Global Problems, Local Solutions     
 

Local Future Articles

Did GM Arise from Peak Oil Ashes?
Saturday, July 18, 2009
By Aaron Wissner

Many individuals from Middleville and Caledonia own stock in General Motors, either by direct stock, mutual funds, 401K investments, or retirement contributions.

On July 10, news reports claimed that General Motors emerged from bankruptcy protection.

More accurately, the US government created a new company, Vehicle Acquisition Holdings LLC, which purchased four divisions of GM: Cadillac, Chevrolet, GMC and Buick.

General Motors then changed its name to Motors Liquidation Company. The GM stock symbol changed from GMGMQ to MTLQQ on July 15.

GM stock had been worth a maximum of over $90 per share at the start of May in 2000 and is currently worth less than $0.40 per share.

Motors Liquidation Company is now tasked with selling shuttered plants, settling liability claims and lawsuits from accident victims, paying secured and unsecured creditors, and paying bondholders. GM stock is expected to have “no value” even under the most “optimistic of scenarios” at the end of the ongoing bankruptcy liquidation process.

In addition to purchasing the four divisions of GM, Vehicle Acquisition Holdings purchased the name “General Motors”, and on July 10, changed its name to “General Motors”, thus leaving the impression the GM emerged from bankruptcy.

Ninety percent of this new “General Motors” company is owned by the US Government, the Canadian Government, and the United Auto Workers' new VEBA retirement fund. The remaining ten percent is owned by Motors Liquidation Company (the original GM).

The new GM may offer and initial public stock offering as early as next year, with two billion shares being available for sale, while the current owners, listed above, own only ½ billion common shares.

GM sales began to decline earlier in the decade as rising oil prices led to a decrease in light truck and SUV sales. The primary cause of oil price increases were the failure of the global oil supply to grow since 2005.

Geologists have known since the 1950’s that the global oil supply would eventually reach a maximum, now known as “peak oil”. Numerous books published in the last five years suggest that peak oil would be reached in the 2005 to 2009 time frame. During 2006, the US Government examined the timing of peak oil and also determined that it could occur at any time.

Assorted books by experts, such as geologists Colin Campbell and Ken Deffeyes, explain that peak oil would lead to changes in oil prices, which would in turn lead to broader economic impacts, including economic recession or an economic depression or even an overall collapse of the global economy.

Based on sales projections, General Motors did not plan for the possibility of rising oil prices or the coming economic recession suggested by peak oil.

As part of the sale of the four automotive divisions to Vehicle Acquisition Holdings, the same team of top managers who lead the old General Motors to bankruptcy will continue to run the new General Motors.

In planning for the future, Middleville and Caledonia residents, businesses, and public servants may find it beneficial to learn about peak oil; to consider how the stagnant global oil supply has impacted their finances over the past several years; and the various ways in which the declining global oil supply in the future will impact the economy, their investments, and their daily lives.

About the Author

Aaron Wissner is a graduate of the University of Michigan with concentrations in mathematics and science, a secondary teacher of 17 years, and founder of the educational nonprofit Local Future.

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Local Food Security
Saturday, July 11, 2009
By Aaron Wissner

The future will be local. Whether this is due to a decline in the global energy supply or because a shifting climate necessitates the changes, the future will be local.

For any community that is interested in continuing and thriving in the future, the top priority is to provide ample food for everyone.

At the moment, most of the food that most of us purchase is grown far from home, processed far from home, and transported long distances, just to make it to our dinner plates.

The amount of energy required to provide us this food is staggering. It takes approximately ten times more energy to grow and get the food to our plates than the amount of energy the food actually contains (as measured in Calories).

Most of the energy that goes into that meal comes from petroleum and coal. The supply of both of these fuels is decreasing by the day, which points to a time when either the prices for these fuels will rise dramatically, or that there will be energy shortages, or that we will see major price swings which impact the economy severely.

Over the past few years, we discovered exactly what happens when total global oil extraction fails to increase. Those who purchased oil thought that oil would be more expensive in the future. This expectation drove the price upwards from $30/barrel to over $140/barrel. As this was happening, all of the businesses and industries that required a steady price of oil ended up experiencing severe complications.

Now, we are living in the aftermath of the widespread, but unrealistic, expectation that the global economy would just keep chugging along, no matter what was going on with the fuel. Now, our food security is a growing concern.

