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| Applying the Linear City Project to the United States All site content © 01/2009 and earlier, Kim Gyr, Green Millennium Given the catastrophes that will occur should we be unable to find a sustainable replacement for our fossil fuelled world, I therefore propose that we all study the following questions in regard to the linear city concept:
1. Whether the elimination of all or most personal, non-commercial and motorised wheeled vehicles is possible with the construction of linear cities. These vehicles consumed 28% of the energy used in the USA in 2004 and we have to wonder what we will be able to do when there is no further economically extractable petroleum. In addition, the continuing problem of massively heavy vehicles transporting single persons surely represents one of the largest sources of energy wasted worldwide. Can we demonstrate that there are better ways to solve transportation problems by leading with brilliant new technologies? The paradigm of the last century, that of building multi-story buildings and skyscrapers, as below, was driven by the advent of the automobile and cheap petroleum. But that paradigm will no longer be practical, or practicable, as fuel costs rise and the damage to our atmosphere and climate increases. We must flee the use of multistories, as below, with their concentrations of people, and return to the population densities and spreads that existed before cars and petroleum came to provide both the advantages, albeit temporary, and disadvantages that we now see! And Linear cities can do that!  2. The daily commute by billions of people worldwide is simply another aspect to the enormous problem of the wasted energy used in transportation. Those earning good salaries prefer to live with their families in the countryside with access to nature, clean air and water, less noise and pollution. By bringing a minimally invasive form of the city to the countryside, can we satisfy this need for everyone? And, can we improve on the need to transport food to habitations such as those above that have no access to food production areas sufficient to support their inhabitants in the absense of petroleum in the immediate area? We also have the straitjacket of the twice daily commute of, on average 30 – 60 miles that is enormously wasteful in energy, and in its contribution to global warming and to pollution, which are problems that Linear Cities can solve easily. 3. The development of the automobile has brought with it many of our most pressing problems, and many at the beginning of its history were uninterested in its development before it reached a threshold of refinement that suddenly got nearly everyone on board. What will it take to get everyone on board for ideas on a scale that are big enough to save humanity from the energy poverty abyss, literally in its historically and absolutely most pressing hour of need, with ideas and projects that are similar to this? 4. By giving access to the recreational opportunities offered by open spaces and nature, all visible outside everyone’s window, as well as to individual and agricultural-scale food production areas in the immediate proximity, can we make food production less harmful to the environment, better in quality, and far less wasteful in terms of the energy used in the production and the transport of goods to market and the consumer? 5. There is another enormously wasteful loss of energy resources, that is the loss in transmission of at least 7-60% of the energy generated between its point of generation and its point of use. Can we vastly reduce this loss by putting the points of generation, that is wind turbines on the roof of the linear city, closer to the points of use only approximately 20 – 70 yards away that they supply? Wind power is certainly intermittent, but the linear city could more easily contain a cryogenic superconducting supply network than the current system of overhead high tension lines, to spread the supply and the demand of electricity from one end of the country, or the planet, to the other. 6. The future will certainly have much less fossil fuel available for our use! We have to ask ourselves what sources we might use when the 71% of non-renewable, non-nuclear sources are gone. At that point it will be far too late to begin building a sustainable infrastructure. We must consider all of the feasible alternatives now, so that mankind can avoid the same kind of mass die-off that has befallen other ecosystems in the past. We must create some kind of replacement infrastructure NOW, while there is still time and relatively cheap energy to design and construct it. That is the challenge that I make to you! 7. Many of the people that I have spoken with have been critical of the large scale of the linear city idea, of the idea that they can no longer possess a car, because they have been unaware of the need for any change. So, one of the biggest challenges in reaching a sustainable world while there is still time is in the education of people so that they take on board the ideas, and begin to contribute ideas that are even more appropriate than these themselves for an entirely sustainable world. Part of the challenge is therefore to explore how the entire world may be convinced of the absolute necessity for the timely construction of designs that can assure our sustainable existence. New, similar and dissimilar ideas must be sought, and people encouraged to put themselves in situations where there is absolutely NO MORE POWER FROM FOSSIL FUELS to see if any new ideas can be produced. My ideas can at least serve as a springboard for the generation of new ideas, even if those new ideas are toward completely different directions! 8. The map below is an example of a tentative arrangement for linear cities that are built  close to existing motorways and railways, to make their construction as quick and easy as possible. Inevitably, something must be built to replace the current fossil-fuelled infrastructure to serve America's principal cities and manufacturing centres. I hope that this initiative will provoke people to reflect on what we must do before we paint ourselves into the corner, with no way out and no more energy to support a burgeoning, demanding population!
