely not you (though it also might not be the landlord).

Renting need not be a phase. According to Time Magazine (9/6/2010), while the rate of homeownership in the US is 68%, the rate in Switzerland, e.g., is only 35%. And just 110 years ago, in the US, the rate was only 47%. This rate was only pushed up to its current high levels through proactive government efforts. Again according to Time, the idea of the 30-year mortgage was invented by the federal government in 1928, as a way of making homeownership affordable to more people; and, even then, it required the creation of a government entity, The Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) to buy the mortgages off the books of the banks.

I guess what I'm saying is that it is much more likely that homeownership is the phase, and renting the norm. To return to the title of this piece, what do I mean by "renting a home"? Well, if renting is the norm and not homeownership, shouldn't we stop thinking of renting as a way to store our butts when we're not at work, but rather think of renting as renting a home? I think so. It's a shame that many municipalities zone renters out of the best neighborhoods on the rationale that they'll bring property values down. There may have been some logic to that in the past, when our cultural zeitgeist told renters there was no point in improving their residences since "they got nothing out of it". I think that's an idea due for throwing into the dustbin of history. I say again: it's time to think of renting as renting a home. Of course it makes sense to improve your home, whether you own it or rent it. Do you want to live somewhere uncomfortable, or antagonistic to your sense of self or aesthetics? No, and who would? And if you say "but you're just improving the place for your landlord", I might reply that I'd rather improve a home for a person than for a bank.

I'll close with a case study, as it were. My wife and I, as I'm sure some of you may have guessed by now, rent a home. It's on a lovely block in west Lancaster. We have great neighbors (some of whom also rent), a backyard, almost enough space to suit our needs, and the (mental) freedom to improve our home. Here are some of the things we've done to our apartment: turned the backyard into an extensive vegetable and flower garden; built a fence between the yard and the alley, and a gate between the yard and the street; installed ceiling fans in every room (much preferred over AC); painted the walls a pleasanter shade than white; installed racks for hanging vegetables, pots, and coats; and other miscellaneous things.

Pretty good list, right? I'll tell you the secret of how we did it. Actually, two secrets. First, we recognized that there's no way we could afford to own a home, and we didn't want to; this made it easy for us to leave that bit of cultural baggage behind and see our "dwelling unit," as planners say, as a home. Second, we have carefully cultivated a relationship with our landlord. This began as early as 18 months ago, when we were looking around for a place to live. One of our criteria for a good place was "a good landlord." I think that's a key goal for anyone looking to rent a home. If you've got a jerk for a landlord, move. If you meet a jerk of a landlord, but otherwise like the place, understand you'll probably be leaving when the lease runs out in a year; if you're looking to live somewhere longer than a year (say, in a home), then take the time to find a good landlord.

Once you have your good landlord, start cultivating that relationship. Before you even sign a lease, ask if he minds if you plant a garden. Ask who mows the lawn, and can you do it? Often (s)he'll be happy to let you mow, and pay you to boot. We get paid $10 per mow. Little things like this form the basis of a solid relationship, such that, when you eventually ask him to shell out $80 for a ceiling fan, on the proviso that you install it yourself (very easy, and saving a good chunk of money on labor), there's a good possibility of him saying yes. If there's hesitation, don't hesitate, yourself, to make the argument that, when you eventually move out (if you ever intend to), you've just improved the value of the place, at practically no cost. I've found this to be a strong argument. We've also convinced our landlord to pay for paint (and it helped we went to the Habitat Re-store to buy it, allowing us to paint our entire apartment for under $50). When your landlord knows you care enough not to waste his or her money, you've made that relationship stronger, and eased the way for future improvements you might like to do.

Rent your home! (source)

Finally, given the state of the national and global economy, you might be worried about the security of your employment. What happens if you lose your job and find rent difficult to make? This is a tough one. Dmitry Orlov has suggested, on his blog and in his book, Reinventing Collapse, that it is imperative for renters to "de-monetize" their relationship with their landlord. I've take the first tentative steps down that path by helping my landlord with basic home maintenance, for free. I don't mean to say I did that out of cold calculation; rather, I did what felt natural in a growing, mutually-beneficial relationship, but in may also help in the "Orlovian" sense, if I may be allowed to coin a term.

