[permaculture] conservatism/food/references requested

Toby Hemenway toby at patternliteracy.com
Fri Feb 22 13:34:50 EST 2008


Harmon Seaver wrote:

>
>    I doubt we can draw any real conclusions from ancient history, since
> we really have little idea of what was actually going on, only what a
> few people thought they saw. 
Historical and population records from Rome, Sumer, Greece, Crete, and 
China are very good (meticulous tax and census records) and have 
excellent correspondence with ecological and archaeological data. 
Collapse undeniably occurred in the rural areas first, sometimes as much 
as a century before that in cities. Read Tainter, Homer-Dixon, H T Odum, 
John Perlin, Mumford, Jane Jacobs. If you want to deny them, well, okay.
>> The country is where some food comes from (there are plenty of cities 
>> that grow 50-70% of their food)
>  Where? Not in the US
The USDA says 30% of all US food is produced in metropolitan areas, 
which really surprised me.
> You can forget about tools and machines coming from the cities in 
> theUS. Most of the factories are closed down,
My city manufactures steel, railroad cars, clothing, packaged food, 
small engines, bicycles, and thousands of other things. There is still 
plenty of manufacturing in the US, and we'll see more as cheap imports 
become scarce very soon. The point is: little but food is made in rural 
areas. So who will get what goods remain? Who will replace your solar 
batteries?

And all 14 families on our road commuted to far-away towns for work. 
They won't do well. Plus, sheer distance and lot size means today's 
rural life uses more resources than urban does.

When I lived in the country, the guy next door dealt meth and sold guns 
(he's dead now). Next to him were two heavily armed fundamentalists who 
shot at each other's cars. They knew I had the best garden for miles. 
How safe was I? Gangs are in the country, too: we had them. But gangs 
stay out of cohesive neighborhoods--that's why I don't buy the urban 
terror scenario. Community is easier to create in cities.

The rural US was once cohesive--it is not anymore; it's a hodgepodge of 
retirees, poor refugees from high-priced cities, affluent dabblers in 
country life, the underemployed, and old-time locals angry at the 
newcomers. Our town meetings were mayhem. Neighborhoods in cities are 
homogeneous compared to rural ones, allowing community to happen. It was 
those sorts of realizations (among other things) that made me leave the 
country for the city. Rural people are farther from community, 
distribution centers, knowledge pools, law enforcement, manufacturing, 
food processing, power generation--everything but big acreage. The rural 
US is woefully unprepared for collapse, and has fewer resources, in 
terms of money, political power, education, skill sets, and neighborhood 
cohesion. Their only money may come from feeding city people; we need 
each other. Some individual rural people may do fine, but overall it 
will be a mess. Rural real estate is already collapsing faster than in 
cities. I would not take comfort from the Depression--things are very 
different now.

I think our principal area of disagreement is that it sounds like you 
believe collapse will be rapid, taking a few years or a decade or two. I 
think that since our culture is an adaptive system at least as complex 
as any ecosystem, it has a profound ability to adjust. I expect our 
collapse will be like that of every other culture known: it will take a 
couple of centuries, with plenty of nasty shocks along the way. But I 
think the "we're gonna run out of everything soon" view is not grounded 
in history, ecology, systems science, or any other rational study. It's 
based on fear and our tendency to be drawn to the worst scenario. I have 
a high opinion of human adaptability; it's our hallmark trait. That's 
why collapse unfolds over centuries: you can't stop it, but smart people 
can slow it down enormously.

Toby


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