9. It has taken us only 100 generations to come from the year 0 to the present year, if a generation is 20 years, or only 20 times the number of generations (5) that we know in our own families. What might we leave for the descendants of our genes, 2000 years or another multiple of 20 times the generations that we know in our own families hence – war, energy poverty, food poverty, disease, or worse?
10. Can the form of minimally ducted wind turbine that we are proposing, along with high-performance photovoltaic and solar thermal panels supply enough energy for those living in such a city? The city itself will offer many opportunities for energy savings, in its integrated structure with reduced external wall and roof surface area per person, highly efficient transportation, “home-grown” food production, and massive energy production from renewable sources. What other alternatives are available? Can we encourage manufacturers to develop new technologies that will benefit us all, open up vast new global markets and even save the world from the catastrophic abyss of global energy poverty?
The following are a series of articles taken from recent publications that detail some of the generally recognised problems of “new” petroleum, Peak Oil, and sustainability, the first describing a hearing in the US Senate:
But the incoming chairman, Senator Jeff Bingaman, decided to go for the big picture, and the big picture is not pretty. There was an almost palpable sense of graveness and alarm that lent a chill to the room. The vice chair of Goldman Sachs, Robert Hormats, was one of the witnesses, as was the chief economist of the International Energy Agency, Dr. Fatih Birol, so this was hardly a “green” group. One Senator described the testimony as “frightening.” And the outgoing Republican chair, Senator Domenici (R-NM), said that “what you told us today is absolutely startling with reference to the future.” There appeared to be a genuine sense that some members really were surprised at how bad things look for the U.S. The shock was so great that after declaring himself a “free-market conservative,” Republican Jeff Sessions (R-AL) concluded the session by admitting that if you looked at energy as a national security issue rather than as a market commodity, Congress might be justified in spending more money on energy R&D and tax credits... There was a steady drumbeat through the hearing for bold, dramatic action. After closing the hearing, Senator Bingaman was surrounded by reporters. Did he think that Congress was now ready to raise fuel efficiency standards? Bingaman said he did not know, and walked away, The Rise of “The Axis of Oil”—Big Trouble for the United States, Richard Bell, Post Carbon Institute, 10 Jan 2007
If indeed the US does launch an attack on Iran and thereby spark an oil price shock, perhaps it will serve as a timely wake-up call to our government — and consumers — to make preparations for the looming peak and decline in global oil production, which itself can be expected to trigger recurrent oil shocks as well as further international conflict. Trouble in the Straits of Hormuz Jeremy Wakeford, BusinessDay [South Africa], 13 Feb 2007
As fields mature and new wells are not enough to maintain production, output starts to drop. To offset the loss and maintain or increase our 85 million barrels a day, new fields must be opened and start producing. This balance between old fields drying up and new fields starting up is the heart of the peak oil story. When there is not enough production from new fields or other "unconventional" sources of oil substitutes to offset the decline, it is all over— world production has peaked... Just to be safe, the Saudi dot should probably be flashing amber just as the North Sea and Mexican dots are already flashing bright red... Iraq and Nigeria are currently in death spirals that could easily lead to serious reductions in their oil exports during the next year or so... Where does this leave us? To anyone who cares to look, the dots are already connected and they spell big, big trouble just ahead. The dots are flashing bright red. The alarm bells are sounding. The klaxons are blaring. But few are noticing... The Peak Oil Crisis: Connecting the Dots, Tom Whipple, Falls Church News-Press, 08 Feb 2007
