Put This in Your Pipe and Smoke It

How to cut your gasoline costs

2011-05-14T17:57:00.000-07:00

As gas prices shoot through the stratosphere in a highly predictable pattern of price increases, followed by demand destruction, followed by price increases, the number of ‘how to save on gas’ articles online and in the newspapers has gone almost as high as the price at the pumps.

I would be remiss in my duties as a blogger, if I did not offer my three, fool-proof, iron-clad-guaranteed ways to reduce your weekly gasoline bill:

1. Ride your bike more.
2. Walk more.
3. Take public transit more.

Which leads me to a fabulous series of posts by John Michael Greer, who for the last four weeks has been systematically dismantling the credibility of the environmental/peak oil movement, and laying the blame for the mess we are in squarely at the feet of those who deserve it the most: Us.

In the end, he insists, there is simply going to be no form of energy that will be cheap, easy, and accessible enough to allow us as a society to go on consuming what we do now.

The only choice is to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, and all that they provide. He calls it ‘making do with L.E.S.S.’ – Less Energy, Stuff, and Stimulation.

James Howard Kunstler likes to say that “suburbia is an arrangement without a future.” If Greer is anywhere close to hitting the mark (and his posts – as are those of most writers in the Peak Oil blogosphere – are getting increasingly dark recently) it’s not just suburbia that’s unsustainable, but much of the way of life we take for granted.

So what’s a city to do?

How do we go about using L.E.S.S. as a city, as communities, and at the basic level of hardiness, as households.

Unfortunately, for many of us, we won’t have a choice. The price of gas is getting dangerously close to triggering another round of layoffs and downsizing, assuming you’ve found a job after the last round. My bellweather – the Phones, PDAs, Ipods section on Kijiji is displaying its telltale sign of economic hardship: A steep rise in the number of people pleading with strangers to take over the ball-and-chain cell phone plans they signed up for when times were better.

And for those of us who are still gainfully employed for the time being?

Well, regular readers will know that I just moved about 8 blocks from Strathcona to Kirkendall. In the process, we lost about 2/3s of the built in storage that we very much took for granted in our old house.

Our first stop? Ikea of course, which set off a small binge of consumption, where for me the simplest solution to every problem was to go out and buy what I needed to fix it.

Fortunately, my wife brought me up short last weekend, when she proposed a very simple workaround for a problem that I had thought was only fixable at Canadian Tire. I had been so caught up in the ease, the speed, and frankly the dopamine hit of the constant trips to the store, that I had lost sight of the much better ways of handling these very manageable situations.

Since then, we have resumed our pledge to only buy large items second hand or locally made, and have set about figuring out workarounds to the numerous challenges presented by moving in to a new home with a much different configuration than you are used to.

I guess my point is, that even for those of us who are committed to consuming less, and making do with less, and growing our own food, and taking public transit and so on; it is embarrassingly easy to get caught up in the consumer solution.

To paraphrase one of my favourite sayings, if your only tool is a debit card, eventually every problem starts to look like a big-box store.

In the end, the conscious choices we make every day make a huge difference in reducing our dependence on a steady supply of oil, food, injection molded plastic and particle board from far away.

But it’s the unconscious choices we make – the spending without thinking – that are going to be the things stand the most risk of sinking us in the end. And it’s the dependence on this unconscious spending-as-solution that will cause us the most psychological grief should our main identity in society – that of consumer – suddenly become lost to us as a lifestyle option.

To bring it all back to my original point, the best way to manage the increasing cost of gas, in an age when the demand for gas is clearly beginning to outstrip the supply, is to use less of it. Use less of it to drive, less of it to transport your food to where you buy it from, use less of it to transport your iPad from China, and less of it to manufacture the plastic and particle board solutions that we so very easily take for granted.

Use less of it by participating less in the global throw-away economy, and more in the locally sourced, or re-use economy, keeping more of the money here in town, spread out among people and businesses you may well need to rely on heavily before too long.

If we voluntarily simplify our lives now, then should the price of gas cause a major economic disruption in the near future (I’m thinking by Thanksgiving at the latest), the combination of reducing our ‘needs’ and strengthening the local economy will mean that the impact to our households, communities, and city will be far easier to bear.

The Tipping Point

2011-03-22T17:46:00.001-07:00

You can tell a lot about a person by the filters they see the world through. It's kind of a variation on 'when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail.'

I was talking to a friend about some of the challenges he was facing in getting his message listened to, and my thoughts turned, as they do, to sales and Marketing. This friend (Michael) and I first met when he was a student in my Sales Training class, so it's a hat I tend to put on when I'm around him, usually subconciously.

The conclusion I drew, from our conversation, was that the reason his message, and indeed the whole message of the peak oil/conservation set, was failing to resonate; was because it had failed to articulate a benefit to the individual that was as compelling, and as comfortable as that of the consumption machine.

Then I started to get really depressed. Because really, how would any kind of message about reducing, living within our means, and consuming less gain any kind of traction without appealing to one's sense of the greater good? A sense fewer and fewer people seem to have.

Then the conversation at home turned to a blog post by Rebecca Solnit over at Tom Dispatch, where she writes about the 'tipping point' of things like the Arab revolutions, or even the storming of the Bastille.

Her hypothesis is that tipping points for sweeping societal change, are a) the result of a long period of things steadily getting worse for most people, and b) stubbornly impossible to predict.

In Hamilton, it has been argued well (by a number of people for a long time) that for the average Hamiltonian family, things have been on the decline for a long, long time.

Real wages have been steadily dropping, income security has all but vanished, and the middle class has been carved up, with a tiny group joining the top 1%, and the much larger majority sinking closer to the margins. Things are not looking good.

Indeed, one could argue, that with the flight of good jobs overseas, the squeezing of workers by foreign ownership, and a ridiculous balancing upside-down pyramid of a civic tax base, that Hamilton was ripe for a catalyst.

Do I mean to suggest that a wholesale shift to a more sustainable lifestyle - to shopping locally, to growing your own veggies, and to supporting one another in community - could happen here, more completely and suddenly than it has elsewhere to date?

Why not? All of the triggers are there: A community with grave structural problems, that prides itself on a long tradition of collective action and support. An increasingly economically disenfranchised group, living in strongly connected neighborhoods. A palpable sense that things are going to get worse before they get better, and a long tradition of (at least from a union point of view) 'taking matters into our own hands.'

There has been quite a bit of commentary since I started writing for Raise the Hammer just over a year ago, about how things will never improve in Hamilton because people are apathetic and self absorbed. I challenge that notion.

Were the people of Hamilton apathetic when they blockaded Stelco in 1946?

Were they self absorbed, when reeling from the horrors of a cholera outbreak, the dreamed of one of the greatest civil engineering projects in Canada of the day?

Were they lacking in vision, when they created the electric city, and transformed the nature of manufacturing in Canada?

I would argue, that what they had is a catalyst. What we need, is a catalyst. But as Solnit points out - these can usually only be seen in hindsight.

The key, then, for those of us working towards change is to continue beating the drum. To continue to put forward ideas, and to see those ideas challenged, and to rise to those challenges. To continue to grow our veggies, and buy the ones we don't grow at the farmer's market, and to support local shops, and to get to know our neighbors and strengthen our communities.

And to wait. To wait patiently for the catalyst. The one that stubbornly refuses to be predicted with any kind of accuracy.

100 Mile Shopping

2011-03-14T16:54:00.000-07:00

It has been suggested in this blog, on more than a few occasions, that the key to Hamilton’s prosperity in the long term, is the revitalization of local ‘production’, whether that be food, textiles, hard goods, or what have you.

Originally, I was prepared to vent at length at Hamilton Economic Development and their lack of obvious support for local manufacturers who were either starting up, or looking to make the leap from the garage to a larger facility.

This was certainly Robert Land’s experience, and while he was in Guelph, the “this will never fly” initial assessment of his business was typical of the reaction many small producers face, in many jurisdictions.

The reason? The fact that Canadian made goods are often priced out of the range of what most Canadian consumers are willing to pay.

I may have mentioned before my experience working in a men’s clothing shop in Calgary, where customers would regularly rail against the lack of Canadian made goods, until they were ushered to the back of the store where the Cline Behar shirts were waiting. Made in Guelph, they were priced 2 – 3 times that of comparable looking shirts from overseas. The zealous customers would then inevitably mutter excuses, and slink back to the discount table at the front.

For many Canadians, purchasing only locally-made, Canadian-sourced goods would be not only prohibitively expensive; but unless one plans to wear only hemp clothing, pretty much impossible. Canada produces next to nothing in the way of wool, and even less cotton. The bottom line is that if you’re going to dress for the winter we've just experienced, you’re going to be buying something for which at least the supply chain started somewhere far, far away.

That’s why the recent article in The Tyee struck such a chord. It mentions the efforts of the B.C. Public Sector Union who are proposing that everyone purchase 10% of what they buy from either local stores, or ensure that those goods are made or sourced in Canada.

Many sustainability advocates encourage a wholesale shift to buying locally sourced/manufactured/sold goods, but this can be tricky. Close examination of my kids’ can of Roberstons’s Apple Juice shows that it is ‘processed’ in Canada – but common knowledge is that most apples sourced for this kind of thing are brought in from China and the far East. There, low labour costs result in much better margins, even after the cost of shipping the apples 1000’s of kms across the ocean. Emails to their Public Communications department as to the origin of their apples have so far resulted in a chorus of crickets, however my only other option at this point is fresh pressed cider from the Farmer’s market. I’m still working with the taste buds of a picky 6 year old on that one…

Looking at other commonly used items around my house, it becomes clear that a switch to buying all, or even a majority of items that were locally made or sourced, would result in a dramatic shift in how I live, from ‘low-impact’ to full blown asceticism. It’s a leap that should not be entered into lightly, especially when the only tangible personal pay-off for the sidelong glances on the playground and whispered remarks at the office is likely to be a not-very-lucrative book contract.

Granted, the ‘big-picture’ pay-offs are enormous, but time and time again, history has proven that humans are unwilling to experience short-term personal pain, in return for long-term societal gain. While such a sacrifice may be palatable to the hard-core, the lack of tangible personal benefit combined with probable ostracization is a serious barrier to entry for the majority of the population who desperately need to become engaged on this issue. Any solution that doesn’t address this problem head-on is simply doomed to fail.

The nice thing about the 10% rule is that it’s easy to calculate (This is my 10th trip to the hardware store in three weekends – don’t ask – so I’m going to go to Arruda’s instead of Home Depot), and it’s not going to drive most people into an ascetic lifestyle of denial of everyday comforts. That and the benefits to the local economy could be substantial, with up to 20% more of every dollar spent at a local store/on a local product staying right here in Hamilton.

Now there are some who would enthusiastically argue that an ascetic denial of everyday comforts is the only chance we have of fending off ‘something very bad’, but at this point it pays to remember both messages contained in Dr. Seuss’s classic book “The Lorax.”

The first, and most obvious message is that reckless depletion of natural resources leads to disaster. The other, and probably unintended message, is that shrill denouncement of the situation leads to the message being largely ignored until it’s too late.

Perhaps a “10% Local Shopping Diet” might be just the thing to reinvigorate local production in Hamilton, and help set us firmly on the road...or the rails/bike lane... to making the best of things; without the kinds of potential lifestyle shocks that usually lead otherwise well-intentioned people to sit on their hands in frustration.

The Cobbler's Children

2011-02-22T18:17:00.000-08:00

We need to start re-skilling.

Now.

Not 5 years from now, once the price of gas has doubled, or a UK Bond Default has left the economy reeling, and the urge to repair vs. replace, and quality over quantity finally takes hold in North American markets.

Now.

For many years, I have had a bit of a shoe fetish. Not an ‘Imelda Marcos' kind of acquisition fetish, but a fascination with footwear; how it was designed, how it was made, and how it was repaired. It probably came from the 5 years or so after University where the only job I could seem to find was in shoe sales, but the curiosity has stayed with me for some time.

So for the first time ever, I finally had the convergence of time and resources needed to give shoemaking a try first-hand.

The teacher in question was none other than Robert Land. An institution if you’re at all into the historical re-enactment scene, he’s been making civil war/battle of 1812 reproduction shoes in his workshop near Guelph for years. His shipping terms are no-nonsense, but his commitment to quality is well known.

I made it to the workshop for just after 9:00 on a Saturday morning, and without even pausing for me to take my jacket off, Robert launched into a brief description of how we would be spending the day, and we were off to his shed looking for lasts (the moulds shoes are based on).

Over the course of the next 8 hours I stopped three times: Twice to pee, and once to eat a muffin. The rest of the time I was moving non-stop; cutting leather, sewing the uppers, gluing the uppers to the midsole, nailing, stretching, grinding and polishing.

In that time, I made one pair.

To be fair, Robert tells me that once he gets going, he and his helper can complete 15 pairs a day each – pretty good turnout for a small operation.

Here’s the catch: Robert is not an old fashioned ‘Pinocchio’ cobbler bent over his workbench with nothing but a sharp knife and pair of needles. No, he has what would probably be $250,000 worth of industrial equipment at his disposal. That is to say if he were to buy it new, and not at close out auctions as shoemaker after shoemaker in Ontario systematically fell under the weight of cheap overseas imports flooding the market.

With all of that equipment, and an unlimited supply of propane and electricity, Robert's two person shop can turn out 30 pairs a day. One piece of equipment in his workshop was rated for 400 pairs a day, but was so fiddly that neither of us could imagine such a high rate of production while using it.

Now imagine what it would be like if that equipment wasn’t there, or if it were prohibitively expensive to run, or if the parts simply weren’t available?

After a day of steep learning curves, the finished product you can see for yourself above, and I like to think I took to it fairly well.

Not bad handiwork considering it was the first time I had used a sewing machine, much less a double needled machine sewing through leather. Also, to be perfectly honest, he completed several of the most difficult tasks, including grinding the heel, and stitching on the sole using a McKay Stitcher - a large sewing machine that looked like something my Junior High Shop Teacher would have called 'the widow maker.'

I asked him though, based on what he had seen me do, if he thought it would be possible for me to sew a pair of shoes entirely by hand. No machinery.

