Earthwatch — Does the End of Oil Mean the End of Suburbia?

By Paul Henderson

“Users of conventional energy are, in a sense, the biggest welfare bums in town...which means every one of us, are all on the dole. It’s time to start paying our way.” — Thomas Homer-Dixon, author of The Ingenuity Gap

Most cities in North America — Toronto as much as any — are surrounded by vast farm fields no longer blanketed and rooted with crops, but with freshly laid water and sewer pipes, cul-de-sacs and avenues, newly built houses, tidy square lawns, and skinny trees. At the end of a long day at work, and then a long drive in traffic, many who work in big cities end up in their houses in suburbia. A gentle breeze feels an urban escapist relief against skin as it sways the manicured bushes and lawns. All is good in suburbia. Away from honking horns, belching exhausts, commercial overload, and ever-imminent crime.

But is the suburban paradise all it is cracked up to be? More importantly, is the myth of suburbia coming to an end? Is it possible that the lifestyle so many of us grew up in will fizzle out and die — remaining only as an era recounted in self-critical stories for generations to come?

“Suburbia has very poor prospects,” says James Howard Kunstler, author of The Geography of Nowhere and Home from Nowhere. “There will be a scramble to get out of the suburbs.”

These comments are from The End of Suburbia, a Canadian documentary produced by Barry Silverthorn, directed by Gregory Greene, and hosted by Barrie Zwicker. The movie asks the question of whether the suburban dream has a future, and makes the leap between the end of cheap oil and the death of suburban living. It is a short leap.

“Suburbia is the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world,” according to Kunstler. That misallocation began in the 1920s when cars for the middle class became a reality. With the cars came all the trappings of personal movement and the Victorian villa in a park-like setting became a reality not just for the wealthy.

Originally streetcars and light rail were paid for by the developers of suburbs. But General Motors, Firestone, and Standard Oil got together to kill light rail, which was at first replaced with roads and buses — made by GM, with Firestone tires, and fueled by Standard Oil.

Eventually the subsidization of the suburbs began as governments built roads and infrastructure out to the new developments growing out of formerly productive farmer’s fields.

After the Second World War suburbia became a sort of “you deserve it” reward for returning soldiers. The promise was made of the idyllic community life and the idea exploded. The reality, according to Kunstler, is that suburbia has no amenities of country life, and no amenities of the city: basically, it is the worst of both worlds.

This criticism of the qualitative features of the suburbs doesn’t hold much water as hordes continue to flock there. If there wasn’t something desirable about suburban living there simply wouldn't be a constant and growing market demand for the lifestyle.

What the growing demand means in Toronto’s reality is that traffic is an increasing problem and demands are made to create more expressways, and widening the ones we have. This only exacerbates the problem of oil depletion and speeds up the inevitable.

PEAK OIL & GAS
A central theme of The End of Suburbia, and of all those writing books and rallying government and industry to take notice, is that we are approaching what is called Peak Oil & Gas. This is a widely studied idea, indeed a group of world experts study what it all means. They are Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas (www.peakoil.net).

Peak Oil & Gas does not mean that we are going to run out of oil any time soon. Indeed someone, somewhere will surely be pumping oil out of the ground for hundreds of years to come. What is estimated to happen around 2010 by many experts is that world oil production will peak, and then will forever be in decline. Simply put this means that with population and economic growth, the demand for oil will continue to grow while supply will be in permanent freefall.

We are in a state now where those in power in much of the world are either in willful denial or simply constitute a modern day Flat Earth Society. But those declaring the world is round, and cheap oil is coming to an end, are increasingly being heard. (An article in the January 17-30 issue of the conservative magazine, Canadian Business, addressed the issue of declining energy reserves head on.)

Matthew Simmons is the CEO of the world’s largest energy investment bank, Simmons & Co. International, with clients that include Halliburton and the World Bank. His insider’s perspective makes it at once surprising the mandarins in Washington aren’t listening, and at once hopeful they will eventually.

The way the world economy is run requires constant and almost exponential growth. Required along with that is the energy to run the economy. But we are now approaching the limits of energy capacity. Something has to give.

