Resource Planning

>Quote:Originally posted by TerraSapient

>Well said, and I agree with you on most of your >points. However, what we need to do and >
>what people are willing to do rarely align (coming >from the historical perspective)..

Mike Morin replies:

People are like lemmings, they are easily led. Look at the way they ran headlong into war in World War 2 and all the other cataclysms of our irrational history. The survival instinct is so fierce as to be extinguishing. The question is, are people now sufficiently knowledgeable and sentient enough to understand and reject the four hundred years of Capitalist/Industrial Revolution/Fossil-fueled/Colonialist Military and Economic Hegemony and accept the conscious and deliberate evolution that will be necessary to adjust to the resource scarce, over-populated future?

Given the consumerist/Corporatist driven realities of the Communications Media and the politicians of the USA and their allies (increasingly few), and the widely entrenched economic interests of much (many (with resources), if not most) of the population are the people reachable with these important messages and will they, can they, understand and recognize the historical exceptionalism of their lifestyles, and be persuaded to accept a rational, planned future for the benefit of the youth and children, and succeeding generations, without despairing about how it upsets their current routines?

Can leaders/educators be found to greatly assist in such an effort when most educators are the result of a Corporatist linear trajectory and a longstanding involvement in a progression of adaptation to one sort of conformism or another that has served to advance their selfish careers?

>Quote:Originally posted by TerraSapient:

> It isn't just about planners laying out guidelines for more appropriately designed urban fabrics >based on a resource scarcity, but about a cultural shift where people want to live in these kinds >of places, want to stop driving their cars, want to walk..

MM:

How do we go about affecting such a "cultural (r)evolution"?

>Quote:Originally posted by TerraSapient:

>the desire to drive everywhere will not change by simply running low on oil.

MM:

Yes, but the ability to drive will change if the price of oil spikes and then plateaus or continues to rise and/or the recession continues to deepen and fundamentally disrupts the effective demand of the middle and ownership "classes".We don't want an oil crisis because fossil fuels are a much too important resource/opportunity cost for more precious applications such as home heating, cooking, hot water, and electricity generation.

Perhaps a good policy to accompany a long-standing demand side plan implementation of rebuilding and retrofitting neighborhoods/villages and changing the fundamental ways and means by which goods and services are allocated to and within communities (to make them walkable, sustainable) would be to slowly but discernibly (and explained) raise the relative price of gasoline relative to oil's more important applications (a selective carbon tax, if you will, but it also could involve a quasi-public orientation of the oil companies (I suppose that we could nationalize them, though this would not be the optimal approach to advocate)).

Such a pricing/tax policy could also use additional revenues, if any, to subsidize and/or pay for the quasi-public/public works rebuilding efforts.

>Quote:Originally posted by TerraSapient:

> Not to mention that if we truly do have an oil crisis on our hands in the very near future
>(which I do believe is imminent) people are going to have a lot more to worry about than what >kind of energy source their personal automobiles will be running on, and therefore how far >their place of employment or the grocery store is from their home.

MM:

Yes, we may not have the time to implement such a long-term strategy. But, we should not abandon it, because as a geo-political overture to OPEC and contested fossil fuel reserves territories, it could go a long way toward making peace and thus helping to ensure a much longer lasting decline phase of the fossil fuel age.

>Quote:Originally posted by TerraSapient:

> Given the subject matter, I think we need to have an understanding of what kinds of >technologies are going to be influencing the built environment of the future before we can
> adequately plan for them. Planning for urban fabrics that are based on an expiring resource is >important, but if we truly want to plan for future generations, we cannot stop there and must >focus on what kinds of resources they will be utilizing as well.

MM:

There is little to nothing in the way of supply side solutions. The solutions will need to be relative to the long-term radical reduction of demand.