“Complete Streets” = Complete Nonsense
April 10, 2010Contrarian 25 Comments »
bicycle by HSB-Cartoon
Well, the new “green”-tinged City Council has wasted no time in trotting out its first major boondoggle. Last Monday the Council voted 5-2 for a resolution directing city staff to attend a workshop to be conducted by an outfit called the “Complete Streets Coalition” — a Washington, DC-based lobbying group devoted to rebuilding America’s urban streets to conform to greenie notions of transportation propriety. The bureaucrats are also directed to find ways to integrate “complete streets” dogmas into City street planning. That means, of course, revamping streets to accommodate pedestrians, bicycles, and transit, and to discourage use of the hated automobile.
“Complete streets” is but the latest euphemism for this element of the greenie “Smart Growth” agenda. Previous neologisms included “traffic calming” and “boulevarding.” All really mean, of course, that streets are reconfigured to hasten retreat to the preindustrial, tribal Nirvana that tickles the greenie imagination, except that these neo-primitives eschew animal-powered conveyances also. What it means for motorists is more congestion and more time-consuming travel.
Now, public streets should indeed be configured to accommodate as many modes of transportation as the traveling public appears to use. No one would object to adding bike or transit lanes to a street if the existing right-of-way could accommodate them without reducing the capacity of the street to carry automobile traffic, as long as the latter is the mode preferred by the majority of users, as it is in Spokane (90+% of all urban trips are by automobile).
Here is a test the traffic engineers can apply after enduring the brainwashing session the Council has instructed them to attend. We can call this the “Contrarian Criterion.” For any street proposed for reconfiguration as a “complete street,” conduct a traffic mode survey over the entire course of a year (to capture seasonal variations), and determine which modes travelers upon that street are using — pedestrian, bicycle, transit, auto, etc. Then determine what portion of the right-of-way would be required to accommodate each mode according to accepted design standards — for bike lanes, transit lanes, or wider sidewalks. If the use fraction does not equal or exceed the required ROW fraction, that use is removed from the configuration plan. The street will remain “incomplete.”
But what if, say, bicyclists make up 10% of the traffic on a given street, and a bike lane would require 10% or less of the ROW, but adding a regulation bike lane would require a reduction in the number of regulation traffic lanes? Well, obviously, we do not cater to a minority at the expense of the majority. So we also adopt the rule: when the ROW cannot accommodate all uses, the dominant uses have priority.
You can be sure that the greenie zealots on the Council will have no use for the Contrarian Criterion. Far from considering themselves public servants, bound to accommodate the demonstrated preferences of the citizens when designing and operating public facilities, the zealots imagine themselves to be, instead, the public’s masters — “leaders” possessed of superior wisdom and purer motives, whose role is to drag their stubborn and unenlightened charges into the Utopia they fantasize, kicking and screaming if necessary. Megalomania has always been a peculiar affliction of politicians.
The current street improvement bond, which expires in 2014, does not provide for the shenanigans envisioned by the greenie zealots. But you can be sure they will try their best to insert their agenda into the next levy presented to voters. We need to be sure that renewal includes the Contrarian Criterion.
Tags: political nonsense, Urban Planning
Posted on April 12th, 2010 at 1:43 pm
If you are starting with a street that is unsafe for cyclists or pedestrians, you will obviously find a low existing level of these users.
If you choose to study a street with no sidewalk, and then say, “nobody walks here, therefore no sidewalk is needed”. Do you not see how your methodology is flawed?
Posted on April 12th, 2010 at 8:46 pm
Lukev,
“If you are starting with a street that is unsafe for cyclists or pedestrians, you will obviously find a low existing level of these users.”
Well, that depends upon how you decide the street is “unsafe.” You don’t do that by deeming every street that lacks a bike lane “unsafe” — that is question-begging — but by looking at the accident records for the street. Cyclists use streets all the time that lack bicycle amenities, and don’t believe they are living dangerously. Virtually no residential streets in Spokane are “unsafe” for bicyclists, and very few collectors or minor arterials.
Low bicycle usage has very little to do with safety, and a great deal to do with inconvenience, discomfort, and impracticality.
Posted on April 12th, 2010 at 11:18 pm
Also, Lukev, if a particular street *is* unsafe for cyclists, and cannot be made safe without reducing traffic flow for the dominant modes, then you advise cyclists not to use that street. If they do so anyway, they do so at their own risk.