So, go forth! Rent a home. And don't feel like you're in some sort of pre-buying holding pattern. Being a renter may very well be your permanent condition, but there's nothing wrong with that.

Collapse or Descent?

I am writing this from the comfort of Chestnut Hill Café, on the corner of Chestnut and Pine Streets in Lancaster. Not the most vegan-friendly establishment, in terms of food offerings, but they brew a mean coffee and graciously let me abuse their internet for hours on end. Good people.

The purpose of this post is two-fold. First, to share some critically important information. Second, to reflect on how that information can inform our actions here in Lancaster.

The Ecological Footprint, or I = PAT

World ecological footprint, 1960-2005, and beyond.
(source)

On the left is a graphic representation of the global ecological footprint from 1960 to 2005, with a "projection" to 2050. I put "projection" in quotation marks because this sort of thing shows as clearly as possible the perils of projecting that E.F. Schumacher talked about in Small is Beautiful. But I'll get to that in a moment. First, what is an "ecological [or eco-] footprint"? The basic equation is relatively famous: I = PAT, where I is Impact, P is Population, A is Affluence, and T is Technology. So, Impact equals Population (world pop is closing in on 7 billion as I write this) times Affluence times Technology.

You can estimate your personal eco-footprint at a website like this one^*. And then, for the sake of simplicity, you can imagine the global eco-footprint to be the sum of all our individual footprints. Feel free to share the results from your personal calculations in the comments section below. When I calculated mine, using the above site, I got around three Earths. That means that, if every human lived like I did, we would need three Earths to sustainably support our population. Yeah, that sucks. I used to be at 1.5. You'd think being a vegan bus & bike commuter who almost never buys anything new would get you some eco cred, but not enough, it seems.

^*Different sites produce different results. Feel free to use another if you don't like this one.

The human population now has an eco-footprint of around 1.4 Earths. The average eco-footprint for an American citizen, in 2006, was 5.3 Earths. We are, in other words, in deep shit, and digging deeper every day.

Carrying Capacity and Overshoot

In systems theory and ecology, the technical term is carrying capacity. The definition is fairly straightforward, and if you don't already know it, you can probably intuit it. Basically, every ecosystem (defined as a biological community and its physical context) has a carrying capacity. In the context of humanity, a typical measure is the amount of arable land available for cultivation (i.e., how much food can we grow?), but also includes measures of capacity to absorb pollutants, stability of the climate, availability of potable water, etc. Notice no mention of money or other economic indicators. This is a strictly physical measure. Money and economic well-being come later, after we have secured the basic necessities of survival and physical well-being. One might also be inclined to include indicators of spiritual well-being, but that's a discussion for another time.

This concept of carrying capacity, like the ecological footprint, can be expanded from an individual or ecosystem basis all the way up to the whole planet.

Once one has estimated a region's carrying capacity, one simply compares that to the analogous estimate for its inhabitants' eco-footprints, and asks the question: are we living within our means, or are we in overshoot? I've made the case that we are in overshoot, and I don't think you'll find a serious thinker anywhere who would disagree with that assessment. Most people, either unaware of this concept or unaware of its implications, assume things can continue as they have (for the past few generations) indefinitely.

Well, I'm here to tell you the implications, if you don't already know. There is really just one response a natural system has when it has gone into overshoot, and that is collapse. To be more specific, population collapse. Where once there were thousands, or millions, now there are not.

As intelligent, reflective beings, you might be inclined to say that we have other options. To the extent those options involve shiny new technologies that solve all our problems without creating new ones, I'd say you're wrong. The reasons why could and do occupy voluminous libraries and sites easily accessible online, and I encourage the intrepid reader to check some of them out (check links on right-hand side).

To the extent you believe we have other options because of our capacity to adapt intelligently, rather than our capacity to live in self-denial, I think you're right.

Collapse or Managed Descent?

Back to that graphic. It depicts our current state of overshoot at around 1.4 Earths. It then projects two possible future trends. One has overshoot expanding ruthlessly above 2.0 Earths. This line I've labeled "Pure Fantasy" because it is. That trajectory is absolutely catastrophic, as anyone with a pulse can attest to today, in the summer of 2010. The world's economies are collapsing, the climate is boiling, species are being driven to extinction at a rapidly accelerating rate, clean water is running out everywhere, the ocean is turning toxic, acidic, and anoxic and, frankly, we are simply running out of the resources we need to keep pushing that destructive envelope.

