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I just finished December's National Geographic, and this article on The City Solution was really interesting. It reminded me of a discussion Dana and I had that didn't really work on twitter. (Because 140 characters isn't really enough to get into depth...)
She, and I hope she'll correct me if I misstate things, desires a "back to nature" "sustainable" lifestyle, on a farm with cows or chickens or whatever, and driving 30-50 miles to sell things at farmers markets or go to buy things she can't produce herself (or order over the internet).
To me, that's not sustainable in the sense of "if we keep doing this, we won't trash the environment any worse than we have already." The amount of fossil fuels burned to drive to market (assuming she doesn't retrofit the vehicle for biodiesel, which is something I know she's talked about doing; but then, where does the oil come from?) are in themselves unsustainable. Eating meat is pretty unsustainable in and of itself. Granted, raising your own animals is less harmful than factory-scale farming, but then you only can eat your own animals or the animals of people who also have small herds (and there we go again with the driving a lot to get the food).
Traditional subsistence farming (growing your own food and having enough to feed yourself and *maybe* trade with your neighbor who grows something else) is something we've gone technologically beyond, even if an argument has been made in favor of something like subsistence farming. However, that essayist stretches the definition almost to breaking, and he sort of conflates subsistence farming with organic farming, which are not the same thing.
In a city, people use public transportation. Not everyone, of course, but in places like New York, London, Paris, Berlin, and Tokyo, taking the bus or subway is often more convenient than driving. Many New Yorkers don't even own cars, for example. (Compare that to LA, which has notoriously shitty public transit and a massive car culture...and a smog problem.) Things are close enough that you can walk to them: walk to the bus stop or train station, walk to the grocery store, walk to the kebab shop, walk to the pub. Or ride your bike.
Your food still has to get to you, but economies of scale (ie, one truck delivering 500 lbs of cucumbers) allow the CO2 emissions to be spread over more people.
If people live closer to their jobs and the things they need, or even a short walk and a train/bus ride away, the CO2 emissions are much lower. There was a graphic in the print version that I can't find online, comparing the national CO2 per capita emission averages to individual cities' per capita emissions. New York City had between half and a third the average US emissions.
Now, not everyone can live in cities, of course: there's not much in the way of farmland in a city. Many European cities have community gardens, where you can rent a square of dirt and grow stuff, but that's not a large enough scale to feed people. If we didn't have factory-farmed meat, and if Western culture weren't so focused on MEAT! EAT MEAT! MEAT THREE TIMES A DAY!!!, that would take care of one major source of environmental destruction (hog lagoons, for example) and free up land to be used for growing food for humans. There's really no reason to feed corn to pigs and cows, except that it's subsidized out the wazoo.
(Aside: subtherapeutic antibiotic use in farm animals as a means to make them grow faster is the worst fucking idea of all time, and fucking right it should be banned. But there's no chance in hell of that happening.)
If I have a conclusion, it's this: the American way of life is unsustainable (in the "killing the planet" sense). More people moving out into the far reaches, past the suburbs, in an effort to get "back to nature" or what have you, only hastens the day when oil runs out and increases greenhouse gases. We should be concentrating in cities of the European model (ie, with public transportation).
She, and I hope she'll correct me if I misstate things, desires a "back to nature" "sustainable" lifestyle, on a farm with cows or chickens or whatever, and driving 30-50 miles to sell things at farmers markets or go to buy things she can't produce herself (or order over the internet).
To me, that's not sustainable in the sense of "if we keep doing this, we won't trash the environment any worse than we have already." The amount of fossil fuels burned to drive to market (assuming she doesn't retrofit the vehicle for biodiesel, which is something I know she's talked about doing; but then, where does the oil come from?) are in themselves unsustainable. Eating meat is pretty unsustainable in and of itself. Granted, raising your own animals is less harmful than factory-scale farming, but then you only can eat your own animals or the animals of people who also have small herds (and there we go again with the driving a lot to get the food).
Traditional subsistence farming (growing your own food and having enough to feed yourself and *maybe* trade with your neighbor who grows something else) is something we've gone technologically beyond, even if an argument has been made in favor of something like subsistence farming. However, that essayist stretches the definition almost to breaking, and he sort of conflates subsistence farming with organic farming, which are not the same thing.
In a city, people use public transportation. Not everyone, of course, but in places like New York, London, Paris, Berlin, and Tokyo, taking the bus or subway is often more convenient than driving. Many New Yorkers don't even own cars, for example. (Compare that to LA, which has notoriously shitty public transit and a massive car culture...and a smog problem.) Things are close enough that you can walk to them: walk to the bus stop or train station, walk to the grocery store, walk to the kebab shop, walk to the pub. Or ride your bike.