Posted on April 13th, 2010 at 2:18 am
Exactly and to the point is 29th in Spokane between Grand and Cedar. This heavily trafficked street HAD four lanes but the CIty decided to make bike lanes and a turn lane in the middle. What happened? One auto/bus lane each direction, two bike lanes and center turnlane. Now the traffic is so overloaded hardly any traffic loads suring rush hour are possible. Very rare that the bike lanes are used. The center turnlane is useless. Nice planning….but the bike riders have their lanes!!
The greenies seemingly think in cliches…I wonder if they can think seriously..??? Arrrgh!
I’ve reviewed the Kendall Yards traffic plan as well. No wide streets. Bike lanes…but traffic willl be very limited. I guess this is the calming effect. The developer indicated that their ensuring people will walk to downtown. .
Posted on April 13th, 2010 at 10:17 am
They think seriously enough, Daisy — about how to convert heathens to their religion. A favorite trick is to increase traffic congestion, so that motorists will switch to bikes or transit. They don’t, of course, but the businesses which depend on efficient truck access and customers from outside the neighborhood move to Idaho. I guess you can count that as a “calming effect” on the local economy.
Posted on April 13th, 2010 at 7:07 pm
Contrarian, I agree that not every street will be good for cycling, and not every street should have a bike lane. However, using the status quo is not a good measure of choosing where bike lanes be built.
The issue is “do any nearby parallel alternatives exist?” if the answer is no, then a bike lane should be considered, even if, hypothetically it is not heavily used by cyclists.
It’s about connectivity. Try using a bike as your only mode of transport for a week. Until you do that, there is no way you could understand. On the same note, I would never want to drive on an interstate highway built by someone who has never driven a car.
Posted on April 13th, 2010 at 9:57 pm
Lukev wrote,
“However, using the status quo is not a good measure of choosing where bike lanes be built.”
What is a better one?
“The issue is “do any nearby parallel alternatives exist?” if the answer is no, then a bike lane should be considered, even if, hypothetically it is not heavily used by cyclists.”
Why should it be considered, if its level of use does not justify the loss of ROW to more efficient modes, thereby reducing overall efficiency of the system? (As I said, if the bike lane can be added without such losses, then building it is fine). What criterion are you applying in deciding it should be considered?
“It’s about connectivity. Try using a bike as your only mode of transport for a week.”
I would never consider doing that, and neither would virtually anyone else. It would be grossly impractical and inefficient. That is why bicycling remains a negligible mode of transportation in most localities (about 1-1.5% of trips). Most people use their bikes for recreational riding only. They do not use them for commuting, grocery shopping, taking Grandma to the doctor, hauling 2x4s from Home Depot, visiting relatives in Walla Walla, going fishing on the St Joe, or chauffeuring the kids and their gear to soccer practice. Nor will they in any foreseeable future.
Posted on April 14th, 2010 at 12:03 am
Contrarian, did you go to the empty field that existed before I-90 was built, see nothing but grass and declare “nobody drives here, so building a highway here would be stupid!” That’s exactly what it’s like to use the status quo as measuring a future development.
In many countries, it is completely normal for a mother to take her kids to school or soccer on a bike. http://imgur.com/brLMI.jpg This sight is very common in the Netherlands. And it’s not for a lack of money, the average income (PPP) in Netherlands is higher than the USA.
But all these errands to home depot, and to Walla Walla, and to take grandma to the doctor are beside the point. The vast majority of cars clogging up the streets at rush hour are not carrying 2x4s, or soccer teams, they are carrying exactly ONE person and ONE briefcase, which is a perfectly acceptable load for a bike commute.
There’s nothing impractical about 10 million dutch men biking to work every day in a full suit and tie, and there’s no reason you can’t do the same… oh wait, I guess there is a reason: lack of safe bike routes.
Posted on April 14th, 2010 at 9:39 am
Lukev wrote,
“Contrarian, did you go to the empty field that existed before I-90 was built, see nothing but grass and declare ‘nobody drives here, so building a highway here would be stupid!'”
No, Luke. You went to East Sprague and counted the traffic there. And on that basis decided that more and faster lanes were needed. You could do the same thing for bike lanes. If bike traffic on a street with a bike lane becomes congested, you could then rationally consider adding a bike lane to a parallel street. You don’t rationally consider bike lanes on additional streets when the traffic on those with bike lanes is less than 5% of capacity, however. (That makes about as much sense as buying 60-passenger articulated buses for a transit system when the system load factor is 7%).