“Peaking means categorically that you no longer grow,” Simmons says. On August 14, 2003 — the blackout — we had a fire drill in Canada and the U.S. and “people didn’t get it,” according to Simmons. “That was not a yellow light, that was a red light.”

FUELLING THE FUTURE
So what will fuel the future economy? There is a sense that not only do we have to learn to do more with less, but we have to simply learn to do less.

The current way that North American society is living is so unsustainable that no combination of alternative fuels will allow humans to continue consuming the way we currently are. Those making a living off the status quo often say that technology will save us. Someone will invent something, some time and everything will be okay. That delusion is no longer appropriate, according to a great many thinkers on this topic.

And the biggest delusion of all is hydrogen. There has been much touting (including in this column) about this magical futuristic world where cars are fuelled with hydrogen and the only output is clean water. Hey, that’s how NASA helps fuel space ships while providing drinking water for astronauts so why can’t we do it too? Well we can’t do it because you have to get hydrogen. Where does the hydrogen currently come from for fuel cells? Natural gas, which is running out.

Much like those who live in the suburbs do not have to take in the full-cost accounting of their lifestyle (publically subsidized infrastructure to farmer’s fields, etc.) so too do the hydrogen pushers need to do full-cost accounting to explain that it takes more energy to get the hydrogen than the hydrogen can create. So too with ethanol, it is argued by Michael C. Ruppert in the film. It takes more energy to produce the corn to get the ethanol than the ethanol produces.

“You have to do the calculation from start to finish,” Ruppert says.

The notion of a hydrogen economy is a myth, some argue.

“Hydrogen is a good example of a public delusion when we don’t have a plan B,” Kunstler says.

In a book recently published and meant to tackle these issues called Fuelling the Future: How the Battle Over Energy is Chaning Everything, Andrew Heintzman and Evan Soloman asked many of the pre-eminent thinkers on the topic to write essays on what will sustainably work in the energy sector. Last month at Workman Theatre in Toronto Heintzman and Soloman joined a panel discussion about these issues after a screening of The End of Suburbia. The film’s producer Barry Silverthorn was on the panel as was Greg Allen, co-founder of Eneract, and Anthony Ketchum, a man who lives off-grid in a house designed by Allen.

In Fuelling the Future Heintzman and Soloman asked hydrogen fuel cell pioneer Geoffrey Ballard to write about his vision of the future. In that essay Ballard insists — as do conservative pundits everywhere — that we need to massively increase our energy production to continue to grow the economy as the population increases. He also says that hydrogen is actually a currency rather than a primary energy source. You need electricity to make the hydrogen, which then can essentially store the electricity. That is the genius and the potential future of hydrogen.

To illustrate just how much a delusion the hydrogen solution is, Soloman pointed out at the panel discussion that they asked Ballard how he would produce the massively expensive hydrogen required. His answer: put nuclear power plants on the Alberta tar sands.

While much of The End of Suburbia, and this panel discussion had negative, even apocalyptic the-end-is-nigh type connotations, there are positive solutions. Heintzman and Soloman argue that there are a lot of very creative, intelligent business people out there right now working on solutions to varied and different energy problems.

Fuelling the Future was the first installment of a larger project called the Ingenuity Project, which will be an annual multimedia series. (The second book is called Feeding the Future: How to Solve the World's Food Crises; look for a review in the March issue of Vitality). Much of Fuelling the Future is full of compelling and real-world solutions to the looming energy crisis. But most of all what is needed is not technological ingenuity, as much as social ingenuity. That is the argument of Thomas Homer-Dixon in the book, and in fact Homer-Dixon’s acclaimed book, The Ingenuity Gap, was the instigator for this project.

Soloman suggested that there are a huge range of solutions out there, but a lack of leadership. He also said that there is nothing wrong with apocalyptic isinuations, as long as it gets people thinking.

“It’s okay to be scared and depressed because that’s how change happens,” he said.