Your food still has to get to you, but economies of scale (ie, one truck delivering 500 lbs of cucumbers) allow the CO2 emissions to be spread over more people.
If people live closer to their jobs and the things they need, or even a short walk and a train/bus ride away, the CO2 emissions are much lower. There was a graphic in the print version that I can't find online, comparing the national CO2 per capita emission averages to individual cities' per capita emissions. New York City had between half and a third the average US emissions.
Now, not everyone can live in cities, of course: there's not much in the way of farmland in a city. Many European cities have community gardens, where you can rent a square of dirt and grow stuff, but that's not a large enough scale to feed people. If we didn't have factory-farmed meat, and if Western culture weren't so focused on MEAT! EAT MEAT! MEAT THREE TIMES A DAY!!!, that would take care of one major source of environmental destruction (hog lagoons, for example) and free up land to be used for growing food for humans. There's really no reason to feed corn to pigs and cows, except that it's subsidized out the wazoo.
(Aside: subtherapeutic antibiotic use in farm animals as a means to make them grow faster is the worst fucking idea of all time, and fucking right it should be banned. But there's no chance in hell of that happening.)
If I have a conclusion, it's this: the American way of life is unsustainable (in the "killing the planet" sense). More people moving out into the far reaches, past the suburbs, in an effort to get "back to nature" or what have you, only hastens the day when oil runs out and increases greenhouse gases. We should be concentrating in cities of the European model (ie, with public transportation).
no subject
Date: 2012-01-21 01:09 am (UTC)From:BUT. Of course a lot of that (especially the food part) is because we can afford to live here. In SF city limits you get the great disposal options but you're paying high rent. Food is incredibly expensive, even though it comes from nearby (there are deals to be found but restaurants, especially, are SO pricey). And I think it's easy to pat myself on the back and say "I buy the non-factory farmed eggs now! I ride my bike! Go me!" even though I still feel like I'm part of the problem. It's tough... I have really grown to love city living but I don't know how you bring that to much of the country, especially since there are areas with no large cities and so many of the ones we have are sprawling and completely unfriendly to folks without cars.
I'm just kind of rambling here because I do think about this issue, especially since my lifestyle has changed so much, but it feels like a really difficult one to solve, especially since a lot of the issues (such as eliminating/decreasing meat consumption and car use) bring up a lot of heated emotions.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-21 05:08 pm (UTC)From:There are a lot of policy-based methods to prevent further sprawl. Increased gas taxes, high fees on building new roads beyond a certain point, getting rid of tax incentives to build sprawl. One thing the NG article pointed out was that there are a lot of people who want a house with a yard, and that's hard to do in urban highrise-type buildings. Rowhouses maybe, depending on how close you pack them.
There needs to be a push for infill, more new suburbs built like Meadowmont or Southern Village, where there's a town center with shops that people can walk/bike to. There needs to be a massive sea change in how people think about driving. Public transportation, especially light rail, needs to grow massively. The Triangle Transit Plan says just *maybe* we'll get light rail by 2025. That's too late.
The biggest problem in the US is that we've had a car culture for a hundred years, and most of the growth has been based around cars, rather than subway lines. (We also have a lot of open space to expand into, which doesn't help.) European cities, though, often had transit lines accompanying growth. Take Berlin, since it's the one I'm most familiar with. Wilhelm I built the Ringbahn, the street-level train system that goes around the city in a ring. It connects a lot of what was suburbs in 1871, some of which is still sort of suburbs (in the way that, say, Berkeley is a suburb). (The VBB is extensive, and the BVG operates everything within the city.
Construction started on the Berlin subway system in 1896. This map shows the development and growth of the U-bahn (eröffnet bis means "opened before"; the red dashed line is planned lines.) (It's also amazing how little the stations have changed in 100+ years. Aside from modernizations like digital arrival boards and whatnot.
Anyway. If we could build an extensive public transportation network within metropolitan areas (anything over, say, 250k people in 30 sqmi?) and connect the major metropolitan areas with real high-speed rail (Acela isn't really high speed rail), that could reduce problems like in LA or Atlanta or the Triangle. There's not much to do with very rural areas, unfortunately. Trains wouldn't be profitable, and to make them useful, they'd need to run many times a day.
One of the biggest complaints in the US about public transit is that it isn't convenient. The Chapel Hill buses, for example, and TTA are anything but convenient, unless you need to get between a limited number of places between 7 and 9 am and 4 and 6 pm Monday-Friday. Otherwise, you're fucked. But people hardly use them, so they cut service and make it less convenient.
It's basically a big vicious circle, because people perceive it as inconvenient, they don't use it, services get cut, and it gets more inconvenient.