In the Middleville and Caledonia area, there is ample land and ample water to grow ample food for everyone. At the moment, much of the land is being used for lawns, or to grow a handful of commodity foods.

This pattern of land use is entirely dependent on an expanding economic system with relatively cheap and abundant fuel. We’ve also seen that an expanding economic system is definitely not a given, and that the price of fuel is seemingly impossible to predict.

Taking care of our families, and our communities, requires that we take responsibility for our own local food security. This means thinking seriously about where our food would come from if that grocery store food became unaffordable or if the shelves stopped being restocked.

For some people, the idea of energy or climate impacting our food supply may seem preposterous, yet that does diminish the importance of our food security.

We suggest two things to increase local food security and to prepare for a more local future.

First, start buying food that is already grown in the Middleville and Caledonia areas. Get to know the growers, and if you have particular requests for fresh food items, let them know. The more food we buy from local growers, the more incentive they will have to grow more food next year, which in turn increases our degree of local food security, not to mention the boost to our local economy.

Next, begin growing food yourself. Whether it is a tomato plant in a pot, or a large diverse garden, growing our own food is a concrete way to increase our food security. For those who already garden, a challenge is in considering how to grow food without the use of store purchased plants, fertilizers and pesticides.

During hard times, we Americans have grown food. The call to plant “Victory Gardens” during World War II invigorated our nation to make food security a national priority. With our local future coming closer by the day, it is time to again get serious about our own food security, for our families, for our community, and for our nation.

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A letter from the future, (part 1 of 3)
Saturday, June 13, 2009
As prepared by David Perkins

Forewarned is forearmed. While many Middleville and area residents as well as many Americans are living day to day, paying bills and putting food on the table, Local Future believes it is critical to ALSO look forward. As their name implies, Local Future defines its role as helping Middleville plan for the distant tomorrows. A letter from the future, part one provides a thought provoking viewpoint, and is reprinted with permission from Richard Heinberg, one of the movement’s most knowledgeable and prolific writers, and The Post Carbon Institute.

The entire MuseLetter (March 2001) is available at www.richardheinberg.com and www.localfuture.org/middleville

Greetings to you, people of the year 2009! You are living in the year of my birth; I am one hundred years old now, writing to you from the year 2109. I am using the last remnants of the advanced physics that scientists developed during your era, in order to send this electronic message back in time to one of your computer networks. I hope that you receive it, and that it will give you reason to pause and reflect on your world and what actions to take with regard to it.

Of myself I shall say only what it is necessary to say: I am a survivor. I have been extremely fortunate on many occasions and in many ways, and I regard it as something of a miracle that I am here to compose this message. I have spent much of my life attempting to pursue the career of historian, but circumstances have compelled me also to learn and practice the skills of farmer, forager, guerrilla fighter, engineer - and now physicist. My life has been long and eventful . . . but that is not what I have gone to so much trouble to convey to you. It is what I have witnessed during this past century that I feel compelled to tell you by these extraordinary means.

You are living at the end of an era. Perhaps you cannot understand that. I hope that, by the time you have finished reading this letter, you will. I want to tell you what is important for you to know, but you may find some of this information hard to absorb. Please have patience with me. I am an old man and I don't have much time for niceties. If what I say seems unbelievable, think of it as science fiction. But please pay attention...

Energy has been the central organizing - or should I say, disorganizing? - principle of this century… Transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, lighting, heating - all were revolutionized, and the results reached deep into the lives of everyone in the industrialized world. Everybody became utterly dependent on the new gadgets; on imported, chemically fertilized food; on chemically synthesized and fossil-fuel-delivered therapeutic drugs; on the very idea of perpetual growth (after all, it would always be possible to produce more energy to fuel more transportation and manufacturing - wouldn't it?).

Well, if the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were the upside of the growth curve, this past century has been the downside - the cliff. It should have been perfectly obvious to everyone that the energy sources on which they were coming to rely were exhaustible. Somehow the thought never sank in very deep. I suppose that's because people generally tend to get used to a certain way of life, and from then on they don't think about it very much. That's true today, too. The young people now have never known anything different; they take for granted our way of life - scavenging among the remains of industrial civilization for whatever can be put to immediate use - as though this is how people have always lived, as if this is how we were meant to live.,,

The energy crisis. Well, it all started around the time I was born. Folks then thought it would be brief, that it was just a political or technical problem, that soon everything would get back to normal. They didn't stop to think that "normal," in the longer-term historical sense, meant living on the energy budget of incoming sunlight and of the vegetative growth of the biosphere. Perversely, they thought "normal" meant using fossil energy like there was no tomorrow. And, I guess, there almost wasn't. That was a classic self-confirming expectation - nearly.

