Posted on 07/27/2006 4:28:38 AM PDT by Tolik
I was born a few years after WW2 and remember as a small kid going to the county fair and seeing work horses pull heavy weights in a horse pulling competetion. In the fall there were so many farms where you could go buy fresh pressed apple cider. So much food was grown locally. Now those farms are either turf farms or housing developments. It's actually a sin to pave over good farmland.
Quite frankly sir that may be so in your rarefied circle but in mine it is not so.
83% of us do our own yard work and 32% of us grow our own vegetables and this is with no financial need to do so.
Should things completely collapse in one city we are well able to pick up the slack. In fact the Katrina/Rita incident proved that.
The death toll from Katrina was around 1,400. By contrast the death toll from the the Lake Okeechobee hurricane of 1928 was 2,500 and it was 8,000 for the 1900 Galveston hurricane. And NOLA had a much higher population density then either of those areas.
It was disorganized and chaotic but you might noticed that no one starved to death. Even with the most clueless and incompetent local leadership around the system actually works.
Something like the Yellowstone caldera going off would be quite another story but in that case we are all screwed. So the total collapse of civilization in the US is unlikely.
Imagine al-Qaida attacking the New York Stock Exchange or an unexpected North Korean missile taking out a West Coast city. What if Beijing suddenly had to sell off billions of its accumulated American dollars? Or how about a good old 1970s-style recession in which interest rates hit 20 percent, with inflation and unemployment each hovering near 10 percent? What would millions of younger Americans do - people who have known only the prosperity, material surfeit and mostly peace and security of the 1980s and 1990s?
Clean up the mess and kick some butt in case of terror attack. Despite the universal delusion of the older generation that the youngsters are helpless dopes we actually are more productive and harder working then the last generation. We are not mindless nor do we lack creativity nor motivation. In fact it maybe argued that we have too much.
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"It's actually a sin to pave over good farmland."
Amen brother. We seem to forget that we were given stewardship over creation, not the right to casually destroy it.
How do you grow sufficient food if there's less than enough farmland to grow it on? And what about energy? Some of the more promising ways to help reduce our foreign oil usage is through things like biodiesel or using corn in home furnaces.
If you like OPEC, you'll love it when we become a net food importer.
"However, I have to ask, where have all the optimists gone?"
I'm optimistic as it relates to my circle of influence; i.e. myself, my family, my friends, and my church. We're going through times of change, and change usually brings opportunity.
As for the rest of the world, well, I think that one of the best ways to "save the world" is by starting with your own backyard.
I don't understand some people. Farmland is the most important resource there is. It can't be created in a laboratory or factory. Only nature can make it, and it takes a long, long time.
Can people live without iPods, TVs, a closet full of more clothes than they can wear out, ATVs, computer games, and giant 4,000 square foot houses? Yes. Can they live without food - all of which is grown on farms? No.
I see great, great danger ahead.
'Pull the plug' for even a day and watch it disappear in our big cities......
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