Urban? For What Species?

It is unfortunate that we use words like "urban" and "city" to describe fundamentally different built environments - i.e. everything from sprawling habitats constructed for the convenience of homo automobilicus to compact habitats scaled for the species homo pedestricanus.

Of course here in the United States the main thrust of our economic activity over the past 60 years has been to expand habitat for homo automobilicus - which inevitably undermines, destroys, and prevents the formation of habitat for homo pedestricanus. No surprise, the larger, faster, more powerful species homo automobilicus is now dominant in most communities. The dearth of human life on the sidewalks of villages and small cities throughout the US attests to the lost struggle.

This victory may prove short-lived, however. Having suffocated millions of acres of bioproductive land beneath the highways and parking lots it needs to move and store its colossal population, homo automobilicus is now appropriating even more land for “food” production (i.e. biofuels). But it is unlikely that homo pedestricanus will have to suffer this seizure for much longer. Why? Because homo automobilicus will eventually collapse from its rapacious appetite. With an average weight of several tons, and given the fact that it travels at much higher speeds over much longer distances than the small, slow, localized species homo pedestricanus, homo automibilicus has far larger energetic requirements. It is by nature a carrion feeder, and basic thermodynamic laws make it highly unlikely that Earth's sustainable energy flows will prove adequate fare for a population of hundreds of millions.

History will almost certainly show that petroleum was the largest, most nutritious dead carcass humankind will ever find on Earth. Cheap oil alone has allowed homo automobilicus to gorge and breed to wildly unsustainable numbers, and the end of cheap oil spells its demise.

One would hope this implosion will not prevent homo pedestricanus from flourishing once again. But why must it come to this? If only the species homo sapiens were to discover enlightened self-restraint!

What's at Stake

One starts off fighting for some relatively small thing – to establish a pedestrian-oriented town square, to protect a watershed, to head off yet another sprawling subdivision and strip mall. Gradually one realizes that one is fighting battle after battle against politically-connected elites who have the money and time to press their agendas until they get what they want; fighting against an omnipotent, rabidly-defended belief in the Growth Economy; indeed, fighting a war against the main trajectory of one's society.

It may be useful to ask what animates the opposition. I would say that at root is the primary – if seldom acknowledged – end-product of the Growth Economy: fear of being useless, without purpose, bound and fettered to a Leviathan that remorselessly destroys our needs for one-another no less effectively than it dismantles self-reliance.

Let us remember that Development is not the final aim of the planners and architects and contractors – they want something meaningful and creative to do with their lives. Nor is Development the end goal of the carpenters and drywallers and plumbers – they want be needed by others so they can earn a living. Development is not even the ultimate objective of those who develop to amass great wealth – they are merely hell-bent on gaining respect in a society that has made virtues of the Seven Deadly Sins.

I am coming to the conclusion that we will inevitably loose on the small things if we do not win the war. Given the stranglehold of Growth-fed media on the public consciousness, however, chances are slim that advocates for a sustainable way of life will be widely heard above the stupefying clamor of Commerce. If humankind is lucky, the limits of energy, natural resources, and/or debt will – in relatively short order – collapse the Growth Economy without widespread suffering and loss of life. But will Man learn from the experience that we are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to our disposition to put moral chains upon our own appetites?

Fatal Pace

Oregon, Wisconsin USA

Our failure as a community to support and reward those who attempt to go about their lives at a walking or bicycling pace is bad enough. But the recent cyclist fatality near Brooklyn, Wisconsin reminds us that we-the-drivers often pose a life-and-death threat to non-motorists. The swift, the powerful, and the heavily-armored so thoroughly dominate most of our public thoroughfares today that merely walking or bicycling across them can be hazardous. (Walk or bicycle along them? Forget it!)

Our pervasive (if unintentional) disregard for the “least among us” – i.e. those annoyingly slow, small, vulnerable creatures called pedestrians and bicyclists – represents one of the most flagrant injustices in our society. Rather than joining the anthropogenically-motivated, we’ve made things even worse by withdrawing ever more frequently into our supersized vehicular exoskeletons. Many of us now consider a three-ton armored personnel carrier a practical necessity for conveying our youngster to extra-curricular activities. “My child needs to participate just like other normal children, and I need a big SUV to keep her safe!”

Unsurprisingly, our police and highway departments won’t slow drivers down enough to make it feel safe and be safe for non-motorists on our roads and highways. A more human pace would surely throw a wrench in our speed-addicted economy, and a voting majority that has become almost totally dependent on the automobile would not suffer any such disruption to the “Happy Motoring” way of life.

