grufty jim
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Re: Sustainable urban living
Feb 24, 2003, 15:25
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I should stress that when i talk about "self-sufficiency", i'm actually talking about a "sustainable lifestyle". I often use the two phrases interchangeably, which is wrong, and confusing. Sorry about that.
A sustainable lifestyle is one in which the community you live in can support itself without the need to import resources. In other words; communal self-sufficiency.
Western rural communities are no longer self-sufficient; but they could easily become that way if compelled by circumstances. Urban communities, however, can never be self-sufficient. Rural communities cannot become self-sufficient if forced to accommodate the total urban population.
This presents problems.
Profligate use of fossil fuels can sustain the unsustainable, of course. There's a great quote by HT Odum, i think, along the lines of "Modern agriculture is merely a process by which fossil fuels are converted to food" - it's a gross simplification; unlike most of Odum's work ;-) but it gets his point across.
I know i've repeated this _ad nauseaum_, and i truly do apologise for it; but i honestly don't believe that most people are aware of just *how* reliant we all are on fossil-energy, in particular cheap oil. It's not just what we fill our cars up with. It's so very much more.
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grufty jim
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Re: but perhaps more importantly
Feb 24, 2003, 15:31
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I too think we'll see a huge resurgence in nuclear fission power. That and a major shift back to coal.
These will both have disastrous consequences and, annoyingly, won't actually solve the problem. Nukes are a huge red-herring. The uranium fuel problem shortage will become just as urgent as the oil problem if we shift over to nukes as a primary power source. Also, France may produce a lot of electricity from nukes; but the food they eat is still basically a by-product of fossil-fuel farming.
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Citizensmurf
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Re: Long Response (sorry) - Part 3
Feb 25, 2003, 05:00
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I'll have to get my big nose in here again.
"The world you describe . . . a post-capitalist society"
Far from it. I think capitalism is a great thing. I think apple pie is a great thing too, but I don't eat it all day and night, and stuff it down the throats of everyone I see until all everyone eats is apple pie. Just because you curb your spending, doesn't mean you have to stop spending altogether. I support my local economy as much as I can, and I take great pride that. You can't seriously say to me that you feel pride buying and supporting Pepsi. So to say that bankrupting Pepsi is a bad thing . . . I don't get it. The main problem with capitalism is what Julian refers to as the greedheads. Rich people getting richer because of poor people giving them money in various forms. Be it the worker in the Pepsi factory, or the schmuck who "wins" the free MP3 player from collecting the letters under the bottle cap.
Don't tell me you can't create commerce a different way. Don't tell me they have to work for Pepsi. This global economy is simply a way for the rich to pay cheaper labour to it's workers, and distribute more of it's products to the world. The man who can't leave the city because his work is dependent upon it. That is simply an excuse. If you really, really wanted to change your standard of living, you could. This dependency upon the economies of chemicals and computers and the like does not have to exist. Yes, I am a hypocrite. I use this computer. I use chemicals. But change does not happen overnight. Small steps in the way of reducing consumption taken by various people will have enormous consequences. And yes that will help far more than throwing a metaphorical brick through the advertising window.
Yes, I agree the world will change dramatically in a short time. Will you be able to cope with the changes, or be a dumb-founded when two buildings thousands of miles away topple to the ground.
I'm sure I'll get some flack for that last line. I live for flack.
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grufty jim
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And so we reach an impasse
Feb 25, 2003, 15:15
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You write:
>
> I think capitalism is a great thing.
>
Whereas i think it's directly responsible for destroying the planet we live on, for the deaths of untold millions, and for creating staggering inequality. It is a fundamentally unjust system which *by definition* is unsustainable.
But i'm not sure there's any gain to be had by debating a system that you think is "great", and i think is as close to pure evil and we can get in our sanitised, secular world.
I will say though that i have no idea what Julian thinks is "the main problem with capitalism". But if he thinks it's "the greedheads", then he's completely wrong. The concentration of capital in the hands of a few is both a precondition for, and an inevitable byproduct of, market capitalism. You could perhaps argue that "the main problem with capitalism is that it cannot exist without the greedheads".
To suggest otherwise is to be wrong. Sorry.
Anyways; i honestly believe your argument is incoherent and self-contradictory, and that you are actually unaware of the basic realities of capitalism. And you - no doubt - feel the same about my position. So we should probably leave it at that.
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