His reply was ‘no’, he didn’t think so, because I (or at least most people) would give up in frustration.

“It’s possible, in theory, to make a pair of shoes with no tools other than a knife and some leather needles.” Robert explained. “The question is, would it look anything like what we currently think of as a ‘shoe’?”

So now, of course, my next challenge is to sew a pair entirely by hand. I’m going to start with a nice easy pair of moccasin style shoes (like a Topsider style), and work my way up from there.

In the meantime, I will repeat my call for an increased return in Hamilton to learning those skills we will need in the near future. Not in a hobbyist’s context, although that is an important first step, but an industrial one.

If some enterprising handyperson who had a good knowledge of bicycles were to combine Kenneth Moyle’s article about the pleasures of commuting on a Dutch style Bicycle, with Undustrial’s ideas about making those bikes right here in Hamilton, some pretty exciting things might just happen.

I nominate Sean.

Unfortunately, if Robert's experience is one to judge by, governments and banks won't exactly be beating down the doors to help these new manufacturers get underway. That is a serious oversight that needs to be remedied while capital is still (relatively) abundant. Securing local sources of financing and expertise will be crucial to helping Hamilton find it's feet quickly should the ground underneath the global economy start to tremble.

As for you, is there an ‘old fashioned’ skill you have always been curious about? Have you jumped on the knitting bandwagon yet, or maybe even something more esoteric like spinning your own yarn, or marquetry, or herbal remedies? Perhaps the time to start learning is now, because if shoe-making is any indication, the ramp-up time for these skills may be uncomfortably long, and our leisure to learn them surprisingly short.

Hardy to Zone 6

2011-02-15T19:22:00.000-08:00

I have been reading Eliot Coleman’s fantastic Four Season Harvest recently, and his wonderful instructions about how to harvest fresh veggies all year ‘round. It has me thinking quite a bit about the hardiness of various plants – especially with Coleman’s assertion that with simple protection from the wind and bitterest cold, we can grow many vegetables that are popular in the south of France.

Hardiness is an interesting term in the agricultural world. It speaks not to whether or not a plant will survive in a given climate, but whether or not it will thrive. That’s the discussion I feel we need to be having in Hamilton right now: With all of the changes that are certain to come, how will we escape the bunker mentality that is so prevalent in peak oil/climate change thought, and turn our attention to how we can thrive, and become a desirable and attractive community in the face of the ‘trifecta?’

The first step is, perhaps, to list our assets. It is widely acknowledged that as fossil fuels increase in price, and decrease in availability, certain forms of transport will quickly trump the current method of loading everything worth moving into Transport trucks. When it comes to rail and water transportation, Hamilton is almost uniquely suited in Canada in terms of not only access to the largest market in Canada, but relatively easy access to the largest markets in the U.S.

And make no mistake, even if stock indexes take a serious tumble, and the price of gas shoots up, and all manor of calamaties are made manifest, we will still be trading. We will still be producing goods and services of real value, in fact if Jeff Rubin is at all correct, we may be producing more of them. People have been trading between communities in some form or another for the better part of 10,000 years. No matter how bad you think things will get, it is foolish to think that every community will suddenly have to become totally self-sufficient.

So then what can we produce for these markets to which we will have almost uniquely easy access?

The first, and most obvious, is food. We live in the heart of one of the greatest agricultural areas in North America, and yet many of the ‘local’ food manufacturers – Kraft, Smuckers, etc, source virtually all of their raw materials from Mexico or California. Don’t even get me started on the ripping up of Peach Orchards after the biggest cannery in Niagara closed.

Local food, in an era of an unreliable power grid, and high transport prices, may not necessarily mean local fresh produce, and we need to start thinking about how we can preserve, can, and otherwise process all of our local produce for consumption over our long, cold winters, and those of our nearest neighbors. Some producers nearby are doing a great job of this, others are hamstrung by contracts with local grocery stores that demand prices lower than what Canadian labour laws will permit.

Even Mayor Bratina recognizes that food processing is a large, and largely neglected part of Hamilton's economy, and yet the list of tangible wins for helping home grown producers to develop those opportunities is rather short.

City Hall needs to be working closely with local farmers and growers to help them find local processors for their products, to get them into Hamiltonian’s cupboards, and not just their crispers.

Next, Hamilton has an enormous amount of built infrastructure that we need to keep in good repair. The steady decline of our electrical infrastructure, and the ongoing problems with waste water and sewage in the East End are glaring examples of what happens when we don’t maintain what we have. It is always important to maintain the infrastructure that supplies the services on which your citizens depend. But to neglect their repair at a time when the cost of repairs could double or triple in the next 10-15 years is worse than irresponsible, it’s reckless.

Finally, Hamilton’s leaders need to stop spending so much of their time and energy on attracting big employers and large factories to our city, who’s loyalty expires minutes after the tax breaks are amortized. The focus of our economic development team needs to be on supporting local companies that produce things people really want and need – and in the process re-skilling our community to be prepared for when those things are no longer available for $1.99 from Thailand.

Retail businesses and consulting firms are all fine and good, but there needs to be a renewed focus on small businesses that are producing tangible goods, and in the process relearning skills that will be vital in the near future.

This focus on the big 'front page' hit of employment opportunities is probably the first thing that needs to change.

I guess it’s the comment stream in my last post on Raise the Hammer that set this whole little rant in motion. The bunker mentality for dealing with the future – how will we survive – isn’t a very big tent, and not many people want to huddle under it. And I know that many people think that WTSHTF everybody will come running to them for help, but Millenarians have an atrocious track record of accuracy. While things will certainly be difficult, the comparison of what is to come with a Zombie invasion is not helpful at best, and alienating at worst.

So instead of focusing our efforts on how to hunker down and just ‘survive’ the challenges we know are ahead, can we please have a conversation about how we can prosper; how we can thrive; how we can be the best place to live, work, and raise a child? Even in the face of triple digit oil?

Nature fights back.

2011-02-02T17:57:00.000-08:00

With all of the talk in Hamilton recently of Snowmageddon, SNOMG, or Snowzilla, my thoughts were naturally turning to disaster planning and personal resilience... or as I like to think of it, 'hardiness'.

Taking a step back from the relatively minor effects of a snowstorm in winter in Canada, one needs only to look at the latest drubbing an increasingly enraged Gaia has been laying on the people of Queensland to see the enormous disruption that can be caused by a planet steadily warming towards the tipping point.

So what kind of preparations have been made here at home? Well, in Hamilton, there has been a fairly standard urban disaster plan on the books in it's most recent form since 2006. It outlines how various civic agencies will work together to coordinate the response to the 10 most likely disaster situations in Hamilton:

1. Chemical Spill – Fixed Site
2. Chemical Spill – En Route
3. Water (health) Emergencies
4. Health Emergencies
5. Terrorism
6. Civil Disorder
7. Violent Wind Event
8. Explosion / Fire
9. Transportation Accidents
10. Special Events

Now those of us who spend our precious free time reading about how the biggest challenges of our age will come from either sovereign debt default, global warming, or energy shortages may be somewhat surprised to see that two of the most serious threats as seen by City Hall are in fact industrial accidents. And these are no small threat. Indeed it was just such an incident that secured a young Hazel McCallion's place in history, and job prospects for years to come.

And what are we to think of this at the most basic unit of hardiness, the household? Well, the federal gov't has some great resouces on their site dedicated to the subject. It's a great place to start.

I think, though, that the most vital preparation a household could do would not be gathering flashlights, candles, and canned goods, but instead to start having conversations about 'what would we do if?' Sensible conversations around the dinner table, away from the hyperbolic warnings of Snowpocalypse on the TV are probably the best place to start.

Tune out all the yelling in the background, and hash out what you would do as a family/household if there were a chemical spill from a derailment while you were scattered at home, school, and work. Where would you meet? What numbers would you call? How would you communicate if an ice storm disabled the cell towers? What would you bring if you had to leave quickly due to an explosion, or high wind event?

Really the best preparation you can make is psychological, because if you have at least some sense of what you're going to do when disaster strikes, it's much easier to recall your plan, than to make one up on the spot.

The next step, is to start the conversation with your neighbors. Not in an 'are you ready for the rapture?" kind of way, but just so it's understood that you'll be looking out for each other.

For a few months over the summer, my retired next door neighbor was having me over two or three times a week to fix his TV reception, or his cordless phones, or his wifi. He and his wife lead a very frugal life, and part of me was concerned about what would happen to them in the event of a major disruption.

Then one day he took me downstairs to show me something in the basement, and on a shelf down there he had what must have been 3 months worth of canned goods. It occurred to me that he would probably have been a child during WWII, on the wrong side of Hitler's 'Bombs not Bread' campaign. He has been through hardships worse than I hope I will ever have to endure, and in the end it will probably be me coming to him for help if the lights go out for more than a couple of days.

So yes, have your canned goods, and your candles, and your source of heat, but more importantly, have the conversation, while it's easy to have it in a calm, rational way. "What would we do if?" And if you're having the conversation in the run-up to a fairly minor 15cm snowstorm, make sure you have it with the TV off.

Whither the Jitney

2011-01-13T19:18:00.000-08:00

There has been a bit of discussion recently about the potential cost of a $130 million LRT line, with several city councillors and armchair urban planners seeming to dismiss the idea entirely out of hand.

While the need for LRT goes far beyond just the need for more frequent, accessible, desirable transit along the King St corridor, it does address one fairly important fact about public transit in Hamilton. Namely that the 30 -60 minute headways on some routes are nothing short of an active discouragement to using the system to go about your daily life. While the frequency of buses on King street is much greater than that, in theory the LRT would free up drivers and vehicles to better serve other routes, thus triggering a joyful cascade of peace, understanding, and more reliable service.

Instead we are left with a system that serves some riders’ needs fairly well during rush hour, but for most of the rest of the day, leaves most of the city high and dry.

The obvious solution is more public money, but I think Australia, Nova Scotia and New York City this winter are all great examples of how as climate change continues to wreak havoc on local weather systems, there’s going to be less and less money to go around. To say nothing of what would happen to public levels of investment should Spain, the U.K. or (God help us) the U.S. suddenly default on a bond payment.

So even if it’s not the obvious solution, the practical solution may just be private transit.

Now, before you dismiss the idea out of hand, consider the humble Guagua, or Dollar Van. A major source of transportation in New York and New Jersey for neighborhoods that are grossly underserved by public transit, these are state regulated, but privately run.

Running simple 15 or 29 passenger Ford Econoline Vans, they ply routes up and down the boroughs of New York looking for people trying to get from point a to point b quickly. They haven't replaced the municipal buses, but in local areas they are the de facto transit system, and are famous for being more frequent, more convenient, and less expensive than city-run vehicles.

The buses are also famous for loud music, erratic drivers, and the occasional fight between drivers looking for fares. The model, though, deserves some investigation. Not by the HSR, but by any enterprising businessperson who owns either an old Econoline van or small schoolbus, and would like to make a tidy little business for themselves.

That would never fly in Hamilton, I hear you say. It wouldn’t be allowed. Why not? It would require only an application to the Taxi Commission to get the license. According to my reading, however, after the initial license was acquired none of the other taxi regulations would apply,because of the way the by-law is worded.

Now clearly you’re going to want a city staffer who is intimately familiar with the by-law to walk you through it, but it appears at first blush that Dollar Vans would fall most of the way through a loophole.

Such a route could indeed be profitable, either following the 1 King or B-Line around and scooping up whoever was left waiting once the bus was full, or plying a mountain route on the opposite half hour from when an HSR bus ran.

The only other question would be: How much damage would an effective, frequent, convenient Dollar Van service do to the HSR?

That’s a question that will certainly be the subject of some public debate, should a Dollar Van ever appear plying the streets of Hamilton looking for fares. By that point, though, it will be mostly too late. The genie will be out of the bottle, and the city will be fighting a rearguard action against the spread of people-centric privately-run, public transportation.

Perhaps it's time to have an open, creative discussion on how we provide and fund public transit in Hamilton, before some quick thinking entrepreneur makes the decision for us.

30 Minutes a Day.

2010-12-05T19:26:00.001-08:00

A few weeks ago, I posted an article about resilience, and how the most important skill to learn to prepare for any coming challenges was not specific skills, but the skill of learning. More to the point, I suggested that people who know how they learn, will be uniquely suited to the unpredictability of the long descent. Michelle Martin then posted a reply on Raise the Hammer which I thought was right on the money, but thought I might spin out these ideas a little further.

I have been thinking since then of providing a list of suggested skills that it might be usefull to try out, in your quest to learn how to learn. In the end though, I kept coming back to my favorite scene from the movie City Slickers. In many ways, the key to success in life, and indeed in the economic world many of us expect is 'one thing', but that one thing is something you need to figure out yourself. Besides, any skills I were to suggest now, may end up being totally useless in the face of whatever unpredictable future we find ourselves in. John Micheal Greer wrote on this at length recently, and it's worth a read.

By way of suggestion, here's a starting point: Spend 30 minutes a day doing manual labour.

Notice I didn't say physical activity, the two are not neccessarily related.

For the first 3,000 years or so of Human civilization, if you had walked up to an average person on the street and told them you had created a place they could go every week to just exercise, and work up a really good sweat by performing repetitive physical activities that had no practical purpose other than exercise itself, they would have done one of three things: Laughed at you, had you committed, or press-ganged you.

For our not too distant ancestors, the thought of needing to create spaces - and even machines - that would enable people to do exercise just for excercise's sake would have been hilarious. Greek Olympiads aside (which were mainly the projects of the idle rich) they were too busy doing manual labour for a purpose. They were plowing fields, or tending orchards, or canning and preserving food, or mending clothes or tack, or any of a million and one other jobs that needed doing to keep a household running.

Nowadays, most of us work in jobs that are so totally divorced from the mind-body connection that we evolved into that we need to do an hour on the stairmaster just to 'clear our heads'.

Humans are an intensely physical species. There is so much evidence that exercise clears our thinking and keeps us mentally sharp that it almost goes without saying now. Our minds and our bodies are inexorably linked, despite what 300 years of enlightenment thinking has tried to tell us.