I cannot end this with a pep talk and some bullet-points. Not only is the Brooklyn cyclist’s death a tragedy; our sprawling, hyper-mobile, resource-gobbling way of life is a tragedy as well. And so long as we cling to our steering wheels; so long as our leaders deploy American troops all over Earth to ensure an uninterrupted flow of cheap energy into our tanks, nothing will change.

Sinking In

This past weekend at my wife's family farm on County Highway D south of Madison, Wisconsin, we had a garage/estate sale to dispose of my brother-in-law's material possessions. Traffic was good - if one considers 99% of potential buyers using a motor vehicle to access 99% of their destinations to be desirable.

For once I kept my mouth shut about our nation's wars and occupations for oil, our addiction to driving everywhere, the enormous Environmental Footprint of homo automobilicus, etc. and just tried to sell my brother-in-law's stuff and thus cover his bills. Instead I used the occasion to quietly absorb the vast gulf between my beliefs versus our prevailing expectations and norms.

The overwhelming majority of people in these parts simply cannot imagine not driving everywhere. They lack any comprehension that their way of life undermines and destroys far more frugal - potentially even SUSTAINABLE - ways of living in their midst. Spending time there near that highway (a once-quiet country road which has morphed into a heavily congested two-lane commuter artery into Madison) I was stunned by the violence of movement. Seeing the vehicles that pulled into the yard, I was disgusted by the phenomenal size of many of them, especially when one considers they are used nearly all of the time for single-occupancy commuting and chauffeuring little Brittany to extra-cirricular activities rather than carpooling or hauling heavy, bulky stuff to jobsites.

What kind of power-mad, self-obsessed monsters have we become? So many people have collapsed their own identity into the identity of their motor vehicle(s). Motorcycle as lifestyle. Pickup truck as codpiece. Speed and power and restless movement as rebellion…against what? Everything branded, everything a logo and image. My own brother-in-law, God rest his soul, was a man who could express his love for his Harley and Suburban and Corvette far better than he could express love for humans; he bought into the Happy Motoring paradigm for the better part of his life. He may have been "book smart"; he certainly did well in the corporate world for a while; but he was a sucker for the perpetual dissatisfaction corporate America has to sell.

It strikes me as less and less likely that I can make any practical difference beyond my own household. This weekend helped me to realize that I have absolutely no idea how to engage most of my neighbors in discussing the issues and beliefs that really matter to me. More than a few - including a man I consider a very close friend - have already shut me off for rocking the boat.

This is Freedom?

The following is a transcript of my comments in support of a Dane County Regional Transportation Authority, delivered to Sun Prairie and Madison Area Transportation Planning Board officials at a hearing in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, on 4 Mar 2009. My “prop” for the occasion was a gasoline pump nozzle.

Do I support a Dane County Regional Transportation Authority? Absolutely. An RTA isn’t just about commuter rail in Madison – it is about real transportation choices all over Dane County, including commuter service in communities like Oregon and Stoughton and Sun Prairie.

That’s right: an RTA is about freedom of choice.

Now let’s think about that word “freedom”. Edmund Burke, an 18th century British philosopher whom many consider the father of modern conservativism, had this to say:

“Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”

---hold up nozzle

Do you think this is liberty? Do you think this is freedom? Do you think importing 60% of our oil a few years ago, importing 70% today, importing 80% and more tomorrow is independence?

---look around room

Do you think freedom is pretending that you and I are not addicted to oil?

Do you think freedom is refusing to connect the dots between where most of the remaining oil is… {pregnant pause}

…and where our country has deployed most of its incredibly powerful, incredibly expensive military forces?

---hands over eyes

Do you think freedom is closing your eyes to the inconvenient truth that blood was shed – and more blood will be shed – to put that tiger in your tank…and my tank…and every other tank driving down Highway 151 and Highway 14 and Highway 138 every weekday morning with only 1.1 people inside?

---hold up nozzle

Do you think the guys at the other end of this hose are our friends? Do you think a tube made of braided rubber is no less a shackle on our lives than ones made of forged steel?

My friends, is freedom is being ignorant of these facts – or worse, willfully, stubbornly blind to them?

I’ll tell you what freedom is.

Above all things, freedom is being honest with ourselves and each other. Because this isn’t just about our entitlements to guzzle what comes out of here…

---point out of nozzle

…we also have a great many obligations and responsibilities for what happens at the other end of the hose.

---point backwards from hose.

This is something we should be talking about here, in this room. It breaks my heart that we’re not.

