[Pil-pc-oceania] Deb Guildner: Backyards are disappearing

[RussGrayson]

On 6/9/07 5:10 PM, "Terry Leahy" <Terry.Leahy at newcastle.edu.au> wrote:

> An interesting issue.   What often bother me is the way "greenies" are
> targeted as those who want everyone to live in medium and high density.  From
> an environmentalist point of view, high density living makes sense if everyone
> is commuting in fossil fuelled vehicles.

It also makes sense if we want compact cities rather than sprawl. Public
transport is only economical where there is a fairly high population density
and most of them make use of it.

> However it is a different story if we are trying to grow food locally after
> the oil crunch.  Then it makes sense for cities to be fairly open and porous
> with many spaces that can be colonized by food gardens.

The assumption here is that in the depressed economic circumstances likely
to follow an oil crunch, assuming that no energy substitute is found in
time, we will be able to afford those houses with land.

> In that environment, most jobs requiring commuting are only 20 hours a week

What jobs would these be? For those that have jobs, anyway. If oil depletion
follows a nonlinear progress then we are likely to be confronted with a
global economic depression with all that means for loss of jobs,
livelihoods, homes and so on.

> and you get to your job in a more central location by walking or riding a
> bicycle to the train station where you hop on a solar, wind or biodiesel
> powered train.  

Doubt it Terry. PV panels won't do much to move a 500 tonne suburban train.
Have to be biofuel of some type.

> Within suburbs, load bearing transport is on donkey carts

I guess that solves the fertiliser problem for all those urban food gardens,
but where does the fuel for the donkeys come from? Doubt if there's enough
space in the cities to grow straw or hay or whatever it is that they eat, so
will there be competition for agricultural land with urban fringe market
gardens that feed the city? Will it become a question of feeding people or
docile quadrapeds?

> and moving around is on foot, bicycles or rickshaws.  I get particularly
> annoyed by Michael Duffy (or Duffer) on this subject when he constantly
> accuses Greenies of destroying the Ozzie backyard.

Well, Dufffy is a soft spoken neoliberal. So of course he blames greenies
and, generally, anyone else who does not follow his pet economic philosophy.
remember that these are ideologically-driven people, not people driven by
common sense, and thus are not very good at following normal processes of
logic and reasoning.

...Russ