That's why Gandhi insisted that every person should spend 1/2 an hour a day doing manual labour. His work at the spinning wheel was as much about clearing his thoughts as it was about protest. In the end though, he didn't just end up with clarity of thought, he ended up with a whole lot of Khadi that he could put to a very practical use.

So with the Mahatma's words ringing in our ears, allow me to propose the following.
Let it be resolved that your new year's resolution be to spend 1/2 an hour a day doing manual labour that does not involve basic housework or cooking (i.e. the things you would have to do every day anyway.)

If you doubt how much you can get done in 1/2 an hour a day, I'll point you to my freezer downstairs which is full of frozen veggies. These were the excess from our garden and CSA that were blanched most evenings in August in only a little more time than that. Or to the rows of canned peaches and jam in our pantry. Or to the homemade leather slippers I'm halfway through or the gallon jugs of homebrewed apple cider. If you have never consistently devoted 1/2 an hour a day to 'doing things with a tangible outcome' you will be pleasantly surprised by your output.

I would also be the first to admit that I have never been able to do this consistently, but in the fits and starts of trying to fit in a half an hour a day of 'labour', it has produced substantial results, and perhaps more importantly, clarity.

The main thing you might accomplish, should make this choice, will be starting down the road to a D.I.Y. lifestyle. To becoming comfortable with just 'giving it a go.' To becoming ok with making mistakes, with screwing things up and not beating yourself up over it. To figuring out the way(s) you are best able to learn.

I have a host of hobbies that I am either just learning, or keen to explore, as I'm sure do you. The only question is, what's holding you back? Time? Energy? Money? Or fear of screwing it up, and not being 'successful' at it on your first try?

Just the act of beginning can be very liberating - the only 'rule' is that it has to be something you don't already do, and it has to result in a tangible outcome.

By the time you've been doing this for a couple of months, you'll be well on the way to figuring out that most important skill for the long descent: The ability to figure out how to do the million and one other jobs that need doing to keep a household running when the option of just buying a cheap foreign made replacement is no longer tenable.

Good luck.

Extremism and the Long Emergency

2010-12-04T04:09:00.000-08:00

My wife was in the Post Office the other day, and was talking to her friend behind the counter who mentioned that her three children, who had all either just finished high school or university, had been unable to find work. "What do you think the unemployment rate is for young people?" my wife asked when she got home.

Well, on Friday, Stats Can came up with the answer, and frankly, it's not pretty.

It seems that 13.6% of people aged 15-24 are currently 'reporting' being unemployed. That rate dropped by 1.4 points from the previous month because of how many young people gave up looking for work.

This is made worse by the fact that this is only the reported rate. The 'reported' unemployment rate in the U.S. is 9% or so - depending on the month, but the actual rate, including discouraged workers is widely agreed to be closer to 17. So if the reported rate of youth unemployment in Canada is 13% give or take - what's the actual rate? 23%? 25%? It's a situation some observers are calling a 'powderkeg.'

Powderkeg may sound extreme, but there are three things young people have traditionally done when they found themselves without any short or medium-term hope for employment: They get angry, they get active, and they look for quick solutions.

Unfortunately, extremism offers (or claims to) all three.

Those of us who are aware of the impending downward stepping of the industrial economy due to either the lack of affordable fossil fuels, damaging temperature increases, or some kind of sovereign debt default causing havoc on the bond market should be very, very nervous about this.

In the 1980's, rampant economic decline and some of Thatcher's most misguided policies gave rise to a violent and angry skinhead culture in the UK. Most recently described in the brilliant movie (and soon to be TV show) This Is England, it is a tale of young people cut out from the labour force, cut out from having anything useful and productive to do with their lives, and turning to the simplistic solutions of skinhead fascism.

This is a tale we ignore at our peril.

Evidence of the shift towards extremism is already underway in economies that have been hit particularly hard by the great recession. From the Oath Keepers in the U.S., to the Issuikai in Japan, people are turning to over-simplified answers that fuel their latent rage - answers usually involving racism and exclusion.

The recent riots in France, and the near shutdown of the country due to the proposed raising of the retirement rate by two years were also inflamed mainly by youth and University students? Why should they care? You may ask. They're 40 years away from retiring? The problem is not how far they are from retiring, but rather the fact that the longer their elder peers take to retire, the longer it takes to free up those jobs.

Apart from the usual satire about the situation, what is to be done?

Once again, I have more questions than answers on this, and none of the easy solutions (such as massive government spending programs) make much sense. It certainly bears thinking about if we want to have any hope of a peaceful stepping down of the carbon-intensive economy towards one that is more sustainable, and indeed more fair.

The High Cost of Power, and the Folly of Subsidies

2010-12-02T19:28:00.000-08:00

Around the same time that this story came out about electricity prices rising by 50% between now and 2030, a very thoughtful Op-Ed piece was written for the Globe that described why the Provincial Government’s 10% electricity rebate/vote grab was a bad idea.

Simply put, the argument is that if you want to help people who can’t afford electricity, there’s a better solution than letting everybody pay less: Simply give some more money to people who genuinely can’t afford that power.

Gordon’s argument, and I am inclined to agree at this point, is that by offering everybody an equal rebate on power, we negate any conservation that may have been encouraged by high prices.

Now I have written before about the sorry state of disrepair our electricity infrastructure has fallen into, and there are several issues on the horizon that make it all the more important that we repair that infrastructure now.

The first is the looming shortage of fossil fuels that will make repairing/replacing/upgrading built infrastructure considerably more expensive in the near to medium term.

The second, and it’s one I haven’t often heard addressed, is that one of the biggest threats to an electrical system is climate change. Climate change, it has been broadly acknowledged, is responsible for the increase in two things: Average annual temperatures, and the incidence of extreme weather events.

Both of these things play havoc with a power grid.

Three summers ago, I opined that with a record-breaking hot summer being predicted, we would see rolling brown/black-outs by August of that year. In my view, the province was going to have to start rationing power to continue to have energy to provide to job- producing industries, and reducing it’s availability to people who had their AC cranked down to 68F. Fortunately, I was mistaken.

Every year since then, I’ve made the same prediction, and last year, it came true. Kind of. Except instead of Ontario Power Generation rationing the power, the grid just started to sporadically overload and fail. There were several high-profile blackouts to large areas of Toronto that were caused by failing infrastructure and the resulting fires. Smaller, similar problems occurred around the province.

Now, combine that with the prediction that this could be one of the snowiest winters in recent memory, and our dilapidated grid could be in for another rough ride. Nothing stress-tests built infrastructure quite like an Ice Storm, or good ol’ 4’ snow drifts. Feel free to ask anyone in Victoria how badly a good snowstorm can impact built infrastructure.

Unfortunately where we are situated geographically sets us up for the double whammy of extremely hot, humid, power-draining summers, and potentially burying snowfalls during the winter. All as a result (either direct or not) of our insistence on driving one-to-a-car to our jobs in downtown Toronto every day for the last 30-40 years.

All this is to say that as painful as it is, it is crucial to make these investments to upgrade/repair our grid now, before the province either doesn’t have the money, or doesn’t have the resources (e.g. relatively inexpensive fossil fuels).

Offering an across-the-board rebate, however, only serves to undo the important work being done to upgrade the grid, by artificially lowering the price of power, and further incenting people to waste electricity. It has been noted by others that really the only way to change individual behaviour is to provide financial disincentives, and the power situation is no different.

On the other hand, investing in a stable grid doesn’t help the thousands of people who may be shut out of the energy market due altogether due to the accompanying rising costs (read: be left freezing in the dark).

Which is why I think that Gordon’s idea of a direct subsidy for energy to low income households is one that demands serious consideration.

Resilience starts in your head

2010-11-17T17:29:00.000-08:00

"Those inclined to worry, have the greatest selection in History" - Mark Twain

We live in uncertain times. The looming sovereign debt crisis (mainly in the UK and the US). The prospect of more common, more severe weather incidents due to climate change. The looming threat of energy scarcity due to a contraction in oil supplies, and an antiquated, poorly maintained energy grid. In short, Mark Twain hadn't seen anything yet.

John Michael Greer in a much older post wrote about the difficulty of planning the road ahead, in the face of such uncertainty. In it he wrote about the futility of the Transition Town movement, because it was preparing for such a specific outcome, when there was no likelihood, much less guarantee that the problem they were envisioning a solution for would ever come to pass. At least not in the way they imagined it.

Originally, this post was going to be about 'what jobs/skill sets will be needed' in a post 'choose your 'long emergency' society. Upon further reflection, though, the answer is: Nobody knows.

Nobody knows what might happen should gasoline suddenly spike to $4.00 a litre. And it may not be supply contractions due to peak oil that cause it. It might be a coup in Saudi Arabia, it might be another deep water oil spill that triggers a global halt to offshore drilling. It might be any number of things that could trigger a sudden spike at the pumps, or a sudden shortage of electricity, or food, or heating oil, or...or...or...

The one question I see posted again and again in the peak oil/climate change blogosphere (most of whose writers have now embraced sovereign debt default as some kind of unholy trifecta) is: What do I do? How do I prepare?

And by this, people usually mean, "What should I buy?" I.e., should I stockpile ammo and canned goods, or buy a generator, or even a woodstove?

The answers are all fairly universal: Forget about stockpiling. Get out of debt. Learn to grow your own veggies. Have alternate ways of heating your very well insulated home. Learn a skill that will be desirable/useful to your neighbors, or people who may have more cash than you.

All of these ideas, though, are predicated on someone having some sort of vision as to what the future looks like. Some kind of accurate prediction. "Prediction is hard," Yogi Berra once said. "Especially about the future."

So are all of those bad steps to take? Yes and no. No, because anything you do to prepare for an uncertain future is bound to give you a sense of security, and comfort that you are doing everything you can. But yes, they may be bad if you think that they are guaranteed to 'save' you, from whatever you feel you need saving from.

We have a good idea of what needs to be done to strengthen our community, reduce our reliance upon fossil fuels, increase our food security, and reduce our individual debt loads and carbon footprints.

The problem is, will it help if the problem is not a gasoline shortage, but an ice storm? Or if the problem is not a bizarre weather incident, but a sudden spike in interest rates caused by a hair trigger printing press?

The bad news is, nobody knows. The good news is, it probably can't hurt.

So what is the one thing you can do to help yourself, your family, and your community to be 'resilient?' Cultivate a 'do it yourself/let's just give it a go' mentality.

If you're a mid-level marketing manager with a major firm, and that's all you're good at, I'd start learning a few more practical skills, a.s.a.p. Not just because those skills will be useful, but learning how to learn those skills will be crucial.

The process of learning new skills teaches you not only the skills themselves, but how to learn - how to experiment, how to 'give it a go.' If you can cultivate the attitude of not being afraid to try/fail, and a baker's dozen useful skills with your hands along the way, you'll be miles ahead of the person next to you on the GO train who has spent the past 3 years following up to the minute news on Hollywood break-ups and hook-ups.

Most importantly - you need to learn to be comfortable with uncertainty. You need to be ok with not knowing what's coming next, but be able to trust that your knowledge, skills and instincts will get you through whatever life throws at you, and safely out the other side. The best, indeed the only, way to do that - is to set about learning new skills now. Anything that interests you, from knitting and textile work to how to keep slugs from devouring your tomatoes. The skills you learn are not as important as the hard work you do learning how to learn.

But with great knowledge, comes great responsibility, to paraphrase my favorite comic book uncle, and when your Brangelina obsessed neighbor knocks on your door in the middle of whatever situation has had the power out for four days - invite her in. Make her a snack, and help her to make the adjustments that the online community helped you make when you started journeying down the road.

The ant and the grasshopper is not only a cautionary tale - it's also a really crappy way to treat the neighbors you may so desperately need one day.

Re-imagining Suburbia

2010-11-01T19:09:00.000-07:00

I have been absorbing Jeff Vail's article about Rescuing Suburbia over at Energy Bulletin, and I thought I would weigh in with a few comments of my own.

Suburbia, as Jeff very rightly points out, is here to stay. The thought of just walking away from acres of subdivisions a la St. Petersburg FL, or Flint, MI may be ideologically appealing to many urbanists, but the economic impact of abandoning cities neighborhood by neighborhood would be nothing short of devastating. That and the resources required to build more dense, walkable cities in the short term are going to be too scarce, and too badly needed for other things (i.e. food production).

So what to do? Sharon Astyk has been writing and blogging about the power of Victory Gardens for years now, and it just so happens that if you have way too much yard to mow conveniently with a people-powered reel mower, the next logical step is to plant gardens.

"But!" I hear you cry, "Nobody knows how to grow veggies any more. The knowledge just isn't there!" Really? Is that why just as the 'great recession' turned it's ugliest, seed companies across North America were posting record orders, and often running out of stock?

For all of Mainstream Media's almost total failure to address the coming challenges, I would venture that there exists among many people a deep and profound unease. A sense that things are bad, and are going to become increasingly so before they get better, if indeed they ever do. So people are gardening and turning to Farmer's Markets in record numbers.

One thing Jeff does refer to, however, when it comes to Surburbia is the concept of telecommuting, and how we'll all be able to go to work virtually. It is here that I disagree with him the most. For one, if, as many Peak Oil writers believe, there is an economic crash (and if it isn't due to energy costs, it will be sovereign state default, or something like it), it's not going to be a case of how you get to your 6-figure financial planner job in downtown Toronto, it will be how you replace the income of that job that has been suddenly rendered superfluous.

As Jeff Rubin likes to say, suddenly entire generations who have never done work more strenuous than typing on a keyboard or serving a cappuccino are going to be figuring out what to pack in their metal lunchboxes, as production moves back onshore due to the skyrocketing costs of shipping goods from China.

And where, I hear you ask, will we put those jobs? More in a moment.

The other issue that comes to mind is that of Transit. In the original Peak Oil Special Report on Raise the Hammer, one commenter mentioned that the reason the buses ran so infrequently in the suburbs was because nobody wanted to take them - $4.00 a litre oil will change that.

