Big Cities, Empty Spaces and the Whole Earth

In 1966, Stuart Brand was hanging around with Ken Kesey--together they helped create the countercultural revolution we pretty much take for granted.

He went on to create the Whole Earth Catalog. It was a fringe document then. Now it is widely regarded as foundational to a rather popular notion called "environmentalism."

He has a couple of other items on his resume: the concept for (not the invention of) the Internet is one. But let's stick to environmentalism.

Brand is not a romantic, live-off-the-land advocate. He claims to be in favor of big cities and empty hinterlands. He claims to be in favor of well-regulated nuclear power.

I have long been against what I call FreeSprawl: the destruction of native habitat for lawns and pools; and in favor a concentrated, mass-transit-oriented population. The bigger (considering our population pressures), the better.

I may take some convincing on nuclear power. But it sounds like a much more viable solution than trying to convince everyone to use paper bags instead of plastic, or to freeze up north in the winter.

Keep it coming, Stuart.

--Renaissance

For Emptiness, for Sustainable Water Tables

Is it news that there's drought in Arizona?

Shockingly, it is.

After decades of untrammeled growth, Arizona (and places like it) may be in for a period of adjustment. Residents of its desert lands are increasingly forced to confront one uncomfortable fact: there's no water in an ocean of sand.

Trace the problem back to a pair of very American factors: the pursuit of cheap land; and the pursuit of hidden subsidies (some say they are the same). Unlike residents in densely populated, heavily taxed corridors, folks who live (often quite comfortably) in the far reaches of the Great American Sprawl rely on several species of freeloading.

The most important in the Southwest, and the least supportable, is that they rely on the nearly free (to them) importation of water. In order to enjoy both constant warm sun and a constant supply of wet stuff to bathe in, historically they have hornswaggled the federal government into building massive, expensive water works projects. The ecological ruin these systems bring is well documented--but if it lets you build a very profitable golf course in Dry Gulch USA, who cares? Right?

Now, perhaps, Nature calls in the bet--for it seems severe drought is really the geological norm in these climes. Consequently it will be even drier there than it is now. As a nation, we continue to fund expensive water so that FreeSprawlers can pretend in their golf carts that they're not on welfare. But we probably can't afford to support their fantasy for very much longer. Will the sprinklers soon run dry on the putting green?

Wake up, FreeSprawlers, and get ready to move someplace more sustainable. In the end, it will have been for the best, at least for those who pay for your subsidized water.

--Renaissance

In Thrall to a New Energy Master One Day

What if the balance of energy production shifted from the land of mullahs to the land of megachurches? That's what proponents of ethanol production are hoping. The New York Times (Week in Review, February 11th 2007) indicates that the Great Plains is waiting for a revival of economic life in what has long been America's Empty Quarter.

For fifty years the population on the prairie has been dropping. Long ago garrisoned against wandering Sioux, then thinly settled by government subsidized stakeholders, the prairie has never been viable economically. Some say it is better left to bison and antelope. Can there be any doubt that returning the American steppe to its natural state would be a boon to our warming globe?

Another plan is afoot. Latched to buzz-concepts such as "energy independence" and "renewable energy source", there's a grass-roots campaign to harvest fuel from corn; and later, fuel from straw. Right now there's enough of it going on to supplant maybe five percent of US oil consumption, but its just getting started.

Does the future look like Kansas and Nebraska, thick with single-species farms, studded with energy-enriched evangelicals, telling the rest of us what the price of heating fuel will be? Have we really thought through this Alternative Energy thing?

I read somewhere there's a 25 million dollar prize on offer for the person who figures it all out. Sure hope some real smart folks are working on it.

--Renaissance