China and India are both growing at a rate of about 10% per year. So, their economies are doubling every seven years... Both of them will in the next seven years consume more than they have during their entire histories... One thing is crystal clear: we are going to have to face up to oil production reaching its peak within a few years, and also the dramatic way in which this is going to affect all of our lives... The inevitable decline in oil production will bring with it restricted mobility, and a far more localised way of living. Work, schools, social services, medical care will all need to be close to where we live... Living in a state of exponential delusion, Simon Ratcliffe, BusinessDay [South Africa], 07 Feb 2007
Will local, national, and international leaders ever shape public policy according to these five axioms? Clearly, policies that would require an end to population growth—and perhaps even a population decline—as well as a reduction in the consumption of resources would not be popular, unless the general populace could be persuaded of the necessity of making its activities sustainable. However, if leaders do not begin to abide by these axioms, society as a whole, or some aspects of it, will assuredly collapse. Perhaps this is sufficient incentive to overcome the psychological and political resistance that would otherwise frustrate efforts toward true sustainability. Richard Heinberg: Five Axioms of Sustainability, Richard Heinberg, Global Public Media, 04 Feb 2007
The number of hungry people worldwide could grow by more than 50 percent by 2020, as corn, sugar and other food staples are increasingly devoted to making fuel here and abroad, according to the projections by C. Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer. The same trend would bring much higher food prices to the United States and the rest of the developed world, the economists predict... However, pork, poultry and egg producers are beginning to sound alarms of their own about ethanol's impact on food prices. Some aspects of the scenario laid out by Runge and Senauer already are coming to pass. This winter's imposition of tortilla price controls in Mexico in an attempt to quell unrest is an early indication of the consequences of food price shocks, the two write... Ethanol plants are on pace to consume more than 35 percent of the U.S. corn crop within a few years, and their growth rate has attracted the notice of food producers who rely on corn in the production of everything from cereals to butter and meat... But some 73 more plants are under construction, or an increase of two-thirds in less than two years when the new facilities come online by 2008. Feeding those plants will raise total ethanol demand, "requiring 35 percent of the total corn crop even in a good harvest," they write. Corn: Fuel or food?, Mike Meyers, The Kansas City Star, 04 Feb 2007
The oil world seems to have learned how to get along with the prospect of war with Iran, which is to say that it is choosing to ignore it. The Bush surge in Iraq with the prospect of fresh and heavy fighting is old news. The news that Mexican production fell half a million barrels a day last year caused not a ripple. The shutdown of most of Nigeria’s refining capacity has evoked the equivalent of a mighty yawn. The fact that OPEC production fell last year, even before the production cuts announced in September began to take effect, evokes derision rather than worry. “OPEC just can’t get its act together.” The announcement in December by the Kuwaiti government that production had peaked and is now declining at the world’s second largest field, Burgan, passed without comment or even a blip in the price slide. The fact that Iran on current trends is set to become an oil importer in six or seven years causes not the least anxiety. The world’s oil replacement ratio, that is to say the percentage of consumption that is replaced each year with new discovery, has fallen to 30% and keeps falling. The truth of the matter is that the world is in the midst of an energy crisis, but neither the NYMEX nor the IPE seem to have noticed, The Fortunate Fifth, Chris Sanders, Sanders Research Associates Ltd., 31 Jan 2007
Dwindling oil stocks could cause the UK to be vulnerable to food shortages for the first time since the Second World War... The dominance of the supermarkets in food retailing contributes massively to our vulnerability. Rising energy prices have an immediate impact on many of their common practises: "just-in-time delivery", "warehousing on wheels", plastic packaging and transportation of processed foods and raw material around the world. We caught a glimpse of how oil dependent the supply of even basic foods is during the fuel protests of September 2000, with supermarket bosses and government ministers warning the UK could be out of food "within days rather than weeks". The increase in our dependence on imported food in recent decades has been phenomenal: half of all vegetables and 95% of all fruit consumed in the UK now come from overseas... we must decouple the food and oil markets by cutting agriculture's dependence on oil, by promoting local and organic food systems where possible and by reversing the UK's growing dependence on imported food, Hungry for oil, Caroline Lucas, The Guardian, 29 Jan 2007