An interesting example of that was, on a lark last weekend, I went to the HSR trip planner, to check out how to get from my house, to the most remote suburban area that I could ever see myself wanting to go to by transit, the hilariously named Meadowlands shopping district in Ancaster. I plugged in the addresses, expecting to see a three transfer, 1.5 hour trip through pergatory. No dice. One bus that runs about three block from my house, and drops me in front of the Sobeys in Ancaster 41 minutes later. 41 minutes may seem like a long time to a seasoned car driver, but as someone who takes a GO bus/train combination to work of 1 hour and 20 minutes each way, 41 minutes doesn't seem so bad.

Some of the basic infrastructure is there, it just needs the demand to support it. Demand, I'm fairly confident will be coming soon.

In the meantime, what needs to be done? Well for one, our antiquated zoning system that rigidly defines industrial vs. commercial vs. residential is probably destined for the dustbin of urban planning history. Now while nobody wants a Matt Jelly Special across the street from a Nursing home, the time is going to come when some enterprising businesspeson is going to see a 1/2 empty strip mall and realize that a nice little garment factory, or cheese production facility would do just fine in there. While some of the suburbanites may howl at first, those who have just been downsized from their job in the mutual fund industry may see it as a well needed source of jobs that doesn't require a 45 minute commute by increasingly crowded bus.

While nobody is advocating a total abandoning of zoning requirements, the time has come to think seriously about the 'sanctity' of suburban zoning. We have the opportunity now to take some practical steps towards re-imagining these neighborhoods as places where work, shopping, living and agriculture all get just a little more neighborly.

100 Friend Diet - the cost of local

2010-10-19T18:48:00.000-07:00

So in the last post, I alluded to how much more the food we purchased locally cost, and I would like to take a moment and explore the 'ugly side' of local food production.

Yes, I agree we need to support local agriculture, and that locally grown food is better in any way you care to measure, except for affordability to the end user (not including negative externalities).

The simple reality is, that if industrial agriculture 'hiccups' at all, in terms of it's ability to provide 340 million Americans, and 34 million Canadians with a steady supply of inexpensive food, things could get a little dicey.

To wit, the prices of some of the local food we purchased for Thanksgiving. Let's start with the Turkey, after all was said and done, it came out to nearly $3.00 per pound. Perhaps a bit more. Two weeks prior, Fortino's (probably the second most expensive supermarket in Hamilton) had frozen turkeys on sale for $0.99 a pound.

Industrial agriculture does many things poorly, including respecting the land, caring for animals well, paying farmers a living income, and keeping food safe; however the one thing it does exceedingly well is feed lots of people for relatively little money.

I have a friend in BC who's sister has 5 children. So she buys, and roasts, a turkey every month. To her, it's the most efficient way to prepare large amounts of protein at a time. I suspect she does a ham too. At $0.99 a pound, this is an option. At $3.00 a pound, they would be steadily treading down the path towards vegetarianism.

All of the other food we purchased that weekend for Thanksgiving was at a premium...a premium we were happy to pay in order to support local growers, whom we now count among our friends. We are, we realize, extremely fortunate to have that option.

My concern is that as fuel prices spike, and supply chains of refrigerated trucks become more and more unpredictable, the steady supply of inexpensive food could be threatened. Suddenly $0.99 a lb turkeys are a distant memory, and a loaf of bread (most of the cost of which is processing and transport...it contains roughly $0.11 of flour) becomes out of the reach of many.

Does anybody seriously think that Walmart's decision to sell more local food was out of a desire to support local farmers? Or maybe it was due to the fact that gas in some US localities is topping $3.20 a gallon, and their 'warehouse on wheels' is starting to look like a 'house of cards.' Securing contracts with local producers ensures that if there is a sudden oil shock, they're the only ones with full shelves.

Once again, I have more questions than answers, other than to reinforce the importance of people learning how to grow their own vegetables, and using meat as condiment most of the time, rather than the main attraction, or getting out of debt, or any of the myriad of things all the 'peak oil thought leaders' say you should be doing.

In the end, our city's resilience is going to depend almost entirely on the resilience of individual household. So let's get cracking.

100 Friend Diet, redux

2010-10-12T17:23:00.000-07:00

So Thanksgiving has come and gone, as has our experiment with only putting food on the table for that meal from producers we know personally.

Results? About 60% Successful.

The grain proved to be the biggest challenge, or maybe our lack of knowledge of local farming practices made it more complex than it needed to be. The closest we thought we were able to come was Oak Manor Farms from Tavistock, ON, where we were able to buy some of their spelt flour in Fortino's. We never actually met them, but they are relatively local, so only half marks for that one.

As for the produce on the table, that one we knocked out of the park. All of the root vegetables on our table were either from Russ at Backyard Harvest, or from Earl and Sharon Clugston of Shearlea Acres fame. They've been growing really tasty produce out in Lyndon for as long as anybody I can find can remember, and even have a market store out near their farm on Governors road.

We have been getting our produce from the Clugston's since we moved to Hamilton 5 years ago, and they were an invaluable source of info on our quest to meet a Turkey Producer. More on that later.

The fruit came, as it always does for us courtesy of Jim from Country Winds farm who sells all of his own fruit, as well as that of T Warner Fruit Grower across the road. Both are in Beamsville, and Jim (and the Clugstons) can both be found at the Ottawa Street Farmer's Market. Jim also sold us locally grown walnuts and chestnuts that we 'roasted on an open fire' that night. Jim, by the way, is completely nuts, but his knowledge of the food he grows and sells, and his obvious enthusiasm for what he does makes his stall an irresistible first stop for us every Saturday morning.

Finally, on Ottawa street our big breakthrough came when we met Mary Robinson of Robinson Farms. Not only has she been keeping us well stocked with eggs all year (the giant double yolkers are to die for), but she let us in on a little known secret on the grain front. As she describes it, she and many of the farmers in her area (Freeelton) have patches of grain they grow, but none of them sell it at retail, because they lack the ability to process it themselves. So it all goes to a grain elevator, and the local flour buyer is none the wiser. She said if we ask her in time next year we can get wheat kernels, oat kernels and barley from her. Our challenge will be in figuring out how to Mill that at home, but we were going down that road anyway.

Mary's explanation of how everybody sends their 'raw produce' off to local processors would bite us hard later in the day. We were incredibly proud of how we'd found a local turkey producer out at . We confirmed that they grew turkeys, and ordered one a week in advance.

However, when we got there, we looked at the bird we had ordered, and there on the wrapper was the name of a producer in Thorold. Not Brantford. The young lady at the counter was very patient with us and took a moment to explain that all of the turkey producers in the area all send their birds off to one processor. Then they can specify (i.e. order) what size birds they get back to sell at their retail establishments should they wish.

At Brantwood, she explained, they tend to grow birds in the 40lb to 50lb range, which have a limited market, so most of the birds they sell come from other small (she adamantly assured us) producers around Southern Ontario. While we were technically buying a local bird, we felt this was a big strike-out for us, but chalked it up to a learning experience.

Next year, the hunt will be on for a truly local producer who sells only the turkeys they raise, and we will have to make the trek to meet them.

Practical upshots of this experiment:
1. We had an incredible meal. It was probably 30-50% more expensive than had we bought commercially produced ingredients (more on that in the next post), but the flavour and textures were amazing. Everything food should be.
2. We got to know some outstanding local farmers that up until now had just been a smiling face on the other end of a retail transaction.

And to that end, I would pose the question: How many of you shop at farmer's markets regularly, but treat the transaction no differently than you would shopping at a grocery store? In our consumer culture, the retail transaction has become such a commodity that it has become sterile and anonymous.

The most important lesson for me in all of this is that local farmers are not just people who grow food and smile at you every week at the market, they are amazing people with fascinating stories, who probably grow much more than they have at their table, and often have a huge network of other producers who can get you anything you need.

In a way, all of this was totally self serving. When oil prices start to spike (Jeff Rubin gives it 10-15 months), shopping locally is going to start to make financial sense on top of all the other good reasons for doing so. At that point, it's going to be largely a question of the relationships you have built that keep a steady supply of fresh fruits and veggies coming across your table as the numbers of people shopping at local markets explodes.

The days of buying food in an anonymous exchange of money for product, may be quickly coming to an end.

But in another way, I feel so much safer, and so much more grounded in the community we have chosen when I know I can trundle down on Saturday morning and buy food from people whom I have met face to face...people I can look right in the eye and Ask "Did you use any hormones/antiboitics/noxious chemicals of any kind?" and know that I can trust their answers.

As for the farmers themselves, the sudden boom in Farmers markets has been a bit of a blessing and a curse, from all reports. There are many more opportunities to sell their wares, but now difficult choices need to be made, on where to concentrate, and which locations to let go. Jim had always sold at both the Ottawa Street market, and a market in Ottawa. Last year, after a fire on his property he had to make a choice, and we're glad he chose Hamilton. This year he's back at both locations, but it's a whole lot of driving, and one has to question how long he can keep it up.

In the end, this experiment has been just what we hoped it would be: An exercise in eating great food and building closer ties to where that food comes from. So even if the numbers tell of only 50-60% of the food on the table coming from producers we have met, I'd have to say it was a resounding success.

100 Friend Diet

2010-09-18T18:47:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago on Raise the Hammer, I made an offhand comment about the new criteria for stallholders in the downtown Farmer's Market, by saying that the relationships we are cultivating among local food producers will be invaluable at such a time when oil prices spike, and the local grocery store's warehouse on wheels inventory philosophy reveals itself as being incredibly shortsighted.

Well, we have decided to take the experiment in cultivating food producer friends a step further.

You have heard of the 100 mile diet, where you only eat food grown within 100 miles of where you live. Usually cheating of some kind is allowed, such as in Barbara Kingsolver's amazing Animal, Vegetable, Miracle where each family member was allowed to choose one 'out of area' food item they would keep. In these situations, it's almost always coffee or chocolate.

Instead, we are going to try and serve a thanksgiving meal, with as many ingredients as possible that have been produced, rather than sold, by people we know personally. And they must be within an hour or so drive of our house. Not as any kind of spiritual mileage number, rather that's just about the longest round trip our kids will sit through in the car without melting down.

As I write, my wife is on google researching local grain mills and dairies to try and figure out where she's going to get the ingredients for the bread she plans to bake, and the butter for the potatoes (whose supplier we already know well).

And it's not that we need to be "hey, can you come over and help me build a fence in my backyard" buddies. We just need to know them. To be able to put a face to a name and say "These beans came from Russ, and the potatoes and carrots are from our friends the Shearleas"

It's a daunting task, but one that leads to a lot more than just eating well. Building community deliberately is not something most people are familiar with how to do - us included. It's one thing to stumble across an already existing community (such as Raise the Hammer, or local foodies, etc) and realize you share a passion with others. It's another entirely to pull into the driveway of a local turkey farmer and say "Hey, we just wanted to know where our bird was coming from."

It's an exercise in connecting with an as-yet nonexistent community, but also with our food. We know where meat comes from, and that it was once a living breathing animal. And to be fair, my wife has a huge advantage over me in that regard, her father having been a hunter when she was growing up. But in an age of styrofoam and plastic wrap, it can be easy to forget that the drumstick you are eating was once attached to something that had a life. In many cases, depending on how little you paid for that club pack of drumsticks, and utterly wretched life.

So wish us well, I'll be sure to report back after Thanksgiving how well we've done, but judging from the remarks my wife has been making while I've been writing this, I suspect the answers will tell us more about a desperately broken food supply system than about our effort.

Labour (saving) day

2010-09-06T20:01:00.000-07:00

So as the sun goes down on another Labour day, it seems fitting that I would write about labour. Lots and lots of labour.

This weekend, we canned 7 pints of peaches, 8 jars of hot sauce, a quart of lacto-fermenting pickles, and 5 pints of garden (i.e. non-cucumber) pickles. My wife baked a dozen muffins, nearly 6 dozen cookies (two types), made home-made granola, and a loaf of bread. We also went into the woods today and gleaned 6 lbs of apples from an orchard that was abandoned about 60 years ago – all for the farmhouse cider I'm going to start next weekend.

This was on top of all of the normal chores that need to get done to keep a house of 4 people going.

We are, quite frankly, exhausted. Normally we're pretty tuckered out by the end of the weekend, but tonight we are bone tired.

Two very frightening realizations came to me this evening as we were discussing the implications of this for a post-industrial society.

1.We are this exhausted despite the unlimited availability of devices such as a bread maker (used only for mixing the dough), a dishwasher, a washing machine, and a stand mixer.

2.Despite having nearly a well stocked pantry, and several dozen bags of home-grown veggies in the freezer on top of the canning we did in the last 72 hours, we have put up barely enough food to last us about a month. Maybe 6 weeks, tops.

Did I mention we are exhausted.

Yes, we are lightweights, but it brings me to an uncomfortable conclusion. The post-industrial economy that many of us have been talking about for some time now is not only going to be inconvenient (as I say often), it's going to be downright difficult.

At the farm down the road, Russ was apparently up until 3 am the other morning, canning enough tomatoes to get him through the year. Granted, he didn't have to get up at 5:45 the following morning and get ready to hop a GO train to Toronto to go to work, but 5-10-15 years down the road, how many of us will be doing both? How many of us will be trying to grow and preserve (or even buy-super-cheap-in-season-at-the-farmer's-market and preserve) in times of plenty, along with working 9-5s to make sure there is enough cash coming into the household to cover expenses that just can't be bartered for.

I know I'm painting a pretty bleak picture here, and frankly reading Dimitri Orlov is not helping one little bit. But you only have to turn on the TV, or open a newspaper (remember those? It's kind of like the internet, only it's on paper, and all the information is a day old) to see that a quick return to the heady days of even three years ago is appearing increasingly unlikely.

The combination of an unyielding environment/resource base and a population unwilling to compromise can lead to some pretty predictable outcomes.

This leads me to the second major topic of conversation this weekend. Peak Electricity. I have blogged before about how Ontario is moving to voluntary power rationing (they are calling it time of use rates, but potato-potahto). It occurred to me this weekend while we were using all of our very convenient labour saving devices, that two things will make the grid more secure: People using less power, and fewer people using any power in the first place.

Time of use rates do both.