It would probably be possible to add bike lanes on enough streets, without increasing auto congestion, to create a route system reaching all parts of the city. I.e., 2-4 N-S routes and 5-6 E-W routes, from city limit to city limit. Once those initial routes became congested with bike traffic it would make sense to consider adding bike lanes to additional streets.
“And it’s not for a lack of money, the average income (PPP) in Netherlands is higher than the USA.”
No, it doesn’t. US (2008): $46,970. Netherlands (2008): $41,670.
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DATASTATISTICS/Resources/GNIPC.pdf
But income is not the only factor. Amsterdam, like many other European cities, is densely built (meaning commutes are shorter) and has narrow streets. So automobiles are impractical for many trips.
“The vast majority of cars clogging up the streets at rush hour are not carrying 2×4s, or soccer teams, they are carrying exactly ONE person and ONE briefcase, which is a perfectly acceptable load for a bike commute.”
That’s true. But the bicycle trip will take *much* longer, will be much less comfortable, and will be less versatile (e.g., if you plan to run a few errands on your lunch hour or do grocery shopping on your way home).
And it isn’t a matter of whether people *can* make some of their trips by bike. It is *whether they want to*. The role of municipal politicians is to accommodate the public’s preferences; it is not to change them. They are not hired for that purpose and it is a task they are not competent to undertake. Pols who assume otherwise are arrogant and grossly overestimate their positions on the food chain.
As I said above, “lack of safe bike routes” is a negligible factor in the decisions of most people to drive rather than bike for most trips. Time, convenience, comfort, and versatility are the controlling factors. Those are the reasons automobiles replaced bicycles (and transit systems) in the first place, and they remain decisive today.
Posted on April 14th, 2010 at 11:06 am
The cause-and-effect rationale you have is questionable. Only if you yourself, could declare “If I had 40 (or whatever the number) extra minutes in the morning, I would feel perfectly safe making my commute by bike” is the playing field level.
I will agree with you, 100%, that less busy residential streets should be the priority for bike corridors, when they do exist and are continuous. Any major intersection such a residential street makes, however, needs to be signalized. If you have to play multiple games of Frogger-on-Wheels to do your journey, it is not safe. Think of it this way: would you feel safe to send your 13 year old child to make this commute on bike?
As to your “people want to”, does that mean that people WANT to be obese, because so many more people are obese today versus 20 years ago? Sometimes what is made convenient by government actions (both built environment, transportation infrastructure, and e.g. corn syrup subsidies, in this example) is not necessarily what people really WANT.
Posted on April 14th, 2010 at 12:28 pm
Lukev wrote,
“Only if you yourself, could declare “If I had 40 (or whatever the number) extra minutes in the morning, I would feel perfectly safe making my commute by bike” is the playing field level.”
Invalid reasoning. No mode of transportation is “perfectly safe.” Safety is a factor that has a weight, like all others. The (perceived) safety is weighed against all other factors. That it is a minor factor in most people’s calculations is evidenced by the miniscule number of cyclists using existing routes which are presumably “safe.” The Centennial Trail, for example, carries a fair amount of recreational traffic, but very little commuter traffic. People ride their bikes there on weekends, and take I-90 during the week.
“As to your “people want to”, does that mean that people WANT to be obese . . . ?”
Yes, they do. They would perhaps prefer that the Law of Conservation of Matter not exist, and that they could eat without consequences, but they are not interested in giving up the pleasures to reduce the risks. And that is their decision to make, not the government’s. It is not their mother. Neither are their neighbors.
Posted on April 14th, 2010 at 8:05 pm
The government is not a mother, it’s an interloper.
They subsidize car infrastructure, and these days car manufacturers too, forcing alternatives off the table. Same way farm subsidies have shoved healthy food off our dinner tables.
If everybody was charged for the amount of road space they used, I assure you that car would not be the attractive option for most commuters. But like most oversubsidized commodities, we have instead have to ration like in old Soviet Russia, which is why we have traffic.
Posted on April 14th, 2010 at 11:11 pm
Lukev wrote,
“They subsidize car infrastructure, and these days car manufacturers too, forcing alternatives off the table.”