Freedom is living in a community where you can stand up on your own hind legs once in a while and walk – actually WALK! – when you want to go somewhere. Real freedom of movement begins with…moving yourself!

Freedom is living where your child can ride her bicycle to play with her friends, not endless duty as child chauffeur…on top of both of you working to meet your car payments!

Freedom is neighbors cooperating for the common good, funding and building and sharing energy-efficient, land-conserving, public transportation together. Freedom is being a CITIZEN who says, “Yes! I want to invest my fair share in a better tomorrow!”

I will close by telling you what freedom could be.

Freedom would be living in peace with other people on Earth instead of hogging the lion’s share of resources for ourselves.

Freedom would be us weaving ourselves together rather than our cars driving us apart; giant corporations driving us into bankruptcy; and the economy driving us all insane with the terribly wicked lie that enough is never enough.

Freedom would be leaving behind a decent planet for our grandchildren.

The Secret

What if the secret to more employment for people is less employment for machines? What if we were no less committed to “the least among us” than we are passionate about our vaunted economic and political theories? What if we really did put people first, firmly above climbing over others to get ahead ourselves?

If healthy, fulfilling, honorable work for everyone was our top priority, would tens of millions of Americans know – and a hundred million or more fear – that their fellow countrymen have no further need for their services?

What if more Growth for those of us already wallowing in stuff leads us away from true prosperity? What if a tide of material consumption that rises even further would drown humankind beneath depletion and ruin long before it lifted the leaking dinghies of the poorest of the poor? What if Edmund Burke’s warning is true: we are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to our disposition to put moral chains upon our own appetites?

Because the choice today – indeed, the choice for all time – remains very simple: to love and serve one another; or abandon ourselves to the pursuit of the lowest prices, the highest rates of return, and the opportunity to die with the most toys.

End of Consumption

Set aside conventional wisdom for a moment, and consider a possibility with ramifications so disturbing that America’s leading politicians, economic experts, and media talking heads refuse to acknowledge them in public. To wit: the present economic implosion really WAS caused by inadequate consumption rather than the usual suspects – inflation of the money supply, precipitous suppression of the prime rate, reckless expansion of credit, aggressive promotion of patently untenable mortgages by government, the repackaging of said toxic mortgages by a host of corporate accomplices, the viral spread of risk, astronomical increases in leverage, and computerized hyper-chicanery by our financial “creative class”. This isn’t to say these factors did not complicate or exacerbate matters, but they are not the root cause (indeed, some are symptoms). Rather, it was the beginning of the end of the age of the consumption that made the collapse inevitable.

Yes, despite Herculean efforts to consume faster than ever before, American shoppers just couldn’t keep pace with what was needed for “healthy” economic growth. Thanks to unprecedented levels of productivity, the output of McMansions and Escalades and ARMs overshot the abilities of our seemingly-insatiable markets to absorb them. Was it because too many consumers still cling to antiquated concepts like “frugality” and “modesty” and "thrift"? Certainly not! Having been incontrovertibly discredited by modern economic theory, such incendiary notions have been almost entirely expunged from our national consciousness, and fortunately no one listens to the handful of contrarians who profess them. So we must not let their censorious rantings about the evils of greed distract us from grasping the real catastrophe: in practice if not in spirit, Americans are falling ever further behind in the never-ending race to consume more than enough.

One can be forgiven for suspecting lack of money was the problem. Many years ago, when the economy managed to survive on a restricted diet of savings-based consumption, current levels of spending would have seemed ludicrous. But as mechanization and automation made goods and services cheaper and cheaper, saving before consuming wasn’t good enough to maintain profits or stave off unemployment. Thus, over time, more and more spending money had to be sucked out of the future, and the velocity of money in our globally-interconnected financial nervous system now routinely approaches the speed of light. And America’s creditors were more than willing to fund deficit consumption, right up to the collapse. No, the problem was not one of insufficient money supply.

With plenty of credit available to sop up surging output, why did Americans falter? Could it have been post traumatic shopping disorder? Not enough aisle-time in the day? Were precious hours wasted socializing at Starbucks rather than piling up savings at Target? Did skyrocketing obesity impede the vital flow of human traffic shuffling from parking lots to Big Boxes? Was it carpal tunnel from swiping credit cards? Did renting one more storage locker to stow surfeit stuff not seem worth the adrenalin rush of another 24 hour sale? Was it because auto designers ran out of room for more cup holders?

We may never know what made a once-proud nation of indefatigable shop-till-you-drop shoppers drop out. But even if we did, it’s probably too late to save America now.