For one, with the spike in power rates, as it stands now, the highest amount I pay is 7.5c/kwh, wheras under the new regime, if I use power any time during my normal day, I'm going to be paying at least 8c/kwh, if not higher. My bill is, quite simply, going to go up, no matter how many 'power hungry' chores I try to put off until the weekend or after 9pm. Just running my fridge, stove, and furnace (FSF) are going to cost up to 40% more than they do now during peak times.

Now, imagine if I was living on the margins of society, and could only barely afford the power I'm using now. I am conserving as much as I can, but even the FSF cost money to run, money I barely have.

Now those costs go up considerably, and I now have two options: Have my power cut off, or start skipping meals. The first clears up lots of excess capacity on the grid. The second necessitates the kind of weekend I've just had.

Suddenly the idea of a backyard garden, and doing some home canning becomes way more appealing. Provided that I have the skills, support, and self-confidence to give it a go in the first place...not a given by any stretch.

So I guess what I'm saying is that for many people in Ontario, the whole “canning tomatoes until 3 am and going to work for 9 the next morning” may not be forced on them after some unforeseen spike in oil prices – it may be forced on them next summer. Provided they still have the power that will be required to do the canning in the first place. All because there isn't enough generating capacity in Ontario to meet the projected needs in the next 10 years or so.

Resource scarcity isn't a problem for 5-10-15 years down the road. For a whole lot of people in Ontario, It's here. Now.

2010-08-28T13:59:00.000-07:00

In a famous cartoon, blogger extraordinaire Hugh Macleod once wrote: The price of being a sheep is boredom. The price of being a wolf is loneliness. Choose one or the other with great care.

In my family, in an effort to stave off any kind of unpleasantness resulting from resource scarcity, we have committed to purchasing ‘hard goods’ second hand as much as we are able to.

We are also committed to ‘making do’ in circumstances where we can survive without the latest shiny new toy.

So at the risk of belabouring this, I used to have an mp3 player with a radio on it, and enjoyed listening to both. Then the headphone jack went wonky, and I had to replace it – with a used $10 iPod Shuffle (1st gen) from Kijiji.ca. All good, except now I couldn’t listen to Metro Morning or Radio 2 Drive.

Then, while looking for something else entirely, I stumbled across my old Walkman style cassette player. It was gigantic by modern music player standards, but it had a working radio. Ta da! The solution to my 1 ¼ hour GO Train commute problems.

The real problem was, it turns out, that the average household income of a passenger on the Lakeshore line is just about six figures, so iPads, E-readers, and iPhone 4s abound.

Then there’s me with my hooptie-radio.

The first couple of times I pulled it out, I got the look…you know the one you want to give to the scruffy looking teen staring through the window at Christopher’s. The “here, take a couple bucks, get yourself something hot to eat” kind of look. I shrugged it off, but then started hiding it behind me on the seat while I listened.

Then I gave my head a badly needed shake and decided – I’m not the crazy one for not replacing my electronics every ten minutes, or always having to own the latest toy…I’m the sensible one for wanting to make our increasingly scarce resources last just a little longer.

When you work in the ‘office’ world (as opposed to retail, food services or non-profit, where I find people are more tolerant), and you tell people you grow your own veggies, they usually get that, and may do so themselves.

When you tell people you are part of a CSA that operates down the street, most people can wrap their heads around it. Or when you tell people you try to drive as little as possible, and either walk or use transit when you need to get somewhere, they think of you as an ‘enviro-guy’, but it’s understood.

But there’s something about dragging out a 2 lb cassette player on a crowded GO train full of impeccably dressed business people that steps right over society’s clearly drawn line in the sand.

If the main difference between our lives now and the lives we will live in 20 years is going to be the sacrifices we make, where will you draw your line?

Urban Bounty

2010-08-24T18:26:00.000-07:00

There has been a lot of conversation in our house recently as to whether or not Hamilton could ever feed itself - not the exurbs, or rural part of Hamilton, but if worse came to worse, could the downtown produce enough of it's own produce to stave off any kind of food security crisis.

Someone (and I forget who) once said that society is nine meals away from anarchy. The first day of not knowing where your next meal will come from is tolerable, the next one worrying, and the third panic inducing. Now keep in mind that with the just-in-time mantra and tiny stockrooms of most grocery outlets there are usually no more than three days of food on any given supermarket's shelves. This is true not only for supermarkets, but for the cities they are in as well.

So I have harped on this topic before, and will do so again - between Hamilton's very active Eat Local community and the farmers right in our midst we are starting to take some shaky steps on the road to food security.

I do want to borrow a page from a blog I am fond of, though, and take a little walk around my neighborhood.

In Strathcona, there is a park about 30 yards from my house with a big community garden. That's a great start. I also have Russ and Backyard Harvest at the end of the street, and around the corner at the local poet's house on Locke. Those are the obvious ones. What about the not so obvious. What about the guy across the street from Russ who has what seems to be a massive tomato patch in his back yard. I also happen to know of another neighbor in Strathcona who is heavily in to intensive, high-yield backyard gardening. All great steps, but sometimes the steps are even more subtle.

One of the most important features of permaculture is the interplanting of fruit and nut trees with your low-rise vegetables. It was about a week ago (while doing my surveys for Hamilton Civic League) that I finally introduced myself to my neighbor with the apple tree in her backyard - apples she considers a nuisance, but that I consider a great source of homebrewed cider. A deal was quickly struck.

One block further than Russ down Peter are two big Serviceberry trees. Out west, we call them Saskatoon Berries, and they make amazing jam. Every year since we've been here, they have been eaten by the birds - in a neighborhood where nobody a) knew what to do with them, or b) had the guts to ask the homeowners for permission to harvest them. Finally, right across York over on the Dundurn castle grounds are the original apple orchards, harvested from time to time by the good folks at Hamilton Fruit Tree.

All of this is to say that predictions of doom and gloom aside, Hamilton is almost uniquely suited in terms of geography, climate, and natural soil quality to provide much of its own food within its own borders. Now we just have to take one teensy little more step and we will be well on our way.

The Real Cost of Outsourcing

2010-07-30T20:10:00.000-07:00

So the other day I wrote about the process of offshoring, and the tendency to have incompatible parts in the 'same' product. This has prompted a number of questions, such as "That's not right, all the products that are called a Model X 9000 are the same, both inside and out, aren't they?"

This is simply not true.

And to understand why, we need to take a bit of a dive into the murky world of electronics offhshore production. For one, when companies offshore (or as we'll call it, outsource) the manufacture of an electronic good, they have a few key considerations: 1. How well will the product do what it says it will? 2. How long will it last? 3. Will choosing this vendor damage our brand in any way, due to a high rate of returns/defects, or lack of reliability in the supply chain? And of course, the big one, 4. How little can I get it for, while keeping these other three things in mind?

From the contract manufacturer's point of view, there are only three considerations. 1. How much am I going to get per unit? 2. How cheaply can I get my materials? 3. How low can I keep my 'production costs' (read 'Labour'). and still ensure my employees come to work every day (because reliability of delivery is key)?

The thing to know about major offshore electronics productions facilities, is that they are not exactly a lone gleaming warehouse surrounded by rice paddies. To the contrary, they are located in areas densely populated with electronics part suppliers. All of whom are trying to get a piece of the action going on down the road.

So the parts suppliers have salespeople who knock on the big warehouse door daily, saying that their part will do what the other guy's part will do, for $0.005 cheaper. Yes, it's that little of a difference. In fact it turns out the manufacturers have a contractual obligation for the most part to listen to these salespeople, and find ways of doing things more cheaply. (See Section 7.4)

A few years ago, I worked at a company that outsourced our production to China, and the main ingredient in product X was brass. As the price of copper jumped by 300% in four years, we started looking around for ways to save on copper. One day, a batch of samples arrived in the office just before I taught a class on our quality. In the middle of the class, I disassembled the product to demonstrate its all brass construction, and found a big plastic insert holding it together. From the exterior, it was indistinguishable from the previous iterations (even the difference in weight was only 2-3 grams - too little for the average person to notice). On the inside, it was completely different.

When I inquired at Head Office as to why the change was made, the difference was $0.015 per unit. The thing was, we moved over 1,500,000 of this item a year, so the savings were..carry the one... close to $23,000. Doesn't seem that much, but if you reproduce those savings over the entire 100 item catalog, the money starts to add up.

That is why, in the post industrial future, the idea that we can all trot our beloved consumer electronics down to 'Ye Olde iPhone Repair Shoppe' is little more than a pipe dream. Not only can the specifications of the parts change from factory to factory, but they can even change from production run to production run within the same factory. All in the interest of saving money.

So now, for 'Ye Olde iPhone Repairpersonne' to fix your iPhone, she doesn't only need to find a discarded 2nd Gen 16 GB iPhone with the part you need still intact, she needs a discarded 2nd Gen 16 GB iPhone where the first 12 digits of the Serial Number match, or with some similar indication that they came from the same production lot.

Good luck with that.

Admittedly there are repair places now that can fix these items, but they are doing so with parts shipped from the same factories that supply the original manufacturers. Factories that are 1000's of miles away. The distance isn't a big deal now, but in a world where even bunker fuel commands a premium price, shipping the parts isn't going to make any more sense than shipping the original item.

Back to my original point: Maybe if we stop relying on our electronic devices to entertain us all the time - or if we had that option slowly taken away from us - maybe we would start to do other things with our time. Things like growing our own vegetables, or going to the park to play with the kids or have a picnic with friends, or even volunteering to fill some need in our community. Maybe even just bringing cookies to a neighbor who is home ill for a couple days. These are the things that enhance our quality of life - not how many GB's or hours of battery life we can cram onto a device.

Don't get me wrong, this whole discussion never would have even come up if I hadn't been trying to fix my iPod, so I could continue to get my 'fix' of daily tunes on the 1 1/2 hour train/bus trip to downtown Toronto every day. Like I said, I'm down to my 500mb shuffle (which, for the record bought used off of Kijiji), and when that's dead...I'm going to have to think long and hard about if I replace it, or with what.

Trying to wean myself off the electronic bottle is one the more difficult tasks for me in preparing for a future with a whole lot less cheap energy. But the tasks I am replacing it with sure beat sitting in a shopping mall overnight waiting for a future that's only going to flourish ever so briefly.

The Throw-Away Economy

2010-07-28T17:56:00.000-07:00

It has been a frustrating evening.

My iPod (for the record, a 1st gen, 20Gb model) had a problem with the headphone jack. For some reason, the headphones would not plug in all the way, and no matter how I poked and prodded, I couldn't get the obstruction (if indeed there was one) to come out. I had already replaced the battery a few months prior, and was now faced yet again with a dead iPod.

But lo and behold, I found an identical looking back cover (complete with headphone jack and on/off switch) on ebay for a lousy $7! I emailed the seller, and asked which version it was.

The donor was a match, and I won the bid, and waited anxiously for the 'organ' to arrive.

When I got home tonight, I went straight to work, carefully prying off the back cover, plugging in the cable that attached the bits on the back cover to the main iPod. It fit kind of funny, but I thought I'd make a go of it. I plugged it into the charger, and got set to rock and roll.

Did the headphones work? I'll never know. The iPod was locked, and no matter what I did with the lock/unlock button, nothing would make it unlock. In other words, the main iPod "body" did not recognize the new implant. Organ rejection was imminent.

I pried it open again only to realize that the tiny little cable was about 1 mm too small on either end to fit properly into the slots on my old iPod.

So I binned the whole lot in frustration (although to be honest, I may try pulling it out and selling it for parts on Kijiji).

It has been noted among many Peak Oil advocates that in the future, as the cost of either a) producing consumer goods, b) shipping them from the other side of the planet, or c) both, rise with the price of oil, that people will turn repeatedly to repairing that which they already own.

Unfortunately, when it comes to many (most?) of the small consumer items we take for granted, this may be somewhat wishful thinking.

The problems are twofold: Who is going to know how to fix things like cell phones, coffee makers, and Blu-Ray players (all of which have microchips and circuit boards), and where are they going to get the parts to fix them?

Back in the original days of munitions production the problem was that a trigger from one gun would never fit another gun...and a hammer from a rifle could only be used on the rifle for which it had been custom made. One of the things that made the U.S. such a world power, was that their arms manufacturers quickly realized the importance of standard, interchangeable parts, and began churning our firearms by the bushel.

Unfortunately, in the world of consumer goods, we may have returned to antebellum levels of part-incompatibility. A Brand X, Model 100 made in Malaysia is often made of parts that are completely incompatible with a Brand X Model 100 made in Taiwan, and so on.

In the world of offshore production, the specs that most companies are concerned with are performance and durability - the 'what it does, and for how long', not so much the 'what bits it uses to do it'.

Sure your coffee pot is broken, but when you take it in to your 'guy' (as in, "I can get that fixed for you, I know a guy"), he pokes around for a few minutes and says "Oh, that's a XYZ chip board, and those are hard to find. Leave it here and I'll see what I can do."

Your options at that point are going to be limited to either getting a new coffee pot (which was what the manufacturers intended, but may become increasingly difficult) or developing a taste for hot chocolate.

Life in a post-carbon economy is not just going to be about endlessly repairing and jerry rigging our treasured electronic consumer goods, it's going to be about letting go of things that improve our 'standard of living', but really do nothing for our quality of life.

It's going to be about living more simply, making do with less, and learning to treasure things like family, friends, music played live in your living room, and homegrown tomatoes.

As for me? I've still got my old 500 mb iPod shuffle, and after that dies, I guess I'm back to reading books and doing the crossword on the train.

Kind of like people have been doing since train travel was invented.

Of Cursing and Candles

2010-07-19T18:59:00.000-07:00

So I have been reading with much enthusiasm over the last few weeks the fire storm that has erupted on Raise the Hammer over the Stadium location issue. Invariably, there are 30, 40, at one point even 70 comments, with most comments being a variation on the theme "council is dysfunctional, throw the bums out."

Yet a quick look at The City of Hamilton web site shows an alarming number of seats in this fall's Civic Election that are still uncontested, and voter turnout in the 2006 election was 37%. Let me say that again. The direction of Hamilton's government, the city hall renovation issue, the parade of jobs out of our city, the Aerotropolis disaster in the making, and even the stadium location will all be presided over by a group of people who had the support of about 1/3 of Hamiltonians.