Actually, they don’t, Luke. That myth is popular among auto-haters, but is largely false. Until the rise of pork projects in recent decades it was entirely false. Users pay for 87% of the cost of federal highways (the rest is pork), and 82% of the cost of state highways. Of the $80 billion the States collect from motorists, $16 billion is diverted to transit subsidies and other non-highway uses. Though general fund appropriations make up $13 billion of that, motorists are still $3 billion in the hole. Highway users are subsidizing transit users and cyclists — not the other way around.
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2008/hf10.cfm
The highway trust funds were designed to be self-supporting — and they were, until the last 20 years or so.
Posted on June 1st, 2010 at 1:48 pm
The consumption of fossil fuels, primarily gas and diesel, have subsidized the development, construction and maintenance of roadways (as well as much else) for many decades in this country. The assumptions made by governments, citizens and even some contemporary bloggers is that the growth of the American economy based on the consumption of fossil fuels would continue unabated for…well, forever. This is a dangerous and self-serving illusion that many will be forcefully disabused of in the coming decades, as the era of cheap energy comes to an end, and the Myth of Human Progress is debunked.
The fact is that as fossil fuel use diminishes in the wake of peak oil, roadways across this nation will fall into ill-repair and become less and less suitable for even the massive numbers of bicycles that people will take to using once the Era of Happy-Motoring has ended (http://bit.ly/5vnKDY). This suggests that communities will need to invest substantial amounts of effort if not money toward the reengineering of American cities to accomodate the changes that are likely ahead of us.
Unfortunately, Americans, including those here trying to “free” Spokane, will not be motivated to accept, let alone embrace these changes until the first shocks of energy depletion have occurred. These are substantially ahead of us, and so time alone will tell, despite much evidence that peak oil has already occurred and we are on the rocky, downward slope of Hubbert’s Curve (http://bit.ly/13YxKT).
The desire to “maintain the status quo” by denigrating those that seek to find new ways amongst the ruins of a soon-to-be-failed way of life is as understandable as it is self-serving in its myopia, but the changes ahead of us will force this type of thinking, as with all unsustainable philosophies and practices, into the dumpster of human history, as it should be. The American Way of Life is–as people are going to soon discover to their great surprise–not only negotiable, but of limited duration, as all societies and civilzations have been.
How–and if–we prepare for this change will be the true measure of our character as a people.
Posted on June 1st, 2010 at 6:33 pm
Er, Dan, you’re misusing the term “subsidy.” A subsidy is payment made by government for which no service is rendered. Consumers of gas and diesel have not “subsidized” anything, any more than your payments for city water are a “subsidy” for the water system. Fuel taxes have merely been the vehicle by which the costs of roadways have been apportioned among their users.
“The assumptions made by governments, citizens and even some contemporary bloggers is that the growth of the American economy based on the consumption of fossil fuels would continue unabated for…well, forever.”
No one I know of has made such an assumption.
“The fact is that as fossil fuel use diminishes in the wake of peak oil . . .”
We worry about “peak oil” when the peak has actually been reached, because until then will not know when it occurs. Guesses about when it will occur have been pushed forward every few years for the last 50 years or more. At present it is ~2060. We don’t impoverish ourselves now out of an irrational fear of something that may or may not happen 50 years from now.
“Unfortunately, Americans, including those here trying to “free” Spokane, will not be motivated to accept, let alone embrace these changes until the first shocks of energy depletion have occurred.”
Well, no. There won’t be any “shocks.” Depletion of resources does not work that way. The resource becomes gradually harder to find or recover, and as a result prices gradually rise. As they do, people invest more money and effort in development of alternative technologies. No premature hand-wringing and no government subsidies are required. The “last drop of oil” will never be pumped from a well, because by the time that last drop is reached, technology will have moved on and it won’t be needed.
“The desire to “maintain the status quo” by denigrating those that seek to find new ways amongst the ruins of a soon-to-be-failed way of life.”
No one I know of is trying to maintain the status quo. Libertarians propose leaving people maximally free to increase their welfare in the present and adapt to future conditions and exigencies as they appear. Greenies, like all previous prognosticators of Armageddon, propose that humans repent their sins, regress to some fantasized past Eden, and freeze the dynamic of history into a stasis. That advice is as silly (and unworkable) now as it was when it was proposed by Christian doom criers 2000 years ago.