The other projection takes us back below the thin red line of our carrying capacity. There are two points I want to make about that before continuing. The first is that I may have misled you somewhat earlier, in that I didn't state that "carrying capacity" isn't some well-defined number, but rather one that fluctuates according to circumstances. In fact, it is possible for that number to rise (if, for example, we began to rebuild topsoil, that might improve our ability to raise crops). However, it is much more likely, and has in reality been the case, that the global carrying capacity has been declining for decades. For example, in the US, as measured in hectares per capita, our biocapacity has declined from around 8 in 1961 to just over 4 in 2006. This is possible because of the increasing productivity of agricultural lands, thanks to massive use of fossil fuels, and also because of importation from abroad (eroding other nation's carrying capacities in the process).

The second point is that the graphic above assumes that humans have harnessed the entire Earth (or Eaarth) to their needs and desires, leaving nothing for other species, except insofar as they are useful to us; that seems like a pretty bleak future. I would, however, argue that taking the road of "managed descent" makes that ethos impossible. The two (living within our means and yet exploiting the entire Eaarth for our own desires) seem to me mutually incompatible futures. I think managed descent absolutely requires a change of mind that makes that level of exploitation inconceivable.

So those are our choices: collapse or managed descent.

Managed Descent?

Managed descent is a deliberate, intelligent, scaling back. If we return to our equation I = PAT, we can see clearly that, if the elements of environmental impact are Population, Affluence, and Technology, then we have three clear areas of intervention. We need to reduce population. And I'm not talking about over in Africa. I mean right here, in the US, in Pennsylvania, in Lancaster. Over 20 years, the situation in the Chesapeake Bay has gotten worse and worse, and this despite improved regulations and improved agricultural practices and improved storm and wastewater management. When your "per capitas" go down, but your "capitas" are always going up, your impact still goes up. So, we need to reduce population.

We need to reduce affluence. It is simply a fact that more affluent individuals have more negative impacts. Those big homes take big energies to heat and cool and power. Those flashy flatscreen TVs take a whole lot of energy. That big lawn takes lots of gas to mow (not to mention the natural gas-based fertilizer it takes to make green, and the oil-based chemicals it takes to keep the weeds down). Before anyone freaks out, think seriously about your level of happiness in the current state. Do you need the big bills, the big taxes for those massive highways, the big headaches from working too many hours to enjoy a shrunken-down life? I love what Thoreau wrote in Walden: that it would take him more time to earn the money to pay for a carriage ride somewhere than it would take to simply walk there. In that simple idea lies real wisdom.

Finally, we need to change our technologies. I'll give a small-scale example and a large-scale one. In your life, chances are you can bike -- or even walk -- more than you do. Let's say you typically drive to a grocery store two miles away. At 12mph, you can bike there in just about 10 minutes. Driving it would take you about 6 minutes (assuming you don't have a superhighway directly connecting your driveway to the store). So, for the cost of 4 minutes, you've gotten some exercise, you've learned your neighborhood better, you've breathed some fresh air, you haven't wasted any gasoline, you've kept wear-and-tear down on your car, and you've avoided putting any pollution into the atmosphere. Good job!

Now, imagine you own a factory. You could take out a loan for a million dollars and buy the latest robotic machinery to churn our your widgets, or you could pay a couple of guys a living wage ($10 or so an hour in Lancaster, or so I hear) to do the same thing. With real unemployment over 18%, doesn't it sound ridiculous to buy "labor-saving devices"? The labor's right there, idle, worried about losing his or her home, going hungry, and living in a tent city.

This Island Lancaster

I encourage my readers (all three of them) to think about Lancaster (or wherever you live). What is its carrying capacity? Is that capacity declining or improving with time? If it's not improving, how can you help it improve?

Now think about your personal eco-footprint. What is it? If it's over 1.0, and it almost certainly is, what can you do to shrink it? Is it time you became a locavore? Do you commute far to work? Can you move closer to where you work, or work closer to where you live? Can you bike or walk or take the bus there instead of driving? Can you downsize your home? Shrink your heating and electric bills? Toss the TV, because it wastes energy and feeds you misinformation anyway? My wife and I have no TV and consistently have an electric bill under $20.