So what can one person do?

Well, here's something. As the saying goes, it's better to light a candle, than to curse the darkness, and here is a golden opportunity to light a whole bunch of candles. Hamilton Civic League is going door to door across Hamilton to ask regular everyday people what they think about their City. How it should be run, and what is important to them. Then...and this is the big then...this is the part that saw Guelph's 12 person-stuck-in-their-dysfunctional-ways council get tossed out on its ear...they are going to compare the voting records of each councilor to the values expressed by respondents to the survey. And they are going to publicize the heck out of that comparison. The media is on board, and raring to go, all they need is the data.

I often hear people say - "I don't vote, because it doesn't make a difference." Fred Eisenberger was elected by 452 votes. The really scary part, was that on my way to the polling station, I said to my partner, "I'm going to register a protest vote, and spoil my ballot or something, cause DiIanni's going to walk away with it again." Sure glad I didn't follow through on that stupid idea.

Similarly, if 453 people had said that night "oh, my vote doesn't count" and stayed home, we might still have Larry as Mayor, and the Aerotropolis would already be a done deal...and who knows what else.

So not only can you make a difference by voting, you can make a HUGE difference by helping your fellow Hamiltonians get engaged in the electoral process. What's it going to cost you? About an hour of walking around in the sunshine and getting to know your neighbors better. Hell, you should be paying them for the privilege. So click on the link , and fill in your volunteer form, and let Kim know you're good for an hour or so.

Because right now, they need over 100 volunteers, and they've got about 20. Unless you want the same 37% of voters deciding how this city is run in three months time, you'd better start moving. Online indignation is not enough. It's time for action.

Eat Local...really local.

2010-07-13T18:07:00.000-07:00

So it’s Tuesday night, and it’s time to pick up the farm share from our CSA. Of course, we pick ours up at the actual farm itself, so I grabbed the keys and headed out to the door. Went straight for the car, and opened up the driver side…so I could fish out a couple of reusable bags. Then I closed the car door, locked it, and proceeded to head for the farm. A block away from my house on the corner of Peter and Pearl Streets in Strathcona.

While the local food craze has swept North America and has even trickled up to places as large as national grocery store chains, most still consider anything grown in Ontario to be local. Russ Ohrt at Backyard Harvest brings 'local' to a whole new level, taking his extensive farming experience and adapting it to the big city. He calls it "urban agriculture."

Most people who stop by Ohrt's yard are inspired by his “farm,” but some express a concern over the safety of the produce. Given Hamilton's industrial history and still-active smoke stacks not too far away, is it safe to eat something grown practically downtown? To Ohrt, it's a chicken and egg problem. Do we clean up all the pollution before we start growing our food this close to home? Or do we start growing our food right here so it requires less oil to produce it and bring it to market?

Ohrt's produce is grown without chemicals and is eaten fresh, preserving nutrition, decreasing chemical content and enhancing taste. And because pollution travels, it isn't just downtown farms that are affected by Hamilton's manufacturing sector. Between the agricultural spreading of bio solids, to your neighbor’s pesticides being carried on the wind, in an area as densely packed and filled with industry as Southern Ontario, who can tell?

While Ohrt's property is large for an urban yard, he has started his business, “Backyard Harvest,” to educate residents about urban agriculture and to access more space to grow. His clients include one family who had him design their garden and tend it, supplying them with fresh, ultra-local produce. In other cases, Ohrt simply leases land in the neighbourhood from individual property owners and harvests the vegetables for himself.

Besides the CSA, Orht has been selling his produce at the “Maker's Markets” around Hamilton's west end and at a roadside produce stand in front of his home, cleverly disguised as a garage sale. Russ is now up to 7 backyards in his ‘farm’, and with his table at the Maker’s Market selling out most weekends, he is on the lookout for more land to till.

It all feeds into the issue of Food Security in Hamilton and area. It’s commonly understood that every calorie of food that comes from a supermarket typically takes 12 calories of fossil fuels to create. Uber-local food that uses no pesticides, herbicides, diesel tractors or refrigerated transport trucks would seem to position Hamilton well for the changes to come.

And to those who say we could never grow enough to make a difference, I’m afraid history would disagree. During World War II, it’s estimated that 40% of the Vegetables on the average American’s table came from Victory Gardens. Yet we’ve come a long way from the government encouraging people to grow gardens out of patriotic duty, and Ohrt even wonders if we have retained enough of those skills. That’s why in our house, we have begun with four simple Square Foot Gardens to get us started. We’re now in our second year, and our veggie patch looks like a scene out of a John Wyndham novel…in the best way possible.

Perhaps the key to reskilling our society is for more people to just be willing to ‘give it a go’ now, before those skills become crucial.

And perhaps the key to weaning our dinner tables off of fossil fuels is to start right in our own backyard…or Apartment balcony, or even south facing window. The possibilities are only limited by your patience, courage, and selection of seeds.

If you're interested in learning more about Ohrt's ideas, including leasing your yard, or having him come to your yard to show you how to grow your own victory garden, you can contact him at 905-296-4479 or russohrt@yahoo.ca.

The original version of this article appeared in Fall 2009, in The Park Bench, Strathcona Community Council’s Newsletter. The information regarding food security and Peak Oil are recent additions.

Energy Security

2010-07-05T17:24:00.001-07:00

I'm sure this will not be the only post generated today by Toronto's black out, but here's my two cents.

It has been noted in the Peak Oil community quite a bit that the coming scarcity of Fossil Fuels is going to cause uncertainty in power generation. For those who aren't aware, the majority of power in Ontario is produced by burning fossil fuels - so our grid is at the mercy of carbon availability. Much has been made also, of the aging grid and how much energy in terms of fossil fuels will be required in order to maintain it moving forward.
To wit:
A very rusted looking - and somewhat awkwardly located Hydro Tower href="
View Larger Map">
And what looks like an
View Larger Map">entire substation that looks about ready to crumble into rust.

I've been saying for years that if we were to get a day (week!) as hot as today, with the economy running on all cylinders, that brownouts would be inevitable. I expected, however, for them to come from lack of capacity, not from apparent breakdowns in the system. That's the funny thing about black swans, though, isn't it?

In the meantime, here are some lovely suggestions for staying cool without AC.

All of this is to say that we are going to have to get used to using less power - not replacing our current power supply with something 'more sustainable.' Part of me applauds Dalton McGuinty's efforts to wean us off fossil fules, the obvious question is - "If the grid can't handle the sunny day requirements of Ontario now - how is it going to handle 1000's of extra cars being plugged into the grid daily. It's not about 'replacing' - it's about reducing. And moving to a lifestyle that just makes do with less...an out of context problem, maybe, for those who continue to confuse 'standard of living' with quality of life.

Perhaps 250,000 people in the dark on the hottest day of the year will be a wake up call.
Here's hoping.

Localisation

2010-04-10T17:56:00.000-07:00

I’ve been reading a lot online about Transition Towns, and the theme they keep coming back to again and again is that of ‘relocalisation’. In a world of increasingly expensive transport, due to rising costs of fossil fuels, the smart money will be on communities that derive most of their power, food and consumer goods locally – however one might define that.

This dovetails nicely with the growing consumer sentiment that rejects the big box experience in favour of small local stores, farms, and service providers. My wife’s business gets regular calls from Business Process Outsourcers (BPOs) in India offering to slash her costs on many of the services she now sources locally. She doesn’t even return their phone calls because she, like so many other business people, knows that the strength of your organization stems not from keeping your costs as low as possible, but from the relationships you have with the people upon whom you rely.

If she needs him to, her IT provider will come in on her day off and recable her office. Or she can call her printer in a panic and know that he will not only turn around a book for her in a heartbeat but will also support the causes about which she is passionate.

This brings me to my friends Russ and Kerry. Russ is a farmer who tills a little over an acre (or so he reported last time I asked him). It just so happens that the acre in question is scattered over a variety of backyards in Strathcona and environs. Now Russ has taken the big leap and is offering a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) option for food grown uber-locally. My weekly food box, combined with what I grow myself should ensure me a summer’s worth of veggies grown not only using organic principles and good old fashioned elbow grease – but also grown within about a kilometer of my house, ensuring better taste and nutritional value than anything I could get in a supermarket.

Similarly, Kerry is the mom of one of my son’s classmates. A week or two ago she started posting pics on her facebook page of the simply amazing ‘super hero’ capes that she was sewing for her daughter and a friend at school. Word has quickly spread, and now several of us have commissioned her to do the same for our kids.

The interesting point about Kerry’s capes is that they are priced competitively with many of the things that you could find in the plastic wastelands of big box toy retailers. Only, unlike so many of those toys, these are not meant to be observed, they are meant to be played with using the full force of a 6 year old’s imagination. While locally produced, and fundamentally different from most things you would buy in these stores – they are in my mind a far superior product.

As the price of fuel creeps up, the simple fact is that no realistically achievable level of efficiency or electrification of our transport fleet is going to keep the price of low-quality disposable items made offshore from ratcheting steadily upwards.

This is to say nothing of what a spike in diesel costs will do to a ceasar salad that has traveled 1500 km, or a calorie of food energy that took 12 calories of fossil fuels to grow.

The point I’m trying to make is that in the next economy things will be different – in some ways greatly so, but they don’t have to be worse. Very few of us pine for a return to a Victorian era lifestyle of quiet games of jacks by a roaring hearth and the christmas stocking that contains nothing but a single Seville Orange. Things will be different, and probably simpler – but as we turn increasingly to our friends and neighbors for solutions to a whole new set of problems, we may find that ‘different’ is much more desirable than where many of us are now.

Like a woman needs a fish...?

2010-03-17T17:23:00.000-07:00

I watched the movie Cuba after Peak Oil this week, and found very interesting the fact that Cuba's initial response to the sudden loss of it's cheap, consistent oil supply (due to the collapse of the U.S.S.R.), was to import 1000's of Chinese bicycles.

There is an awful lot of conversation in the transition town community about making cities more walkable and transit friendly, however the reality is not lost on these groups that for many people, bikes may be their vehicle of choice in the face of more localized communities due to $3.00+ a litre gas.

I work in downtown Toronto, and can't help but notice the huge increase in the number of bikes on the road compared with when I lived here 4 years ago. Yes there is a fitness and lifestyle component, and certainly a “save the planet” ethos to riding your bike everywhere. Then there's that article the Star wrote several years ago (sorry, can't find the link) where they had a cyclist, a car, and a TTC rider go from Yonge and Queen to Yonge and Bloor, and the cyclist won hands down.

There is, however, that element of people who ride a bike because … well, once you have bought your bike (some of which can be had at second hand shops or kijiji for often as little as $20), it's free to ride. Notwithstanding the whole getting-soaked-in-wet-weather-and-arriving-hot-and-sweaty-in-good-weather thing. That, I guess, comes down to the whole 'The world is about to get a whole lot less convenient' thing.

I used to say in Hamilton, that you could always tell the people who rode bikes not out of choice, but out of necessity in two ways: 1) they almost never wear helmets, and 2) they often smoked while riding (clearly indicating it was not a health conscious choice).

One of my favorite stores in Hamilton (and I'm not even an avid cyclist, he's just a great guy) is Downtown Bike Hounds. Sean has positioned himself perfectly to a) equip Hamilton for the reality of bike commuting, and b) make a reasonable living in the meantime. His shop is packed with good quality refurbished bikes, and top of the line European commuter bikes. Exactly the type of bikes that will seem like a very cost effective option when oil hits $200+ a barrel.

So now that the snow seems to be gone, and the weather is warming up, I'm going to get a jump on the whole “bike commute” thing. I can easily walk to the GO bus stop, no problem, but starting Monday I'm going to start biking to the train station and catching that in, instead. I'm also going to get real used to making my Friday at 8:30 'Beer and Hard Cider' runs by bike.

Sure I'll be helping to husband what will be increasingly scarce resources, but mainly I'll be preparing myself (both in terms of physical ability and mindset) for the realities we're all going to face in the next 20 years.

What are you going to do?

The Nature of Work

2010-03-12T17:30:00.000-08:00

Jeff Rubin et al wax fairly poetic about the way the nature of work is going to change in the Next Economy. Rubin in particular posits that many of the manufacturing jobs we have sent offshore, will be returning in a hurry once bunker fuel surcharges wipe out the difference in the lower wage costs. Good news indeed for unemployed manufacturing workers in North America. The question remains, though, who is going to be able to afford to buy a new big-screen TV or swap cell phones every 6 months?

Pretty much all the pundits agree that the next economy is going to be 'post-industrial' – or rather an economy based largely on agricultural production more than the consumption of throw-away goods.

This is probably not a bad thing.

In the few weeks since my Grandfather passed away, I have been thinking more about his legacy, specifically his DIY mentality, and how more of us are going to need to adopt just such an approach. A while ago, I also wrote about how the “homesteading crafts' are making a resurgence.

I think this time may be now for each of us to pick which homesteading craft we wish to adopt now, knowing that in an economy based on the repair of existing goods (of which there are a whole lot in the system) rather than their disposal and recycling, it would be handy to have skills in line with these needs.

In his book, The Complete Guide to ADHD, Thom Hartmann talks about how the most successful entrepreneurs (many of which live with full blown ADHD) see needs before anybody else does, and move to fill them. Well, here's your big chance.

Grandad would have had a few tricks up his sleeve. Car repair would certainly have been useful, but so would have his plumbing, gardening (he often grew his own vegetables), drywall hanging, and yes, even shoe repair skills.

Frankly, I don't know a whole lot of people who know the first thing about repairing their own shoes, but I'm keen to learn how, because in 10-15 years it may be unthinkable to throw out a pair of shoes whose sole has come loose, when for much less money you could take it somewhere and have a new one put on.

