Midtown Wednesdays

LIVE BLOG: Building Sustainable Regional Food Networks

Ed Morrison just called and provided an update on his work in open source economic development in the WIRED grant in Indiana. Ed has just been asked to lead a national meeting in Atlanta to talk

James Howard Kuntsler, author of "The Long Emergency", sets the table for the 21st C. Kundstler identifies trends and opportunities in sustainability and energy. We are watching a video of Kundstler talking....about the development of coal and equipment to support the production of this industrial economy progression...The kerosene lamp was the iPod of the Civil War era. During this time of development the world consumers more and more oil progressing up to 100Million B of oil a day.

Between 2/3 and 3/4 of American oil is imported. More that 2/3rd of the world's oil comes from the MiidEast - where we are not so well liked.

There is an arc of discovery just as there is an arc of

Hubbard came up with a model - bell curve graph - that states that any given region or locality will reach a peak of discovery and after that time - 30 years - will begin to decline.

US production peaked in 1970. This came to the attention of OPEC had the pricing power and the Muslum nations the opportunity to flex their political muscles. Affecting interest rates affected an entire web of pricing and the overall economy. The oil in Alaska and the North Sea saved America for 20 years from the affect of OPEC.

The Arabian population is in a predictiment of their own, because they live as a large otherwise unsupportable economy where it not for oil.

We cannot sustain the current system running without first going through a period of hardship and adjustment before we can begin to move forward.

Europe is ahead in that it did not destroy its cities and towns and as a serious habitat; they continue to support local agriculture and development of regional food production.

We will need to live profoundly and intensely locally. Large government will become increasingly ineffective. We will see profound differences in the various regions throughout the country. We are living with large systems failure. We are living with the investment of our last 60 years of resources in a way of living that is not sustainable as a car, oil driven economy.

An "outside context problem". Circumstances and events will propell us to do certain things whether we like it or not.

Link to download the video:

Here are more links to read:

"Rolling Stone" article: The Long Emergency: What's going to happen as we start running out of cheap gas to guzzle?

Howard Kunstler's web page here.

Add the Orion Magazine to your favorites here.

What are some next steps?

Horticultural Enterprise Zones HEZ

Only 1% of our population can see far out ahead. It takes time to move forward; first, to acknowledge a problem and then to reconstruct what is troubling you and what some answers may be.

The case for locally grown organic foods is very strong. We need to have healthy soils that produce healthy foods; today we think big sizes and big eating quantities. We eat large quantities because the level of nutrients in food is too low and we must eat more.

Large dam construction has displaced millions of cultures. We can love a building but somehow not as much as loving soil. Our society needs to listen and address the question of how do we create the urban environments to ensure healthy living and create community equity and social justice?

Goals:

1) Establish Eco-industrial Zones
2)


Support long term, sustainable healthy environments and create new businesses as we do that.

Pennsylvannia where oil was first discovered is now leading with models of sustainable activity.

The HEZ model points to Food Security, Green Enterprises, Alternative Energies, Support Services. All of these categories produce enormous workforce development opportunities for any local region.

Here is follow up information provided by Melvin Hendrix:

Part I: http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=82655
Part II: http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=82790

posted by Unknown @ 5/10/2006