Robert Bryce is “managing editor of Energy Tribune”. The Energy Tribune website is in general anti-Peak Oil, however Mr Bryce has written an interesting article that could have been written by someone concerned about Peak Oil. Multiple arguments about why relatively low oil prices are bad (lower than $50/barrel), high prices good: <
Declining oil reserves will impact hugely on energy prices and the way we eat and farm. Is Britain ready for a new agri-culture? ... Post-Stern, the department's [Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs] passionate advocacy of the benefits to UK consumers of an increasingly globalised food economy remains undiminished. Simple projections demonstrating what might happen to global supply chains if both the price of oil and/or the price of carbon took off over the next 10 years are hard to come by. Little serious attention is being paid to the hypothesis that supplies of oil may well peak over the next few years, rather than "around 2030", which is the reassuring message the oil companies would have you believe. With the world economy continuing to boom, that "peak oil moment" will dramatically affect energy prices and supply chains the world over, Banana drama
Jonathon Porritt, The Guardian, 24 Jan 2007
10 OECD countries have already established APSO chapters, and are in their own ways educating the broader public about the fact that oil and natural gas reserves are very likely more than half exhausted. ASPO is based in large part on the theories of Marion King Hubbert, a noted U.S. geophysicist who created a model for predicting oil and gas reserves. Hubbert's Peak, or what is called Peak Oil, refers to the theory that at some point in human history, the world will have exhausted half of all the oil and gas reserves that have been or will be discovered. As a result, oil production has peaked, and the world begins a "terminal decline" that ends when all the oil and gas is exhausted. Schreyer said several brilliant minds followed Hubbert, and refined the concept of the oil peak to the point where some have theorized that the world has already passed its Peak Oil stage, and is now in decline. Combined with global warming, Schreyer said, the stage is set for economic and environmental chaos, Schreyer leads new oil, gas study group, Dan Lett, The Winnipeg Free Press, 22 Jan 2007
Peak Oil activists adhere to more pessimistic resource estimates and production forecasts, and it is tempting to think that this is partly because doing so makes their case appear stronger. However, the track record of prediction by the optimists is not good:
-- During the 1960s, the U.S. Geological Survey issued successive reports forecasting a peak in U.S. oil production around the year 2000; this followed M. King Hubbert's controversial forecast of a peak around the year 1970. Confounding the official view, U.S. oil production did reach its maximum in 1970 and has been generally declining ever since, despite the subsequent discovery of the largest conventional oilfield ever found in North America-on the North Slope of Alaska-in the 1970s.
-- In their International Energy Outlook (IEO) 2001 report, the EIA stated that "The United Kingdom is expected to produce about 3.1 mb/d by the middle of this decade, followed by a decline to 2.7 mb/d by 2020," implying a peak around 2005. Britain's oil production from the North Sea actually peaked in 1999, two years before this forecast was issued, at 2.684 mb/d, declining to less than 1.7 mb/d by 2005.
-- In their IEO 2003 report, the EIA predicted that the country of Oman was "expected to increase output gradually over the first half of this decade" with "only a gradual production decline after 2005." In fact, Oman's production had already peaked in 2000, three years before the forecast was published., The Closer We Get, the Worse It Looks, Richard Heinberg, OpEdNews, 08 Jan 2007
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) projects that [US ethanol] distilleries will require only 60 million tons of corn from the 2008 harvest. But here at the Earth Policy Institute (EPI), we estimate that distilleries will need 139 million tons — more than twice as much. If the EPI estimate is at all close to the mark, the emerging competition between cars and people for grain will likely drive world grain prices to levels never seen before...