Posted on June 3rd, 2010 at 10:29 am
Yes, you’re right that I misused the term “subsidized.” I didn’t know the correct, technical meaning of the word, and meant something more generic, like “paid for.” But no real matter to the substance of what I’m saying.
_____
My point is not that any sort of “Armageddon” is going to happen as the era of cheap, abundant energy recedes and industrialized civilization itself begins to decline. No civilizations have collapsed “all at once,” and the idea that the end of industrial civilization will occur in some sort of overwhelming, dramatic event signaling the End of Mankind belies an ignorance of history and owes to one of the two predominant myths of the modern world; in this instance, the myth of the apocalypse. Contrariwise, to assume technology will simply “move on” once the extraction of fossil fuels have peaked suggests a similar an ignorance of history and belief in the other dominant story within our culture, the myth of progress. Both of these myths have deep roots in the collective imagination of the modern world, and very few people nowadays seem to be able to think about the future at all without following one narrative or the other. Unfortunately, both of these myths are very poorly suited for the likely challenges the era of scarcity industrialism has in store of us.
_____
You are correct that “self-impoverishment” is unlikely to catch on with enough people to make any difference. Renunciation, even in the face of possible catastrophe, is a strategy few can summon the inner strength to attempt, let alone master.
You are also correct that the last drop of oil will never be pumped from a well, but not because some other, as yet undiscovered energy source will come along or be developed to “save” our wasteful way of life, but rather because the energy returned on energy invested (EROEI, http://bit.ly/UfUeK), once it approaches 1:1, will dictate that efforts to extract these precious substances end. I think we’ve actually reached this point and that your 2060 peak oil figure is way off base? Can you provide a citation, if you will, to support this estimate?
BTW, what would constitute for you a “gradual” decline (relative to demand) of fossil fuels? 1% a year? 3%? 5%? And what would you suggest as prudent individual and societal preparations for such a small, yet potentially dramatic change? An what technologies do you imagine will replace the consumption of fossil fuels? Again, see http://bit.ly/UfUeK for details of why I believe there is none, nor will there be any energy forms that can truly “replace” the cheap, abundant fossil-fuels we’ve partied on for the past 300-years.
I think many will be surprised to see where automobiles end up in the priorities of Americans once gasoline passes, say, more than $5 a gallon. Bikes (and sleighs?) may yet swarm over Spokane streets in larger numbers than automobiles.
_____
BTW, thanks for your thoughtful posts…
Posted on June 4th, 2010 at 6:55 pm
Dan Kallen wrote,
“No civilizations have collapsed ‘all at once,’ and the idea that the end of industrial civilization will occur in some sort of overwhelming, dramatic event signaling the End of Mankind belies an ignorance of history and owes to one of the two predominant myths of the modern world; in this instance, the myth of the apocalypse.”
Civilization has never collapsed. You’re mixing apples and oranges. Societies and polities have collapsed, and they are sometimes called “civilizations,” e.g., the Minoan civilization, but they are merely particular instances of civilization. While they were collapsing, civilization continued, thrived, and advanced elsewhere. Civilization, i.e., cultures characterized by cities, has supplanted tribal cultures relentlessly and continuously since its appearance ~10K years ago. Similarly, “industrial civilization,” “agrarian civilization,” etc., are phases in the evolutionary history of civilization. They don’t collapse either; they evolve into new phases.
“Contrariwise, to assume technology will simply “move on” once the extraction of fossil fuels have peaked suggests a similar an ignorance of history and belief in the other dominant story within our culture, the myth of progress.”
“Progress” is a deceptive word, since it embodies an arrow, and the direction in which the arrow is alleged to point is vulnerable to prejudices. What we can say without too much hesitation is that civilized cultures evolve rapidly in comparison with tribal cultures, that it becomes ever more complex, that it is adaptive to changes in external parameters, including resource availability and utilization, and that standards of living consistently improve, by most common measures, as they evolve.
” . . . but rather because the energy returned on energy invested (EROEI, http://bit.ly/UfUeK), once it approaches 1:1, will dictate that efforts to extract these precious substances end.”
Yes. Oil will be abandoned (for particular purposes) when it is no longer economical to extract and refine it. And as its price rises, more efforts will be invested in developing alternatives and improving efficiency of processes which require it.
