If our petro-intensive system of farming collapses, will Lew Fidler’s constituents eat their SUVs?

onlineuniversalwork

Fossil fuels have and continue to enable the global urbanization trend that has been happening for the last 100+ years. But it’s not because of fast transportation, it’s because of improved agricultural efficiencies. Hundreds of years ago, most people lived on a farm, because farm productivity was so low that such was the only way to feed the people.

Today, many poor countries remain fairly rural with low farm productivity, even though relatively fast public transportation (usually in the form of buses) is available and priced at an accessible level. These countries are becoming almost universally more urban, but the change is driven by urban jobs and low food prices, and not by the mere existence of transportation.

Humans are a generalist species that prefers extensive utilization of resources over intensive. It is no accident there is only one vertical city in the U.S. Humans do not prefer to live that way.

Today’s sprawling metropoli not only disperse population, they also disperse jobs and services. With the present state of low job security, people travel in all directions (i.e., rush hour is now isotropic) to work, since they cannot plan on living long-term near their work. Urban services, however, no matter where you live, tend to be nearby. With the decline of small market towns, rural populations, on the other hand, now have longer distances to go for services.

The main immediate task is increasing efficiency of energy use. Finding alternate fuels is secondary. We are at Peak Oil not End Oil. The $200 billion we spend per year on the Iraq War would go a very long way toward efficiency improvement. We must immediately re-orient our priorities.

Peak Oil and Global Warming are social problems; however, we have been focusing primarily on individual choices for solving them (for example, using flourescent lightbulbs or buying a fuel efficient car). Social problems need social solutions.

If our petro-intensive system of farming collapses, will Lew Fidler’s constituents eat their SUVs?

Sorry, Charles. I fully agree that higher density living is much cheaper.

However, what I meant to say is that the cost associated with people from low density locations changing to high density locations is high. And thus there will be a need to cater for those already in low density areas. This will be achieved by newer cleaner and cheaper technologies. As a consequence it will still be possible to live in lower density areas.

But, I think that many in the higher density “liveable cities” advocacy groups, Berlin being an example of such a city, are looking a upon increasing oil prices, saying that this is the end of low density living, and I think that this is wrong.

However, what I meant to say is that the cost associated with people from low density locations changing to high density locations is high. And thus there is will be a need to cater for those already in low density areas.Thus, it will still be possible to live in lower density areas because of these new cleaner and cheaper technologies.

But, I think that many in the higher density “liveable cities” advocacy, such as Berlin (one of my favourite cities), are looking a upon increasing oil prices, saying that this is the end of low density living, and I think that this is wrong.

In the US, it is projected that two-thirds of the development that will be in place in 2050 has not yet been built. The economic cost of building this new development in high-density, transit-oriented developments will be much LOWER than the cost of building it in low-density, auto-oriented developments – not to mention the environmental costs.

Outside of the US, most of the world’s cities already are relatively high density. No need for “introducing high density living throughout the world.”

When oil prices do increase to levels at which it is uneconomical for people to do their daily commute by car, there may be a period of time where people will say that we should move to areas close to the city or near to a public transport hub.

However, a few years later, when the hydrogen fuel cell reaches mass market level, it will probably become cheaper than oil ever was to travel. And thus people may actually travel longer distances than they do now.

The economic costs associated with introducing high density living throughout the world are too high. It will be technology that will save us and not these dramatic changes in life style.

What is your take on this?

Just some of the latest news.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21838083/

and

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aS8qyeqQhtXk&refer=home .