You can't downsize your family, but maybe you can adopt instead of having more children. If you want a large family, consider joining a community group (like Transition Lancaster!) and making them your adopted family.

Do you believe these things will actually improve your quality of life? I do.

Visions of the Future

A vision is an important thing to have. If you don't know what you're working for, you'll often find you don't like what you've built with all your labor. And even if you do know what you're working for, you may find the product not to your liking, which shows that it's not just a vision, but the right vision, that is important.

Another important point about visions is that, just because you have one, doesn't mean it's guaranteed to come about. This is a really important point, so I'm going to emphasize it: just because you want something, doesn't mean you're going to get it. I find this kind of semi-magical thinking at all levels of society, from individuals who believe a change of consciousness is imminent -- or immanent, if you will -- and that *poof* just like that, next Tuesday we'll all be sipping organic chai wondering what all the fuss was about last Monday.

As an example of that level of thinking at the highest levels of government, I present the following chart (let us call it "Figure 1"):

Figure 1. Magical Thinking at Upper Levels of Government. (source)

In 2009, the US Energy Information Agency (EIA), a department of the US Department of Energy (DoE), projected world demand for petroleum at around 105 million barrels per day (mbd) in 2030 (up from below 90mbd in 2008). They also projected all known and expected petroleum extraction projects to decline to around 40mbd -- a disjunction of over 60mbd, or the output of six Saudi Arabias. Now, any sane person would look at that information and say "oh, that's interesting. Maybe it's time to transition off petroleum before it transitions off us?" However, the EIA, a very clever agency, simply filled in the gap with "Unidentified Projects." You see, it is simply impossible for some people to imagine a world in which growth in oil production did not match growth in (nominal) oil demand. They matched their internal reality to their "vision for the future." That's magical thinking in the worst way (trying to influence physical reality with positive thinking and only positive thinking), and it's a mistake.

Similarly, if I presented to you a vision for a transitioned Lancaster, in which we were not dependent on oil, where the air was clean, where noise and light pollution were gone (and I could see the night sky again!), with full employment and a (mostly) localized economy that was insulated against violent hiccups from abroad, and then simply asserted that because I have this vision, and maybe you do, too, it's simply bound to happen, you would see that for the lunacy it was. However, that does not negate the value of the vision. It simply says the vision isn't enough.

My purpose in this post is two-fold. First, to present the beginnings of a vision for a better, relocalized Lancaster economy; and second, to sketch out some of the steps and preconditions that might help in realizing that better future.

A Vision for 2020

First, it's just "a" vision, not "the" vision. I'm just one guy, thinking aloud. Feel free to chime in with some comments.

I'd like to see a carless, or mostly carless future. I admit to a strong bias against cars: I think they're obnoxious and dangerous, in many ways; I think they are inimical to urban life and demeaning to life generally. Now, I'd like this transition to a carless future to be a matter of choice rather than necessity, but I suspect it will be the latter. Peak oil -- barring even more massive government intrusion into, and subsidies of, the oil markets (imagine that) -- will make gasoline and diesel ever more expensive. As Figure 1 above shows, we're already falling off the oil cliff into the relatively uncharted waters of terminally declining net energy per capita. This will necessitate radical changes in how we live our lives; most immediately and obviously, this will mean transportation, of ourselves and our food, will become ever more expensive. A nice side-effect will be cleaner air than any of us have breathed in Lancaster for a long time, if ever. I think the quiet will prove an unexpected boon, as well.

I mentioned the increasing expense of transporting food. It's difficult to imagine a scenario in which buying Chinese garlic from Giant (e.g.) doesn't become impossible; it's already insane: making it economically impossible would be a nice way to put a stop to the practice. To give you an idea of the scope of the problem, read this article, published by the Daily Mail in the UK, titled "Nine Meals from Anarchy." It does an excellent job of relaying the extent to which our globalized food system is dependent on (dwindling and dangerous) supplies of petroleum. And then read these articles about the 2008 trucker strike in Spain and this one about the very recent trucker strike in Greece, each of which seriously threatened those two nations' economies, not to mention bringing real hardship to the people those economies nominally serve. Since we clearly can't rely on state or national action to avert this looming catastrophe, my vision for Lancaster's future has us producing all the staple food we eat here in the county. Before you interject: "but don't you know Lancaster has the best soil in the world and is a national breadbasket -- no problem!", let's look at some of the facts. According to the 2007 US Agricultural Census, produced by the US Department of Agriculture, out of 303,222 acres of harvested cropland in Lancaster County, only 6,019 acres (less than 2%) produced vegetables for human consumption. The vast majority (over 90%) of the rest are fed to animals, the vast majority of which are then trucked out of here on a plume of diesel smoke. Also according to the Ag Census, less than 1.25% (or about 6,250) of the county's population (around 500,000 people) self-identified as a farmer.