This unprecedented diversion of the world’s leading grain crop to the production of fuel will affect food prices everywhere. As the world corn price rises, so too do those of wheat and rice, both because of consumer substitution among grains and because the crops compete for land. Both corn and wheat futures were already trading at 10-year highs in late 2006. The U.S. corn crop, accounting for 40 percent of the global harvest and supplying 70 percent of the world’s corn exports, looms large in the world food economy. Annual U.S. corn exports of some 55 million tons account for nearly one fourth of world grain exports. The corn harvest of Iowa alone, which edges out Illinois as the leading producer, exceeds the entire grain harvest of Canada. Substantially reducing this export flow would send shock waves throughout the world economy... There are alternatives to creating a crop-based automotive fuel economy. The equivalent of the 2 percent of U.S. automotive fuel supplies now coming from ethanol could be achieved several times over, and at a fraction of the cost, by raising auto fuel efficiency standards by 20 percent... We need to make sure that in trying to solve one problem—our dependence on imported oil—we do not create a far more serious one: chaos in the world food economy, Distillery Demand for Grain to Fuel Cars Vastly Understated, Lester R. Brown, Earth Policy Institute, 04 Jan 2007
China's sales of cars is forecast to increase about 20 percent in 2007, and the price will drop about five percent. Industry experts said that sales of passenger vehicles in China would maintain a high-speed growth for at least 20 years, and the growth is expected to stand at 15-20 percent in the coming 10 years. They forecast that the automotive industry will retain its steady growth of profits in 2007. It is predicted that the annual sales of cars in China will reach 10 million by 2010 and 20 million by 2020 when China will become the world's largest car market... The sales of automobiles in China are expected to hit 7 million units in 2006, 1.2 million more than that in 2005, of which the sales of cars will account for 3.8 million units, 1 million more than that in 2005, according to a forecast made by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, China's Car Sales Forecast to Rise 20 Percent in 2007, aftermarketNews [Xinhua News Agency ], 03 Jan 2007
Food shortages, cars abandoned, another depression. It's the stuff of nightmares — and the type of future an eclectic group of engineers, computer experts and others in Seattle believe could await us. They're not religious zealots predicting Armageddon, nor survivalists digging bomb shelters. They believe the world is about to start running out of gas. Literally... Reid, who is 43, is preparing by investing in gold, installing solar panels and buying a home near the new light-rail line, which he figures would still operate. Other members of the group are making similar preparations for a low-energy future... What happens next, they say, will at first be similar to the 1973 oil embargo by OPEC nations — high gasoline prices, shortages, long lines at the pump — except it will never end and will only get worse.
The group's members are taking incremental steps to adjust their finances and their lifestyles. They talk about how to grow, cook and store seasonal foods. Their Web site has forums about creating a seed bank, saving rainwater for gardening and building raised planting beds. There's discussion by some members of eventually buying some property that can be planted. They also discuss widening their social networks and establishing strong connections with neighbors, so they'll have people to count on if life gets tough... "I think peak oil is inevitable," Nelson said. "It's not escapable and it's going to happen within our lifetimes, so why not try to change our lives so we can live with those changes and be ready." Seattle "peak-oilers" prepare for a world without petroleum, Andrew Garber, The Seattle Times, 02 Jan 2007
EIA’s Long-term Forecasts Significantly Understate The Natural Gas & Electricity Price & Supply Risks Facing the U.S... How could this be? How could the U.S. economy be faced with a potential energy supply crisis of this severity without the magnitude of this potential crisis being more widely understood? While there is no single answer, the most important factor is the long-term forecasts of expected supply, demand and price of natural gas issued by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA). Earlier in the decade, EIA severely over-estimated the supplies of natural gas likely to be available to the U.S. market and drastically under-estimated the likely price. Unfortunately, there is a significant risk that EIA’s current estimates will prove to be just as far off the mark, potentially resulting in far reaching harm to the U.S. economy. It is important, therefore, that policy-makers begin to develop a better understanding as soon as possible of the extent of the price and supply risks faced by the U.S. economy in coming years. The Reference Case price forecasts issued by EIA over the past 12 months provide a useful starting point for critiquing EIA’s work, Playing with Fire – Part II, Andrew Weissman, Energy Pulse, 02 Jan 2007