END OF SUBURBIA...REALLY?
So what will happen to suburbia? Kunstler predicts they will become the slums of the future. We may see more than one family living in one dwelling. People left behind may rip up their sod and start planting crops to feed themselves.

But on a more hopeful front what is possible is — if there is enough money, public will, and social ingenuity — that those of the New Urbanist movement will take over. Those corners near the suburban developments currently consisting of gas stations and strip malls could be redeveloped into multi-use centres. Those centres could become more densely built with things like small, three-storey walk-up apartments. The end of cheap oil will spell the end of big box shopping so local people will have to re-learn retail.

Make no mistake about it, there will be great “gnashing of teeth” as Michael Ruppert puts, but local living will be the outcome.

Beyond the possibly massive societal destabilization — and this is not to be underestimated — once the dust settles, so to speak, what we may indeed be left with is exactly what advocates of green energy and local purchasing and organic food production have been preaching all along. With no more cheap oil and gas to transport the “3,000 mile Caesar salad” — as Kunstler puts it — we will be left with the reality of living within our means. That means buying local. That could mean the tiny handful of farmer’s markets that currently exist in downtown Toronto during the harvesting months could multiply exponentially. People everywhere with any scrap piece of land will start throwing in rows of carrots and beans and potatoes and if they have more than they need for their own families, they’ll share with neighbours and sell to locals.

With no more cheap oil and gas to run massive centralized energy plants, more energy co-operatives might spring up as people decide providing power locally will be the only reliable way. Windmills may be erected all over to provide energy to those in the co-operative that funded its construction along the model of the Toronto Renewable Energy Co-operative and their example at Exhibition Place.

With no more cheap oil and gas the factory farm system so reliant on carbon-based fuels may collapse and smaller farmers will once again find their niche. But better yet, the petroleum-based fertilizers and pesticides may become too expensive and conventional farmers will — if reluctantly — look to organics and biodynamics and eco-agricultural to finally have a look at how those folks are doing things. The world may be strong-armed into organics after all.

These are of course just possibilities, but it is worth noting that those currently treated as pariahs to the global economic system, and those simply ignored as anachronistic back-to-the-landers may in fact be the ones ahead of the curve.

Better make friends with that neighbour with the solar panels and the biodigester. You might just need her one day.

• There will be a screening of the End of Suburbia on February 25 Hamilton at 7:30 p.m. at the Sky Dragon Centre, 24 King St. E. on the south side of Gore Park, 4th floor . Admission is $5 and all proceeds to fund the Sky Dragon Community Development Co-operative. Or you can purchase the VHS or the DVD through www.endofsuburbia.com
• www.kunstler.com; James Howard Kunstler’s site.
• www.peakoil.net The Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas


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SEEDLINGS OF HOPE & TOXIC SLUDGE

Seedling: To the Ontario Clean Air Alliance in the if-you-don’t-laugh-you’ll-cry category for making a contest out of guessing the amount of delays and cost overruns that will be associated with the latest Ontario Power Generation restart of Pickering A Unit 1 nuclear reactor. Do we hear $1 billion? $1.5 billion? As high as $2 billion? Will it be this September? October? November? If you can guess correctly you could win 1,800 kWh of green power, 10 energy efficient light bulbs and $100 cash. Check out www.cleanairalliance.org and play.

Sludge: The United States EPA. The George W. Bush Enivonmental Protection Agency has offered more than two years of immunity to the factory farm industry from the Clean Air Act if they voluntarily keep track of their emissions instead. So they don't have to clean up their act just yet...just keep tabs on the mess. Not a tough decision for the massive polluters to make.

Seedling: The Federal government...yes you read that right. Hey, we gripe enough when they screw up so let’s give a little praise when they make the correct — if obvious — decision. Ottawa has finally taken a position on a plan developed by governors of the eight Great Lakes states and the premiers of Ontario and Quebec for managing the Great Lakes waters. In their recent submission to the Council of Great Lakes Governors, the federal government has said the proposed agreements are “too permissive” on the fundamental issue of withdrawals or diversions of Great Lakes waters, and too imprecise on other key issues.