Notes on “The END of SUBURBIA”
By Gary Morton, April.18.2004
A new film, ‘The End of Suburbia’ had its opening in Toronto Friday. Full information on it is at http://www.endofsuburbia.com
Directed by Gregory Greene and produced by Barry Silverthorn this film paints a startling picture of the end of North American society as we know it. The reason for the catastrophe is that global demand for fossil fuels is beginning to outstrip supply. World oil production has peaked and it will soon start dropping as the remaining oil is more difficult to extract. Prices could start to rise unbearably in as little as two or three years.
That means there will be no growth, only continuing recessions, shortages and blackouts. Suburbia will collapse because the auto based world is fast becoming a dinosaur. East to west and north to south, America is one vast city serviced by oil that will no longer be available at low prices.
I would say the movie is a must see because it demonstrates that our way of life is most definitely unsustainable. Where it comes up short is on answers and ways to salvage a society facing collapse.
I have a few answers of my own and they combine with ideas from the movie to paint this picture.
The automobile is definitely dead. Fuel prices by about 2010 will prohibit driving and there are no alternative fuels to save us. Hydrogen and methane take too much energy to produce, so there will be no mass shift to autos powered that way. In the US the media and President Bush are pushing hydrogen as the answer even though most hydrogen is produced from natural gas. Hydrogen is produced by applying electricity to fluid. It can be produced with solar and windmill energy but it will likely be far into the future before large numbers of vehicles run on reasonably priced hydrogen.
The only powerful transport for people and goods is going to be light rail so any investment in highways like the Red Hill Expressway and so on is a waste of money. In the long term highways may simply end up as new rail routes.
In the area of big power, natural gas is running out, so building gas power plants is out of the question. The grid is inefficient and consumes too much fossil fuels. Governments are going to burn coal and go nuclear. Protesting against new nuclear plants will be futile when the public is stirred up over shortages and blackouts. People may as well start working to make nuclear power publicly run and the construction and maintenance of plants completely transparent and open. With coal the plants in the USA will need scrubbers or they will blacken the sky. Coal will also take us further down the road of global warming disaster.
Neither nuclear or coal will be an answer because combined they still don’t produce nearly enough energy and in the nuclear area governments in recession simply won’t have the money to build.
A huge investment has to be made in green technology now, yet governments won’t do that, so it will only be long after the collapse that we’ll see windmills and solar panels popping up everywhere.
Eventually, after millions have died, enough energy may be produced by green and nuclear methods for vibrant local industry and home heating. But not for cars, autos remain a dinosaur and the number one job of Canadian males – trucking – will be gone.
Most deaths will be caused by the collapse of the social system, trade and agriculture and its effects on our aging society. Our food is grown on soil like a sponge by spraying it with oil based fertilizers and pesticides … a system that will not be viable when the oil supply declines. Meat will be gone. It takes too much grain, water and land to produce meat … and all of that land will be needed for local old fashioned agriculture. Lack of food and oil means that huge crops of corn and so on will not be grown for use in making plant based fuels for autos.
After the rioting and mass death of the angry suburbanites we’ll see cities like a New Toronto where food is growing in every park and backyard. Parking lots, golf courses and graveyards will be torn up for use in energy and food production. Garages will mostly exist as housing for the homeless people that move into them. Travel will be through roads turned to bike trails and foot paths. Some electric and hydrogen vehicles will exist, mostly for police, government and military use. Governments will have small planes.
For a long time society will run on volunteers. When the system collapses union members won’t get paid. They’ll be in with suburbanites who think the whole thing is a conspiracy of the oil companies. Volunteering and doing work the government wants done may be the difference between homelessness and having some shelter and meals.
Initially the ill and the disabled will be warehoused but most will perish as there will be no real social programs except one – handouts for everyone.
The global village will exist through the internet, while air travel and celebrity society will be mostly killed off. Globalization will die due to difficulty creating and transporting goods without enough fossil fuel. Economy will be mostly local or continental through rail. An unfortunate symptom is that globalization will perish like an angry dragon. Economies like ours that simply don’t produce many forms of goods any more will face endless shortages and unrest.
The war that has started now with the US securing Iraq’s oil supply will go world-wide as nations compete for oil. There may be a war with China. Nations like Japan will collapse quickly … and Europe is facing a death sentence as global warming is killing off the Gulf Stream, creating a small ice age there. Other parts of the world will fry and medicine, water and food will not be available. Much like it is there now.
By 2020 the US will invade Canada and take over at the federal level with a governor in charge. They will likely leave some form of provincial and municipal governments intact as their goal will be to secure Canada’s energy resources for US use. Given that Canada is an educated nation this could be dangerous. Resistance fighters could use biological weapons against the US and even during the initial world collapse organisms could escape from germ labs. Nuclear war is also very possible in the Middle East as they war over water and other resources.
Generally war is speeding the collapse. In Iraq the Bush administration has robbed the treasury to give taxpayer and oil funded reconstruction projects to corporate friends. They’ve succeeded in creating suffering, looting, robbery and government debt, but still have not secured the Iraq oil supply. Continued unrest will deprive them of control over oil and in the end the US will have to pay high prices for most of its fuel.
In Canada we would have good survival chances if we prepared now, but as the movie notes, it is in everyone’s interest to pretend that our society will keep expanding in the usual unsustainable ways. So many products from solvents to inks and on across the board are made with oil when alternatives could be used. Cars have wasted far too much oil. If we had practiced extreme conservation we would not be in this predicament.
Considering my own personal options, I will be older then and may not survive. I will be part of an aging majority in a collapsed world where the young will blame and hate their elders for squandering resources and killing the planet.
Suicide will become a fair option at that time for many who don’t want to endure the hardship. A bright note is that long after the collapse people who live may actually be healthier. There’ll be no mass produced cigarettes, junk food or car accidents … it may be a safer world, too … but then we could be killed off by radiation and disease.
Oil boom to oil bust
and some people blame the corporations … but it is all of us … and I am one
person who won’t miss the automobile … because I travel everywhere by bike, foot
and rail now.
--------