“BTW, what would constitute for you a “gradual” decline (relative to demand) of fossil fuels? 1% a year?”
We should expect the downslope of the peak to be symmetrical with the upslope.
“I think we’ve actually reached this point and that your 2060 peak oil figure is way off base? Can you provide a citation, if you will, to support this estimate?”
Sure. “Squeezing More Oil from the Ground,” Leonardo Maugeri, *Scientific American*, October, 2009. (May be available online, but probably behind a paywall).
The extension results from new recovery techniques, just coming into use, which allow more oil to be recovered from wells long thought exhausted. Though they still contain billions of barrels of oil, it was not recoverable economically.
Posted on June 4th, 2010 at 7:02 pm
I read your EROEI link, Dan. ‘Tis a point well taken.
Posted on June 12th, 2010 at 3:51 pm
My apologies for not continuing the conversation sooner; health issues…
With less fruity confusion than you seemingly imagine, I use the term “civilization” as it is used by Spengler (http://bit.ly/bYL2iU), Toynbee (http://bit.ly/1fofsr), Tainter (http://bit.ly/R17aG), Diamond (http://bit.ly/1uHlDI), Greer (http://bit.ly/bmLrzp) and others in their investigations into, and resulting theories about the larger dynamics of human societies/cultures/civilizations, including societal collapse. Regardless of what we call them, history shows that societies and cultures experience cyclical lifespans and that each eventually experiences overshoot (of resources and/or money) and collapses, setting the stage for the next dominant cultural patterns to emerge. There are increasing indications (http://bit.ly/drcK4N) that this overshoot has begun to occur within industrialized civilization, that we’ve wasted most of what little time we had to begin to prepare, that “the next twenty years will be nothing like the past twenty years” (http://bit.ly/25Yflc) because, as Greer soberly states to an I imagine flabbergasted poster in his latest column (http://bit.ly/acWDV2), “You can’t have the future you want; no matter what you do, at this point, your future is going to involve fewer choices, fewer comforts, fewer privileges, and a lot more deprivation and hard work than almost anyone in the industrial world is willing to imagine.”
Modern people’s unthinking adoption of the myth of progress has lead many to believe that human civilization is somehow outside of, or beyond the larger natural world that we are in fact but a small part of, and that ecological limits are mere hurdles to be crossed, rather than absolute barriers that may one day stop our way of life dead in its tracks. This unwarranted and hubristic viewpoint will likely ensure the misery of millions of people in the coming difficult decades, as too many continue to ignorantly cling to the platitude that there is a “someone” or “something” that is going to “save us” from the consequences of our own unwise decisions.
With regard to the ideas of unbroken progress and that today’s technic man is somehow the ne plus ultra of civilization, these are debatable points, and you are I think more optimistic than I about our long-term prospects in this rergard, but as clever as we think we are (and we are undoubtedly that), the fact remains that, as Greer bluntly states, “Fossil fuel energy–and only fossil fuel energy–made it possible to break with the old agrarian pattern and construct the industrial age.” We were, in essence, given a gift, a fortune of 500-million years of stored sunlight, which we…proceeded to burn through like a proverbial drunken sailor! And, once this bonanza is gone 30, 50 or 100 years from now, what are the likely possible consequences? As that earlier EROEI paper makes clear, no “alternative” energy source comes close to providing the advantages that fossil fuels do, and without this the changes ahead of us as we proceed down the uneven slope of Hubbert’s Curve will, IMO, be startling, unprecedented and difficult for us to cope with, and all the more so if we make no preparations whatsoever for the possibility.
Posted on June 12th, 2010 at 4:07 pm
Thanks also for that link to the Maugeri paper, or at least what I could see of it online, here (http://bit.ly/agBdhW). It did seem to imply that he thought Peak Oil would likely occur around 2030 rather than 2060, but no matter, as I found these comments (http://bit.ly/1zkQN8) and this critique (http://bit.ly/XSt47) of his work to be more cogent and factually accurate.
As with any such reliance on technology, I believe it’s prudent to plan for the possible worst case scenario, or to at least consider that scenario before deciding to NOT plan for it!
Posted on June 13th, 2010 at 9:46 pm
Dan Kallem write,
“Regardless of what we call them, history shows that societies and cultures experience cyclical lifespans and that each eventually experiences overshoot (of resources and/or money) and collapses, setting the stage for the next dominant cultural patterns to emerge.”