The problem, though, is where does one go to learn a fairly archaic handicraft like shoe repair? There don't seem to be any apprentice programs in Ontario, and only a limited number of stores where you can even buy basic leather and leather tools to work with. It's similar to the fictional "letter from the Future" in Richard Heinberg's Peak Everything that describes how one of the most valuable skills a backyard farmer is going to be able to have, is the ability to harvest, save, and use their own seeds. These skills are all but lost to most of us, but not entirely. My Grandad was two weeks shy of 90 when he died, and pretty much all of his secrets died with him, but it doesn't have to be that way.

We are facing the greatest loss of traditional knowledge the world has ever known as our grandparents one by one slowly slip away. Their resourcefulness, work ethic, and perhaps most importantly skills and techniques are disappearing with them.

So walk, don't run, to your grandparents home, and get them to show you everything they know about how they did things when they were growing up...because there's a pretty good chance that's how you'll be wanting to do them before too long.

2010-03-03T18:50:00.000-08:00

I Stumbled across Raise the Hammer's extensive list of postings about Peak Oil, and thought I would continue a thread that started there a few years ago.

In many of the posts, Ryan describes how land use is going to have to change dramatically in the face of $3-4 a litre gasoline.

It has been well documented how the days of suburbia are severely numbered, and yet the question remains - all of those houses are there - without a huge quantity of fossil fuels to power the machines needed to rip them all out, the land is useless for farming. So what to do? People aren't going to be willing to abandon their houses en masse and flee for the inner cities (which would soon become unlivable) or the countryside (where they would be trapped in one location by the price of gas).

That's when the discussion around our house turned to Rail. I'm from out west, and on the Prairies, rail has an almost mythical quality to it - people I grew up with had grandparents who had been homesteaders - the area was settled that recently.

After reading a report in one of the RTH blogs about how rail was 10 times as efficient at moving people or freight as road, it got me thinking about communities out west, and how they sprang up.

Basically, the railroad companies decided where the towns would be across much of the prairies by deciding to plop down small 'whistle stop' stations that were in areas where they could reach a reasonable number of customers (for the freight, mainly) within a one day wagon ride.

Now, I don't think we'll be back to horse and buggy any time soon, but the model may not be a bad one. Hamilton right now is looking at adding a GO transit stop en route to Niagara Falls. This would mean a whole new cluster of activity and spikes in property values right around James St. North. The gentrification that has already begun would start to seriously accelerate.

All this is to say that in the world of only driving your car for 'special occasions', people are probably not going to want to just stay in their communities all the time, as walkable as they may need to be. Maybe our kids will, or theirs, but we are too accustomed to the freedom of the open road.

Maybe if we can't afford that, we'll settle for the freedom of the rails.

At the same time people are going to need to have relatively affordable access to goods - whether it be food, or building materials, or other essential items for daily living ($2.49 plastic toothbrush holders from Wal Mart do not count). Stores and businesses located to small rail spur lines, or even close to existing rail stops (which may become mixed use rather quickly) will have a decided advantage.

Hamilton, with it's extensive network of inner city rail lines and spurs, and proximity to an even more cost effective mode of transporting goods (marine!) is ideally suited to capitalizing on the skyrocketing cost of diesel which pretty much everybody who has looked at the issue agrees will be here in the next 5-10 years.

So then why then is the new president of the Chamber of Commerce threatening to bulldog through the approval of the Aerotropolis? Does he not realize that kerosene (jet fuel) is going to be every more expensive than diesel?

Somebody needs to do their homework.

The Rennaisance Man (Person)

2010-02-23T17:36:00.000-08:00

My Grandfather passed away last week – 2 weeks shy of his 90th birthday. Since then, the stories that have been shared about him lead me to believe that he would have been an incredibly popular and resourceful person in the Next Economy – just as he was in the current one.

Grandad was, as they say in Northern England where he grew up, a 'dab hand' at pretty much anything he did. He built a caravan by the sea by hand from scratch, replumbed his son's crumbling house, and did everything in a D.I.Y. fashion from auto maintenance to shoe repair.

His skill, however, wasn't all with his hands, but also with people. He started the first Post Office Social club in his area, and led the way to raise enough money for them to build a location where the men and women of BT in Plymouth and their families could gather and socialize, and … you guessed it … build community.

Exactly the type of skills that will be in high demand in the Next Economy.

Currently, when something is broken, we generally throw it out, unless it is something vital, in which case we take it somewhere to get it repaired. There is, however, an undercurrent of D.I.Y. That flows just below this 'throw-away' society.

Consider the recent death of my iPod. I got the 'sad iPod face.', meaning it was almost certainly done for. My sister, however, insisted it was probably just the battery. My Mom went on eBay (she's the ebay queen) and bought an OEM battery, and gave it to my sister to fix. Well, something went wrong, and she accidentally unhooked a vital cable while putting it back together. It ended up coming back to me with a new battery – but a disconnected headphone jack.

I was looking seriously at shelling out $200 or so for a new iPod touch (which frankly, I really want), but then decided to have one last kick at the cat. So I found a youTube video that described really well how to get the iPod open, and with much fiddling, managed to get the cable plugged back in. Voila – fixed iPod. Total cost? About $18 for the battery.

Year ago, in the book Die Broke, Stephen Pollan described taking his old 'breadbox' Macintosh to an Apple store in Manhattan to get fixed (a wire was loose). The clerk looked at him in shock and said “This thing is really obsolete. It's going to cost $100 or so to fix it. You should really just get a new one.”
“Wow!” exclaimed the author, with feigned surprise. “I can get a new Apple for $100?”
“Well, no...” replied the clerk, only just starting to get it.
He fixed the old one.

As the flow of artificially cheap goods from overseas starts to slow in the next 10 to 15 years as the price of bunker fuel starts to climb, it is going to start to make so much more sense to fix what's broken, and buy second hand. To say nothing of the environmental and social degradation that comes from replacing your electronics constantly.

So next time you 'fall out of love' with your cell phone. Think carefully – is it really not doing the things you need it to do any more (enable you to call people, text message, play the odd game)? Or is it just boredom? Or better still, is it just a small, relatively easy fix you could probably do yourself with the help of a good online video?

Who knows, it might be an idea to join the legions of DIY enthusiasts, and get a jump on the Next Economy now.

The Next Economy

2010-02-22T17:21:00.000-08:00

So I started this blog out referring to Jeff Rubin's amazing book Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller Since then, I have referred a few times to 'the coming changes' without ever outlining what I believe those changes will be. I thought I would rectify that now.

What I am calling the 'Next Economy' is going to be shaped largely by three things: Climate Change, Peak Oil, and less concretely a public backlash against all things cheap and over-manufactured and flavorless.

Climate Change is now so widely accepted that the tables have turned; now people who doubt the effect of global warming are the ones being viewed as the tin-foil-hat wearing lunatics. The changes' most dramatic human impacts of this (for instance, as outlined in Cleo Paskal's book Global Warring) will largely involve the migration of large numbers of people away from areas where water becomes scarce, and where sea levels are rising. As a result, if you live in a desert – now would be a good time to move. And if you live somewhere like Southern Ontario, now would be a good time to invest in Real Estate.

Peak Oil is based on the increasingly accepted view that at least ½ of the oil there ever was has already been pumped out of the ground and burned. What is left, is the hard to get at/hard to refine oil like that which exists in the Tar Sands. That doesn't mean none of us will be able to get any gas in our cars in 5 years time, but it does mean that because the oil left in the ground costs so much more to extract – that the price of that gas is going to steadily climb. This will have predictable effects on our economy, and our way of life – especially considering that the average Caesar Salad travels around 2500 miles from farm to table.

Finally – this will all be shaped by a growing public backlash against the types of behaviors that have caused global warming and accelerated the arrival of peal oil. Wal Mart's 'warehouse on wheels' and it's endless shelves of cheap, disposable garbage that nobody needs. Tomatoes that feel and taste like racquetballs because they were picked under-ripe and chemically 'ripened' in a truck on the way to the store. Big box stores where nobody knows you, understands what you need, or particularly cares. Clothes whose price tag clearly indicate they must have been made in appalling working conditions – with possible child slaves.

This backlash has taken the form of an increased interest in shopping at local boutique stores, in growing vegetable gardens in the back yard, in taking public transit and in 'homesteading crafts' like knitting, sewing and preserving vegetables.

What is the next economy going to look like? Well for one it's going to be much more local than we have been used to. Almost everyone will be on the 100 mile diet, rather than just few hard core enthusiasts. Public Transit will be the preferred method of getting to and from work, and the nature of work will change. As the cost of overseas shipping skyrockets, more and more manufacturing industries are going to come back 'onshore', resulting in entire generations switching their vocations from barista or stock clerk in a big box store to craftsperson or factory worker.

Communities will get a lot more walkable as land uses intensify and diversify. Jeff Rubin says that 10,000,000 cars will come off the road. That means that if you own a home near a grocery store or transit route, your property will be worth a whole lot more than somewhere that can only be reached by car (or pick-up truck!) - unless you are far enough out to participate on the supply end of the aforementioned 100 mile diet.

People won't quibble any more about having a small shopping plaza open next to their suburban cul de sac - at least it will mean they won't have to drive anywhere for their bag of milk or their haircut. People will also have to get used to the meat packing plants and other 'less than pleasant' companies moving back to the city, after having been exiled to the country by a society that wanted less and less to do with where their food actually came from.

Will the future, though, be bleak in a world with paper butcher wrap instead of saran wrap (which is made of petroleum products) and all of us crammed into a limited number of biodiesel buses?

I don't think so, not for a minute. People are incredibly resourceful, and will find all sorts of creative ways of making money with their talents, of sharing their resources, of coming together as communities to help each other out, and of celebrating their collective victories.

The other day I got on an elevator with a well dressed man who was complaining that he had invested thousand of dollars in a snow blower, only to have no snow. “I was hoping to get outside and meet my neighbors for the second time this year as I offer to snow blow their driveways.” he remarked.

In the Next Economy, he will know his neighbors really well – because he will probably be trading that snow blowing service for homemade jam, or hand knitted mitts and a toque.

Greg Brown on his amazing record The Live One describes life in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan as one where “if you see someone stuck at the side of the road, you damn well better stop. People up there need each other,” he explains. “That's how you build community. All of this talk about intentional community is a bunch of baloney, people have to need each other.”

And that, will be the Next Economy in a nutshell.

OPG Announces Voluntary Power Rationing

2010-02-21T17:20:00.000-08:00

I got a lively, cheerful notice in the mail the other day, along with my garganutan Horizon Utilities bill - that announced that soon I would have one of the much vaunted 'smart meters' installed at my house.

Yes, Horizon is introducing time of use pricing for electricity. Use power during peak periods (which vary by season and day of week) and it'll run you 9.3c/kwh, mid peak - 8 c/kwh, and off peak, a miserly 4.4 c/kwh.

In effect, Ontario Power Generation has admitted that they do not have enough power to feed a potential peak demand (i.e. a province in full economic recovery on a hot summer day) and they are now asking people to reduce their use at certain times of the day, and save their use for other times when there is less demand on the system.

This is called 'voluntary rationing.'

Years ago, I had the immense privelege of going to Nicaragua, where I stayed for two seperate weeks in the capital Managua, and delivered training to two groups of contact centre employees. One morning in class, I asked if everyone had done their homework. Nobody had. When I asked for reasons, someone was kind enough to explain to this utterly ignorant northerner the realities of life in a city with a truly disfunctional grid.

Each section of the city, only had power at certain times of the day - and then for only 4 hour bursts. The people in my class who had not done their homework, only had power between midnight and 4:00 am. Not so helpful. And at 44C in the shade, with about 98% humidity, candles were totally out of the question (near the equator, the sun goes down promptly at 5:30 pm)

Now, Ontario has a looooong way to go before it reaches that point, and probably never will, but the prospect of the power generating authority for the province tacitly admitting there could potentially not be enough to go around, is a little chilling.

They're not the only ones saying that.

The constant theme of this blog is that for most of us in the west, in the face of things to come, life is just going to get less convenient. But doesn't have to get less pleasant, or less enjoyable.

Things can be awfully romantic by candlelight, and if you know how to sing, or play an acoustic instrument, you can be the life of the party even during a brownout.

People can still gather around a board game, and a glass of red wine, and have a real genuine conversation. It's like that ad on TV for Sobeys about when the power goes out, and everyone gets together for a big potluck because the food in their fridge is about to go off.

Maybe when we're not plugged into our iPods, or Netbooks, or...dare I say it (at the time I'm writing this) Canada vs. USA hockey games going on 5000 km away, then maybe we'll take time to connect with real people - people around us that we love, and could grow to love.

Maybe a little power rationing is just what a 'community' needs.

GIve Me Convenience, or Give Me Death

2010-02-15T17:00:00.000-08:00

While listening to CBC the other night, a journalist who had just returned from Haiti, asked what I think is an extremely relevant question in light of the coming changes we are likely to see in our planet.

“What would you do if you called 911, and nobody came?” Or if it was really obvious that there was no point in calling 911. Or if the phone system itself had totally shut down, and there was no way to call 911?

It’s a chilling question for those of us who count on what we view as the most basic infrastructure to always be there.

The reality is, though, that the future is certain to hold more dramatic weather events and extreme temperatures, which is certain to result in more frequent failure of our power, communication, and civil infrastructures. Just ask the people in Washington D.C. It might not be this year, or next, or even 10 years from now. But it’s coming.

Cody Lund’s When All Hell Breaks Loose
(not that I am anywhere close to being a Survivalist, but it was an interesting read) describes a study that was done where people who had at least contemplated what they would do in a disaster, were dramatically better able to handle the psychological trauma of such an event than those who had always denied it would happen.

So now’s your time to contemplate. When there’s nobody to answer your 911 call, what will you do?

Or if the power goes off for a week at a stretch – which is not far fetched. During the 2003 blackout, some were without power that long, and during the Montreal ice storm in ’99 some went without power for longer – how are you going to cope?

Is the solution to buy a big generator, and start spewing two stroke exhaust into the air? Or to get a woodburning stove, and start deforesting the urban canopy as soon as the lights go out? Or is it to prepare in a way that means that for a few days or weeks you might be inconvenienced, but will still survive.

Which is the crux of the whole debate going on about climate change in the first place: In order for our civilization to stand any chance of looking remotely like it does now, we are all going to have to get really inconvenienced.

