Ford Transit Gloria Detroiti?

[biffvernon]

Oh no! I agree with Colin McInnes about roof top turbines and very few people think they are very much use, but the rest of his article is utter bollocks. (That's a technical term frequently employed in the Buildings' Conservation trade.)

 

[Penners]

I have no idea how pie-in-the-sky it is, but this little graphic is quite interesting and purports to have a recipe for a completely renewable-energy-powered planet: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=powering-a-green-planet

 

[JohnB]

These highly technical exchanges invariably leave me baffled, but I could understand what this chap is saying:
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10059/

Transition Towns can be viewed as a harmless pastime for those with time on their hands. However, the danger of the Transition Town movement is that some in positions of influence are buying into the underlying philosophy. Their vision of local production is for a sustainable society filled with Saturday farmers’ markets, forever. For some, this would be a welcome retreat from the uncertainties of modernity to a mythical golden era - an era which never actually existed. Such a future, low-energy, sustainable society based on local production is seen as a re-invented agricultural Britain, but with access to the internet and modern healthcare. This is dangerously naive. A community living in permanent energy austerity, cut off from regional and international trade, would quickly regress, its life expectancy would fall and the young would be pressed into agricultural production rather than education.

This is very misleading. Transition isn't about cutting a community off from the rest of the world. It's about doing things on the appropriate scale. Some things are best done locally, while other things benefit from the economies of scale of being done regionally, nationally or globally. If we're heading for a time when we don't have the energy available (or affordable) for a globalised transport network, we need to produce the basic essentials close enough to where they're consumed that they can actually get to the consumer. The current food supply system depends on just in time delivery to supermarkets. If the complex and energy hungry system fails, there will be little food available in an area within days. If the bulk of essential food is produced locally, a failure in the distribution system can be overcome. There's no reason why less essential, high value, low volume, non perishable food items shouldn't come from greater distances. It's worth looking into bio-regionalism.

 

[Penners]

I confess that I've tended to regard "Transition Towns" as another of those vacuous PR projects undertaken by local authorities, which don't amount to more than a few large notices on main roads. A bit like "Nuclear Free Zone" and "Low Emission Zone".

An example of the latter can be seen on the southbound M11 near the junction with the M25 - a place where stationary traffic queues can be found belching out emissions for hours every day. :roll:

 

[Flyfisher]

That's a fair point, and just goes to prove how complex this whole thing really is. But the point about the downsides of localism remains. For example, it would be hard to imagine something like the Irish potato famine having such a devastating impact today.

I take the point about long-distance transport in an energy-depleted world, but surely and energy-depleted world would want to use its energy with maximum efficiency. I suspect there is little debate that intensive agriculture is a more energy-efficient method of food production than subsistence farming.

Of course, it may be that labour-intensive, localised farming does become attractive again (or, rather, economic?) if the prediced economic collapse due to peak oil leaves millions (billions?) of people with no other form of employment. Labour would then be cheap and since society could probably no longer afford to routinely educate people into their early 20s and pay for a long period of retirement, filling the fields with people to grow local organic food might make sense.

I can certainly imagine such a scenario, but I can't imagine it being particularly popular.

 

[biffvernon]

I confess that I've tended to regard "Transition Towns" as another of those vacuous PR projects undertaken by local authorities,

Oh absolutely not! They are not a Local Authority initiative. The come very much from below grassroots organizations. It happens that in many cases the people involved have made an effort to get on the right side of councillors and council officials and councils have ended up being quite supportive but please do get the direction of flow right.

 

[worms]

For example, it would be hard to imagine something like the Irish potato famine having such a devastating impact today.

Amartya Sen (A Nobel prize winning development economist) would contend that there has never been a famine in a functional democracy. Perhaps we should ask the question of whether our democracy is robust enough to ensure that even in a post-oil world we would manage to share the food resource and prevent famine or would democracy as we know it break-down in the face of increased hunger in society.

Of course, it may be that labour-intensive, localised farming does become attractive again (or, rather, economic?) if the prediced economic collapse due to peak oil leaves millions (billions?) of people with no other form of employment. Labour would then be cheap and since society could probably no longer afford to routinely educate people into their early 20s and pay for a long period of retirement, filling the fields with people to grow local organic food might make sense.

At present population levels, the UK has 1 acre of land per person. Taking out sufficient for towns, some trees and the odd mountain, it is difficult to see how we could feed the current UK population from the available land. Land is the limiting factor, we can make our agriculture more or less labour intensive or more or less capital intensive but in our climate, producing sufficient food from the available land without external inputs is a very serious challenge.

 

[biffvernon]

Comparing the productivity of my vegetable plot with the barley field across the fence it is easy to see how we could feed the current UK population from the available land. It all hangs on the available labour.

I live in an area of particularly rich farming land. Much of that land is used for producing cereals, rape and beans for animal feed for bio-fuel. Large areas are devoted to horses used for recreation and Lincolnshire is famous for its tulips and daffodils. Some land is actually used for crops that people eat, though I gather about half of that food never actually reaches a dinner plate.

There are problems enough to worry about without inventing problems that don't exist.

 

[worms]

Biff,

Please don’t misunderstand me – I am convinced by the arguments in favour of localisation and the need for a rethink on industrial agricultural processes. I admit,though, that I tend to view things from the perspective of those who are not fortunate enough to have access to Grade 1 agricultural land. But I don’t agree with you that the land issue is “inventing a problem” and I didn’t say that feeding our population from our land area was impossible, simply that it was a very serious challenge.

The current scenario seems to be that we need to encourage carbon sequestration in peatlands and forests at the same time as bringing more land into locally-intensive mixed agriculture, while also coping with loss of good land through sea level rise and increased restoration of flood plains. Increased frequency of extreme weather events will lead to localised temporary loss of production and long-range food distribution will become increasingly uneconomic.

The last fifty years has seen an unprecedented loss of some of our best farm land and an increased concentration of land ownership in fewer hands.

I just can't see land not being an issue in the near future.

 

[biffvernon]

Of course it's an issue, a serious challenge, and as sea level rises 25 metres higher than at present it won't get easier. My point is that too much is currently made of the food issue: "Britain is overcrowded", "A billion people are hungry - how can we feed 9 billion in 2050?" and similar cries.

I think the energy security and global warming issues are much more important, with population and food coming a distant third place in the Doomer Stakes.

I suppose what I'm saying is that the food/population problem has a solution. Get cosy and do lots of gardening. I'm not so confident about energy and global warming.

 

[Onetap]

Read the article here: http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/6602

Thanks for that, Biff; brief and to-the-point. Book-marked for much future use.

Whilst we all continue to hope for an alternative to the fossil fuels, there is no sign of anything promising on the horizon.
Cold Fusion is back in the news (although they don't call it that) and one of the inventors seems to have form for some financial naughtiness. I'm not too hopeful.

This also looks promising;
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/saul_griffith_on_kites_as_the_future_of_renewable_energy.html

However, if we were to exploit such a source of cheap electrical power, we'd need a plentiful supply of conductors, copper or maybe aluminium. There might be a problem with the copper, though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_copper