…some of the alternatives suggested by CERA (Cambridge Energy Research Associates) are "fuels of the future and always will be", e.g. so-called oil from shales; many existing projects are years rather than months behind schedule e.g. the original target start-up date for the Kashagan field (offshore Kazakhstan) was 2005. In 2003, the date was set back to 2007. Last year, 2006, it was set back to 2009 'at the earliest'. Most yet-to-be-discovered conventional oil is expected to come from those countries where delays are the worst - the Middle East (think Iran), Russia, Africa (think Nigeria). With the release of Why the "Peak Oil" Theory Falls Down: Myths, Legends and the Future of Oil Resources, by Peter M. Jackson, Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) attempts to cast doubt on empirically based concerns about our near-term future oil supply. CERA’s study requires a response because since 1870, the health of the world’s economies have hinged on a secure, dependable and growing flow of conventional oil. If the world’s oil supply cannot grow to meet ever-rising global demand, irreversible economic damage will occur unless mitigation steps are taken now. This debate is not academic; much depends on a correct analysis of the future oil supply. Does the Peak Oil Theory Just Fall Down? David Cohen, World Energy, Dec 2006
CERA are the analyst group led by Daniel Yergin author of “The Prize” and whose reports go for thousands of dollars. When the report came out we mentioned how odd it was that the ‘peak oil’ crowd were being attacked in this way. Why did such an establishment body need to take so much time attacking a group it sees as so far-out? Well now it has had a reply. Chris Skrebowski from the Energy Institute in London has written an open letter to CERA wondering about many of the same questions... But Skrebowski then makes his most interesting point, one that we have pointed out before, that CERA do in fact believe in “peak oil.”... He then goes on to back up our view, that what CERA is doing is providing a blanket of denial for the industry, whilst simultaneously telling the industry itself that the problem is real. Peak Oil Passnotes: Peak Oil vs. Cera - The Fight Continues, Edward Tapamor, Resource Investor, 22 Dec 2006.
There seems to be a race between the USA and UK as to which country is going to have a severe natural gas energy gap first. This is the latest article to discuss USA natural gas depletion and supply / demand issues. An introduction to a short series, it is lengthy but with plenty of graphs/analysis. The author's two main solutions are increased energy efficiency and greater use of coal - coal gasification and coal-to-liquids. No suggestion of directly using less energy:
<James Kunstler is best known in the Peak Oil community for his views regarding USA-suburbia-has-no-future, American suburbia being a way of life so utterly dependent on the car/auto, and therefore cheap and plentiful supplies of crude oil. James has written this article primarily in response to a book that celebrates suburbia, written by an academic, Robert Bruegmann, professor of art history, architecture, and urban planning at the University of Illinois, Chicago: <<... Despite his boatloads of statistics, Bruegmann is just flat-out wrong in many of his positions and virtually all of his conclusions. At the center of his thesis is the unquestioned assumption that the suburban project can continue indefinitely, that it is a good thing, that we will get more of it, and we ought to stop carping and enjoy it. His book fails entirely to acknowledge the fact that we are entering a permanent global energy crisis that will put an end to the drive-in utopia whether people like it or not... It is necessary to insert right here that, contrary to a lot of wishful thinking and techgnostic wool-gathering rampant these days, no combination of alternative fuels or systems for using them will allow us to run America the way we currently run it, or even a substantial fraction of it. We are not going to run Wal-Mart, Walt Disney World, and the interstate highway system on hydrogen, coal synfuels, tar sand or oil shale distillates, bio-diesel, ethanol, recycled french-fry oil, solar electricity, wind power, or nuclear fission. The stark truth of the situation is that we are simply going to have to make other arrangements -- and I'm sorry to have to repeat that this will be the case whether we like it or not. Suburbia will be coming off the menu. Suburbia: Running on Empty?, James Howard Kunstler, AlterNet, 14 Dec 2006
1. Green Building Bible, Volume 2, p. 10, © 09/2006
2. Encyclopedia Charts, © 05/2006 Further details We stand at the first major crossroads of history, where all that we have learned and built risks disappearing as the cheap energy that underpins our global existence gradually, or sharply, vanishes. Do we have both the technology and the wisdom to cross the forthcoming energy abyss, in the accelerating climate of energy use and global warming, before it catches us by the balls?