Not walking 5 miles a day to get water inconvenienced, but by our standards, pretty damned awkward.

For instance, to get to my job in Toronto, I have a choice of driving one person to a car – listening to my music, not having to breath other people’s air, and having my own space - or cramming in like a sardine for the hour and a quarter GO bus or GO train trip.

Guess which one is remarkably inconvenient. It’s also the only one that makes sense in the context of contributing in some small way to the solution. Here’s the deal though – when gas reaches $1.40 a litre (my prediction is by Victoria Day) – the $18.50 for a day pass is going to look a whole lot more convenient that cutting back on the grocery bill to pay for gas.

The question is: How to get people to choose inconvenient – but more sensible – solutions before they (in terms of gas prices) or we (in terms of constant, crippling weather events) hit the wall?

Because you know what? Some people are going to just have to suck it up. Which is a skill a whole lot more people are going to have to learn if things are to stand any chance of improving.

Farmers and the Environment

2010-02-09T17:59:00.000-08:00

I wrote the other day about Farmers, and how they tend to resist change by attempting to eliminate any kind of negative effect that could result from proposed changes.

This leads to me, somewhat obliquely to the hand wringing going on by climate change scientists around the world about how to get people to do something – anything – to address climate change.

By some estimates, the amount of carbon in the air (in parts per million) that we need to be at in order to prevent some really serious consequences is 350 ppm. Not so bad, except that we are currently at 387.27 ppm. So we're pretty much hosed. What these climate change scientists are basically saying is that if we turn all the cars, factories, and fossil fuel burning power plants off today – right now! - then we'll be at a safe level in a couple hundred years after the environment has naturally sequestered the dangerous excess.

This illustrates quite nicely the problem with putting a bunch of Hunters in charge of managing change.

One of my son's favorite books (he's 5 years old) is Dr. Seuss' classic, The Lorax. In it, a small furry creature, the Lorax, encounters an industrious figure known as the Onceler, and entreats him at every opportunity to stop despoiling the environment. Of course his entreaties fall on deaf ears, and the last of the Trufula trees is felled, and the whole system collapses.

The essential message of the Lorax for industry, is: “If you don't change your ways, you will have no more raw materials left to produce with – and we'll all be destroyed.”

Unfortunately, the little understood (and largely unintentional) message to the environmental movement is: Shrill denouncements of industry – telling companies and people that what they are doing is bad-bad-bad-bad and they need to shape up – basically gets you ignored.”

In the end, the coming environmental/geo-political hardships are as much the fault of the Loraxes as they are of the Oncelers.

Farmers (I use the term technically not vocationally), it has been said, fear change of any kind – and the more someone (especially them) is likely to be harmed by the change, the more they resist it. Don't believe me? Open up an Albertan newspaper any time, and you will see a letter to the editor, or God help me an actual editorial – denouncing the 'soft science' of climate change, and refusing to acknowledge the realities that are as plain as the nose on Gaia's face.

Why? Because if we adopt harsh environmental standards, and begin to cut back our consumption levels to the point that the planet can sustain them – people are going to get hurt. Jobs will be lost, families will be uprooted, communities will disappear. It is inevitable. It is also much more immediate, much more 'real' than the oblique threat of the your summertime being two degrees warmer. “Hell, we're in Canada” they say. “We could use a couple extra degrees.”

What's the solution? Conversation, dialogue. Engaging your friends and neighbors one conversation at at a time. In coffee shops, on the GO train, whenever the opportunity presents itself. The Hunters need to engage in rational, one on one dialogue with every Farmer they can find, and the conversation needs to acknowledge that the short term pain will be great, and that the Farmers hate the idea, and it's ok to hate it every step of the way– but that the consequences of inaction are far, far worse.

Change is in the Air

2010-02-04T17:20:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Ryan and Raise the Hammer for posting my thoughts on the Lizard Brain and resisting change.

The LRT debate is not the only place that I am encountering this kind of resistance these days – it's everywhere. At work, in our communities, at all levels of Government, at our schools – every day there are people around you who are resisting change that you, and people who see the world the way you do, agree is absolutely necessary. In a lot of cases - this is good. Necessary checks and balances on our system. Reckless, unfettered change is just as bad as stagnation.

The crux of the matter stems from a basic division in world views. It has been said that there are two types of people: Those who feel the need to divide the world into two types, and those who don't. I am definitely in the former camp.

In my world, the most meaningful distinctions is: Hunters and Farmers.

Hunters, are for the most part impulsive, make quick decisions, are very comfortable with risk and change, but have short attention spans, and not a lot of staying power. Traditionally their job was to sit around much of the time, and then when people started to get hungry, go out and get dinner. Often alone, or in small groups, and in a state of hyper-awareness (which we would now call 'easily distracted') they would pounce on any sudden movement and deliver a quick, decisive and lethal blow. Then they would drag the carcass back to camp for someone else to deal with. In a primitive society before farming, everything depended on the Hunter's ability to think quickly, adapt to change, and make instant – good – decisions.

Farmers, are for the most part patient, 'in-it-for-the-long-haul' kind of people. Traditionally their job was to make balanced decisions about seeds, sow them cautiously, and patiently care for the shoots and plants until dutifully harvesting.the crops. This way everyone could be assured food. With the diminished role of hunters in our primitive society – everything hung on the Farmer's ability to be cautious, patient, and do what has worked before.

Seeing the pattern yet?

So with that in mind, I – a bona fide, dyed-in-the-wool Hunter, present the two types of change resistance that you are likely to encounter. Think of it as a public service announcement that applies to everything from recalcitrant set-in-their-ways Primary school Principals, to local NIMBY groups opposing...oh...say...a downtown LRT.

The two ways of resisting change:
When change is proposed, say things like “That would never work in our town/business/school because things are different here. People would never 'use florescent lightbulbs/abandon their cars/donate their time/etc.' It would just never work in our context.” This is the adult equivalent of a kid putting their hands over their ears and loudly saying “la-la-la-la-la” Sometimes this works, but if the change is being mandated from above – it doesn't always work.

The other wasy is to, once the change is inevitable, attempt to gain control over the change itself. To try and micromanage and control every facet of the proposed changes in an effort to minimize any effect. The main tool for doing this is to demand perfection – or absolute fairness – or that nobody be even slightly negatively affected by the changes being suggested.

This is of course impossible. If you understand change, then you understand Robespierre's famous assertion that “If you want to make an Omelette, you've got to break a few eggs.” The reality is, that with any change, there are winners, and losers – that is the nature of change. The question , then, is do the benefits outweigh the costs? Is it enough of an improvement to enough people – and is it a significantly small enough impact to a small enough group of people? More importantly, who decides?

In the end, it's a process that decides. A process of push and pull, of resistors trying to protect those that they feel will be hurt, and the change agents trying to create a benefit for those who would be helped.

Keep in mind, though, that Farmers have the upper hand in resisting change. They are patient, careful, and consistent in everything they do. The change-loving Hunters tend to be impulsive, make inappropriate remarks that derail the process, and give up easily when they don't see quick results.

Keep this in mind if you are advocating change of any kind. The more eager you are for change, the more likely the fight is to take longer than you are initially willing to commit. Choose your battles carefully, 'cause you're in it for the long haul.

The Lizard Brain and the LRT

2010-02-03T19:02:00.000-08:00

So I'm listening to the audiobook of Seth Godin's latest effort, Lynchpin. It has all sorts of interesting things to say about the nature of work and art, but the part that appealed to me the most was his discussion of what he calls 'the resistance'.

The resistance, is basically the part of your brain Dr.s call the Amygdala – or as some call it, the Lizard Brain. The Lizard brain is the second most primitive part of your central nervous system, and it only has a few concerns: Eating, Not being eaten, making more lizards (or whatever species it might be), anger, revenge, lust, things like that. In other words, all of the baser emotions that 'civilized' people know they have, but try and deny.

So when you are in a situation with an otherwise rational person, and suddenly they go Crazy Ivan, chances are that their Lizard Brain feels threatened. You have (however inadvertantly) threatened their ability to eat, reproduce, or avoid becoming prey. The threat itself may have come just from suggesting they do something differently. And such threats make people cranky.

Which brings us to the rather odd debate playing out in the local newspaper about the potential implementation of an LRT line across the centre of the city. The pro-LRT side has lined up on one side of the debate citing grand and glorious future benefits – greater investment in downtown, greater pedestrian activity, a greater sense of community – all good things. But in and of themselves, good things down the road sometime. In some not-too-distant, but totally unquantifiable future, things will be made immeasurably better by the LRT.

So of course, on the other side of the debate, the Lizard Brains of the various opponents are doing their collective nut. Letters and comments in the Spectator recently revealed a terrified, highly vocal group of business owners downtown who thinking with their Amygdalas. And when animals get cornered, they strike.

Simply put, they say the LRT will not work – because it's not what we have now. It's new, it's different, it's *gasp* unproven! The whole concept of an LRT track running through the downtown has made them feel threatened in their ability to eat, or not be eaten (in a figurative, competetive sense) – and they are lashing out.

The reality is, that the PRO-LRT side has done what most groups do when opposing bald faced NIMBYism. They have responded with facts and arguments and reams of data supporting their argument. “Look at Portland! Look at Calgary! Look at all of this data proving how many more people will use it!”
What has not happened, is any head-on effort to address the basic emotion in play here: Naked Fear.

This situation may stem from a common misunderstanding about how people make decisions. Most people think that decisions are reached after a careful analysis of the facts. Nothing could be further from the truth. People decide things based on 'gut reaction', and then spend enormous amounts of time and energy coming up with facts and figures to justify their decision. As a result, they cannot be swayed by facts, not matter how compelling. Don't believe me? Go out right now and try and change someone's mind about abortion or capital punishment. Go on. I'll wait.

There. Futile, wasn't it? You had all the arguments, all the data, all the facts. And they were irrelevant, because they didn't address the emotion.

Well, the first thing they teach you in customer service school about dealing with an angry (or in this case fearful) customer, is acknowledge the emotion head on (if a customer service representative has ever told you "I understand why you are upset...now let me see how I can help you..." then they are doing what they were trained to do). Next, we need to enter into an honest dialogue about what is causing the fear and how to resolve it. That means not devolving into name calling and pointing fingers – even if the other side started it.

That probably means the Chairperson of a Pro-LRT group inviting the Downtown BIA to a meeting to discuss issues and concerns in a respectful, non-confrontational way. If we want LRT to work in thic city, someone is going to have to take the first step to address the fear through meaningful dialogue. Because those of us who want change have the most to lose from things staying the same – and keeping the status quo is much easier to do than making meaningful change. We're the ones with the heavy lifting to do - we need to be the ones who extend the olive branch.

Dialogue is the most basic building block of community. Face to face, real time dialogue. Not through twitter, or emails, or RTH, or the Spec. But real people sitting across the table (preferably with food involved) to discover that in the end they really want mostly the same things - a better city for everyone.

Or maybe I'm just hopelessly naïve.

Why Jeff Rubin Makes Me Want to Patch My Jeans

2010-02-02T18:06:00.000-08:00

Years ago, when I was a little boy, I had a severe case of what could only be called "Scalpel Knees" I could wear through the knees of a new pair of pants in about 2 1/2 weeks. And when I did, my mom did the only sensible thing she could - she would simply patch it. I hated the big blue patches on the outside of my jeans, and kept trying to convince her to sew the patches on the inside of where the hole was. This would of course be pointless. So the jeans kept getting patched. There was a kind of street cred to being fairly scruffy when you're 5, and the patches made me look far too respectable.

Now I'm "all growed up," and I have a wonderfully comfortable pair of jeans, that I have worn to just the right consistency. Except that there is a HUGE hole in them, just to the right of the fly. They are still comfortable, I still wear them around the house, but can't be seen in public with them.

Normally, I would go out and buy a new pair of jeans – recession notwithstanding, you can usually pick up a pair somewhere for $20 or so – if you have a Costco card, or aren't particularly concerned about being on the cutting edge of fashion.

But Jeff Rubin makes me want to patch them. A while ago I finished Rubin's amazing book Why Your World is About to get a Whole Lot Smaller. In it, he posits that our whole lifestyle is about to change dramatically because there simply isn't enough oil left in the ground any where that it's cost effective to drill it out. He predicts triple digit oil prices are here to stay, and says that as gas goes to $5-7 a gallon in the U.S. in the next year or so – up to 10,000,000 cars might come off the road in the coming decade.

He also says that pretty much everything we enjoy about our standard of living is based on the availability of cheap oil. Everything from the plastic that makes nearly everything we use, to the cheap jeans that have been shipped by container from Bangladesh. Which is to say that as the price of bunker fuel (the cheap, gooey oil that container ships run on) goes through the roof – it's no longer going to make sense to get our clothes from overseas, and we'll start to bring those jobs back home.

That, however, is going to require a shift in thinking by the consuming public.

Years ago I worked in a really nice Men's clothing store in Calgary, and there was a sale table at the front with dress shirts on for about $30. A gentleman came in and began to complain loudly that everything was being made in China, why couldn't he buy a shirt made in Canada. “Of course you can,” explained the owner, Graham. He took the gentleman to the back of the store where the $120 Canadian made Behar Cline shirts were. The man walked out with a $30 Chinese special.

Then Graham went on one of his usual rants about how if people aren't willing to pay the prices required to manufacture items in North America, then they need to shut up about all the jobs going offshore to China. "They're the ones chasing the jobs there by refusing to pay the higher prices!"

So all of this is to say – if the jobs do come back, and pay standard North American wages and benefits - it is soon going to be no longer feasible for most of us to go and buy new clothes every time we get a snag or a rip in our favorite pair of jeans.

In that case, I would like to start the whole “patching your jeans' trend now. Now, I have never exactly been a fashion forward kind of guy – but I”m thinking the appropriately coloured patch tastefully sewn on would fit me in quite nicely into the artistic elite down on James St. North.

That combined with the fact that when neighborhood fixtures Warren and Catherine moved out of here a year ago, they left behind a sewing machine, means I'm rarin' to give it a go.

If it works out, I'll try and post photos.