That’s true. But you’re still comparing apples and oranges. Particular civilized societies collapse for a variety of reasons, always specific to that particular society. The “collapse” you’re anticipating, however, would involve all civilized societies, since they are all presently dependent upon fossil fuels. You are not predicting the demise of a particular society, but of civilization *per se*, to be replaced by an archaic, pre-industrial or even pre-agricultural style of economy. That has never happened.
I use the term “civilization,” BTW, with its root meaning, i.e., to refer to a society characterized by cities (“civilization” derives from “civis,” the Latin word for “city”), with a “city” designating a settlement so large that most of its inhabitants do not know most of the others.
“Modern people’s unthinking adoption of the myth of progress has lead many to believe that human civilization is somehow outside of, or beyond the larger natural world that we are in fact but a small part of, and that ecological limits are mere hurdles to be crossed, rather than absolute barriers that may one day stop our way of life dead in its tracks.”
Actually, it is greenies who are disposed to look upon *homo sapiens* as being somehow “non-natural,” — as “viruses,” aberrations, trespassers upon the natural order, rather than as products of that natural order and integral with it. But we, and all of our products and activities, are as natural as coral, beavers, honeybees, and termites. Like them, we are a transformative species, able to alter our environment when we find it to be less than optimum. Our constructions are no less “natural” than beaver dams or beehives.
I confess to being one of those who rejects the notion of “ecological limits.” There are no such things — or at least, none with which we need be overly concerned at the moment. What counts as a limit, just as what counts as a resource, depends entirely upon the momentary configuration of the economy and the technologies which characterize it. But those are both dynamic processes evolving in a complex adaptive system whose future states are unpredictable in principle.
Greer and his ilk are making the same mistake made by Malthus, Paul Ehrlich, and numerous other economic doom criers — he is assuming the current state of the economy can predict its future, or that its current state is its terminal state, which must somehow be “sustained” into the future. He is looking at a single frame of a movie and imagining he can predict the denouement.
“And, once this bonanza is gone 30, 50 or 100 years from now, what are the likely possible consequences?”
The most likely consequence will be that be that as prices rise, we will develop alternatives, not only for the energy sources, but for the the technologies that require it — technologies far more efficient than those which make economic sense when energy is cheap. By the time oil becomes prohibitively expensive we will not be using it and will not miss it. We will have picked up those “ecological limits” like temporary fencing and moved them out of our way. That’s what Nature designed us to do.
Posted on June 13th, 2010 at 11:04 pm
No, Greer is no “doom crier,” and you would be best advised to try to understand his theories, at least before glibly dismissing that which you clearly haven’t even read!
Posted on June 14th, 2010 at 7:44 pm
Dan said “…history shows that societies and cultures experience cyclical lifespans and that each eventually experiences overshoot (of resources and/or money) and collapses, setting the stage for the next dominant cultural patterns to emerge.”
After reading that I thank my lucky stars I am already a ball busting, hard working, highly adaptive individual who doesn’t look for the government to provide me with anything I am not willing to provide for myself. Then when the shit hits the fan in the form of the collapse of industrial civilization, instead of getting up and going to my shop to produce a product that I trade for the things I need to sustain my self, I’ll get my gun and go get breakfast.
Be it an asteroid, a plague, or the topic in discussion here I am going to react the same way. So, Dan, what are you going to do?
Posted on June 16th, 2010 at 4:23 pm
“…Then when the shit hits the fan in the form of the collapse of industrial civilization…”
No, you seem not to (or not want to) understand how the collapse of a civilization typically proceeds, which, as Greer asserts, isn’t in cataclysmic fashion, but is rather a slow, decades, even centuries-long process, ending with the eventual succession of the overextended empire (http://bit.ly/60ikFe or http://bit.ly/bwlNhV). I believe that industrialized civilization is such an overextended empire and the consequences of this will be my child’s future, and if nothing else I want her to have the wherewithal to understand and cope with the coming changes as is best possible.
I can see we aren’t moving in the same direction with this–c’est la vie!–but thanks for the discussion nonetheless…
Posted on September 28th, 2012 at 6:25 am
Although all the way over in Perth, you have inspired me to fit out my bike so I can get out and about a bit more wioutht feeling like a pack horse from hauling around a full backpack I love this girls basket and shall now go on the hunt for one of my very own too cute!!