These are questions that I was already considering in 1981, as I struggled to regain my life following my heart stopping for 10 minutes after a car accident in Kenya as I was first immigrating to a new country (!). As I staggered more than 330 miles home from my first job in my first year I became obsessed by the weight of the cars that were passing on the road beside me. Did it really require such a weight to transport one or two people?
Because of my cardiac arrest, I found myself with a mind that was a blank slate, a tabula rasa, onto which I could, and found I must, write all the information that I was being presented with…to survive! So, with this very young mind in a 28 year old body I simply began to imagine a future without cars, driven only by renewable energies – a situation that was distant in 1981, but is considerably more under our noses at present.
I have kept in mind the solutions that I imagined back then, and now understand them to be even more worth proposing now, as the world grates toward the cliff edge of energy poverty, with all of the terrifying global consequences that may follow. Is there really a way beyond the obsolescence of our cities when there is no more petroleum? Can they still function and exist when there is no longer a scaled infrastructure that is adequate to the task of supplying those who live there - with food, and with the energy required to make communication, transportation, business, industrial and education systems work?
Can we look beyond the historical model of human agglomerations, that of building them at crossroads or strategic points, and watching them grow to soon to be unmanageable sizes, to that of a global infrastructure that will banish the immensely heavily polluting forms of transportation that we myopically view as the only solutions, but that point surely to our premature demise?
Can we banish the daggers in the heart of sustainability that are each and every skyscraper represents – structures that demand that every desk in them be filled by someone who travels on average at least 20 miles every morning and every night – the worst model for sustainability that has ever existed on this planet?
Can we replace them with structures that generate their own energy entirely from renewable sources, that provide their own highly efficient transportation systems while giving every inhabitant access to their own pigs, chickens and allotments, as well as to real leisure areas, within a 10 minute walk, and to “industrial” scale agriculture within half an hour – to lead to the elimination of most of the food miles that occur on this planet at present?
Where can we start on this daunting task? Step by step, first things first is the only way. Countries all over the world, especially those with coastlines, have considerable wind resources; why don’t we start there? How can we optimise this resource? Bear in mind that the solutions that I am proposing are revolutionary, because they came to a very young mind that was unconstrained by convention, and driven by the need to innovate to survive. But, are they any more revolutionary than the consequences of our use of the automobile, whose impacts, positive and negative, we could not see when it was introduced on a large scale a century ago? There were plenty of people who resisted the automobile back then!
Let us start by imagining that every gas station has a sign saying, “Closed forever!”…as they all will within, let’s say, 50 years, or perhaps as little as 5 years, depending on which country you live in!
How far away are we from that situation, as the entire world races to gain what we in the West have taken for granted for 100 years - access to unlimited and cheap energy? Will we be able to create a replacement infrastructure with cities that generate their own energy, and provide their own optimised high, medium and low speed transportation systems, access to GREEN fields and food production areas, climate controlled “streets” without cars, outdoor cafes and shops, and practically unlimited recreational facilities, using what will surely be our last and shared (?) drops of petroleum? Will the only form of life that is provably eternal on this planet, the components of our genes that recombine with each new generation, in the form of our children and the generations that follow theirs, thank us or condemn us for leaving 6 billion+ of us to live on energy resources that only supported 1.6 billion in 1900?
It only requires the same imagination that was needed to make the transition to motor cars from horse-drawn vehicles 100 years ago to launch the bold and imaginative schemes that are crucial to the survival of our current global cultures. And presenting the new models provided by this research, already largely completed, will also surely stimulate many minds around the world to improve on it, and give it the variation necessary to give it ownership to many diverse cultures and populations, so that its acceptance and installation can be completed before the last curtain that hides the inevitable energy abyss from us falls away, into that abyss.
All materials copyright 4/2007 Green Millennium, Kim Gyr | |
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