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permaculture - Re: [permaculture] Time to pick up our hats?

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  • From: Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Time to pick up our hats?
  • Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2007 14:22:45 -0700

In post-peak oil thinking, there is an unspoken thread of logic that goes like this: "When oil gets very expensive, food is going to be hard to find, which will cause major unrest in the cities. So let's avoid both problems by moving to the country where we can escape the urban riots, and grow our food."

There's a good chance that food will be the last major resource to become scarce during hard times. Governments know that food shortages are what bring governments down, and The Powers That Be will sacrifice nearly every other resource--transportation, schools, health care, consumer goods, you name it--before they will let food become scarce. So I would worry more about getting tools, medicine, fuel, paper, and nearly everything else before I'd worry about needing to grow all your own food. And notice that nearly everything but food comes from urban areas. Being far from a city may mean that the only resource you have is land. It's hard to grow food without tools, food processing equipment, and the fuel to make and repair them. That's what farmers discovered in the Depression. At first, people left the cities in droves. But by the early thirties, they were returning, because most of them found that the cities had more resources. They certainly had better welfare programs.

And I think there's an even better chance that rural areas will suffer far more than urban ones, or suffer before cities do. At least in the US, rural areas have been Wal-Martized to be barely distinguishable from suburbia. Only 6% of ruralites farm; the rest commute long distances to their jobs. So 94% of your neighbors are going to be unemployed, hungry, and jealous of your garden. And you'll be a long way from police and social services. How will that be better than a city? In hard times (like the collapse of Rome; see Homer-Dixon's "The Upside of Down") rural areas have almost always suffered earlier and more than urban ones. Unless absolutely everything falls apart instantly--a very unlikely scenario--urban areas have the economic and political clout to pull resources to them. (Shipping hubs are near or in cities. If goods are scarce, they won't make it far from the hubs.) Plus cities have a the social and cultural resources to deal with widely varying conditions. Witness how long a rural area takes to recover from the loss of say, timber revenue, as opposed to a city when a major employer leaves. In a decline that will take a few decades to unfold (with shocks along the way) my bet is on a moderate-sized progressive city surrounded by good farm land in an area with a mild climate. I think we're not far from seeing rural property values plummet as commutes become too expensive (so wait to buy that farm!)

To me, moving to the country looks a lot like what therapists call "doing a geographic." That's the belief that going somewhere else will solve our problems. But we just run into new problems, or, more often, bring all the same problems with us. Starting an intentional community is a monumentally difficult, and most of them rapidly fail, so I'm skeptical that starting a rural Pc community is an option open to any but the lucky few. Voluntary communities of neighbors and friends in the city are far easier to form. A rural intentional community is a pressure cooker: one bad egg and the community ceases functioning. In an urban community, if it's not working for someone, there are tons of other options, so urban communities are more likely to shift direction or membership rather than collapse.

I'm not saying that moving to the city is the answer. For some rare individuals, the rural ecovillage may work. But I think the belief that rural areas and rural ecovillages will be better places to live in a post-peak oil world shows a poverty of logic, imagination, and belief in human creativity.

BTW, I read Sharon Astyk's Casaubon's Book regularly, in spite of the fact that she has utterly hated 4 of my last 5 articles and wrote unbelievably vituperative and distorted diatribes against them. I ticked her off with arguments like the one above, and she's been angry ever since (someone in the comments to "Pick Up Your Hat" even referred to my articles). But Sharon says she doesn't mean to literally move somewhere else. She says, "Start making changes now . . . . Build community, grow food." I'd modify that to "Build community, know your foodshed," and then I think you'll be as well off as one can be.

Toby
http://patternliteracy.com
Dear all,

When I read the article pasted on below, I was moved to also share the following.

When we share about our plans to move to SW Wisconsin and create a permaculture farm where we and others can live as sustainably as possible, some people comment that they believe one should never move out of fear, but only if one would enjoy living elsewhere more than they enjoy where they are now.

This brings up some interesting questions. The main one in my own mind is what is it that makes the above belief appear rational to those who hold it? If you live where an incoming hurricane or a rumbling volcano threatens your home, is it sensible not to be afraid?

We live out in the country fairly near a railroad crossing. One day I heard a train approaching, then a sound I had never heard before, a very loud metallic screeching sound that lasted for quite a few seconds. "I bet that's the train braking for somebody in the crossing," I thought, and beat it down to the crossing, which is not in a populated area, in case I could be of assistance. It turned out that the young man driving the car hit by the train had indeed seen it coming, but somehow didn't think it would hit him. Across the top of his smashed windshield was a large decal that said "No Fear!"

It happens that the farm we are creating will allow us to live the lifestyle that has been my ideal for decades, and that it's in an absolutely beautiful place. However, in all honesty I don't know whether we'd have taken on the huge project of pulling up roots and moving across the state if we had not had a good bit of apprehension about how un"enjoyable" our lives might become shortly if we didn't take some positive action now.

-Shivani






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