These statistics point to two major issues: (1) our farming is largely devoted to commodity crops and animal production; and (2) our farmers absolutely require vast inputs of petroleum and petroleum by-products to produce those crops and animals.* This latter point is made more clear when one considers that, in 1840, the first year of the Ag Census, around 69% of the nation's population was in farming. Those massive productivity gains made over the past 170 years are the direct result of industrialization, which is directly the result of massive inputs of fossil fuels.

*even if you imagined we could maintain that ratio of animal production to vegetable production, do you really think a healthy diet would consist of 98% meat and 2% veggies?

So, back to my vision for Lancaster's food supply. I envision us producing enough food to supply our population with adequate nutrition and calories, with modest imports of luxury, non-staple foodstuffs. I envision that this food is produced by a vastly increased population of farmers, both rural and urban. Another of the pleasant and unexpected spin-off effects of peak oil, therefore, is that farmers, no longer able to rely on imported, terrorism-supporting (and watershed and climate-destroying) fossil fuels, will be forced to "re-labor", if you will, food production. There, just solved the employment problem.

In addition to labor, the new (old) farm will need a new (actually, quite old) source of fertilizer. It just so happens that Lancaster County, and Lancaster City in particular, has a HUGE supply of potential fertilizer, but one which we currently foolishly flush away into the Conestoga River, and from there to the Chesapeake Bay, where it is presents a seemingly intractable nutrient pollution problem. You ever wonder how we could have something so ridiculous-sounding as "nutrient pollution"? That's your ancient Earthly self speaking up. It's only modern (wo)man that has such a farcical problem. Let me sketch out to you our current system:

Step 1: Pour petroleum and natural gas on farm fields, which have been degraded by centuries of mining them of all their valuable nutrients; and raising food thereby.
Step 2: Eat that food.
Step 3: Urinate and defecate into drinking water, whose potability has taken a tremendous amount of human toil and (yet more) fossil energy to produce.
Step 4: Flush that fouled water into the nearest body of flowing water, fouling it as well.
Step 5: Waive as it bobs merrily out to sea.
Step 6: Repeat until every ocean is full of anoxic (oxygen-depleted) dead zones and every formerly-productive agricultural field is only able to be kept so by the exponentially increasing application of artificial (petro- and natural gas-based) fertilizer.

Is it just me, or is that asinine?

So, here's another part of my vision, which will simultaneously solve the problem of where to get fertilizer once oil and natural gas are out of the question, the problem of the dying Chesapeake Bay (not to mention the unswimmable and drinkinkable Conestoga), and save a whole lot of energy and money to boot! One word: humanure. Well, maybe two words: composted humanure. I'll just let that mentally digest for a while as I move on....

So, we've looked at transportation (which includes a vision for a clean and quiet atmosphere), food, employment, wastewater, and natural fertilizer. That may be a good stopping point for today.

Oh, and I promised one other thing in this post: a discussion of steps and preconditions that might be necessary to see this vision come to fruition. That's actually rather simple. Another two words: accept reality. To elaborate (just a little), we need, as citizens of this county, to give up our personal visions of a future of endless material abundance, forget about what we always thought we were promised as 20^th- and 21^st-century Americans, and get down to Eaarth. I believe that a better world is possible, but I don't believe it is inevitable. The odds are rather stacked against it, frankly. But if we can shed our illusions and embrace the new Eaarth, we may yet achieve the grandly simply goals outlined by the Founders in our Declaration of Independence: life, liberty, and happiness are still possible. But a right that is ignored, or passed up for a flatscreen television, is hardly worthy of the name, is it?