At first, most people thought the shortages could be solved with "technology." However, in retrospect that's quite ludicrous. After all, their modern gadgetry had been invented to use a temporary abundance of energy. It didn't produce energy. Yes, there were the nuclear reactors (heavens, those things turned out to be nightmares!), but they cost so much energy to build and decommission that the power they produced during their lifetimes barely paid for them in energy terms. The same with photovoltaic panels: it seems that nobody ever sat down and calculated how much energy it actually took to manufacture them, starting with the silicon wafers produced as byproducts of the computer industry, and including the construction of the manufacturing plant itself. It turned out that the making of the panels ate up nearly as much power as the panels themselves generated duing their lifetime. Nevertheless, quite a few of them were built - I wish that more had been! - and many are still operating (that's what's powering the device that allows me to transmit this signal to you from the future). Solar power was a good idea; its main drawback was simply that it was incapable of satisfying people's energy-guzzling habits. With the exhaustion of fossil fuels, no technology could have maintained the way of life that people had gotten used to. But it took quite a while for many to realize that. Their pathetic faith in technology turned out to be almost religious in character, as though their gadgets were votive objects connecting them with an invisible but omnipotent god capable of overturning the laws of thermodynamics…

Naturally, some of the first effects of the energy shortages showed up as economic recessions, followed by an endless depression. The economists had been operating on the basis of their own religion - an absolute, unshakable faith in the Market-as-God; in supply-and-demand. They figured that if oil started to run out, the price would rise, offering incentives for research into alternatives. But the economists never bothered to think this through. If they had, they would have realized that the revamping of society's entire energy infrastructure would take decades, while the price signal from resource shortages might come only weeks or months before some hypothetical replacement would be needed. Moreover, they should have realized that there was no substitute for basic energy resources…

The economists could think only in terms of money; basic necessities like water and energy only showed up in their calculations in terms of dollar cost, which made them functionally interchangeable with everything else that was priceable - oranges, airliners, diamonds, baseball cards, whatever. But, in the last analysis, basic resources weren't interchangeable with other economic goods at all: you couldn't drink baseball cards, no matter how big or valuable your collection, once the water ran out. Nor could you eat dollars, if nobody had food to sell. And so, after a certain point, people started to lose faith in their money. And as they did so, they realized that faith had been the only thing that made money worth anything in the first place. Currencies just collapsed - first in one country, then in another. There was inflation, deflation, barter, and thievery on every imaginable scale as matters sorted themselves out.

Next week -- In the era when I was born, commentators used to liken the global economy to a casino…

http://heinberg.wordpress.com/2001/03/01/110-a-letter-from-the-future/

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CSA - Shared Risk Builds Community
Saturday, June 6, 2009
By David Perkins

Nature’s problem-solving ways will not be pleasant.

Local Future’s primary goal is to help Middleville and area residents make as smooth and painless a transition as possible to a sustainable future. Communities that become successful “transition towns” will be much better equipped to thrive in the uncertain future that is approaching like a runaway freight train. Unemployment, homelessness, and lost retirement savings are only the beginning. This week’s column is with permission from Richard Heinberg, one of the movement’s most knowledgable and prolific writers, and The Post Carbon Institute. The entire letter is highly recommended and available at www.richardheinberg.com.

“This month's MuseLetter brings together two pieces that share a connecting theme — is humanity capable of making the necessary changes to save the planet and so itself? The first article Look on the Bright Side discusses this from the viewpoint of the huge shifts that are already occurring as a result of economic decline. Somebody's Gotta Do It explores the job of trying to lead change and the challenges faced by all who attempt so to do…

World energy consumption is declining. That's right: oil consumption is down, coal consumption is down, and the IEA is projecting world electricity consumption to decline by 3.5 percent this year…

C02 emissions are falling. This follows from the previous point. I'm still waiting for confirmation from direct NOAA measurements of CO2 in the atmosphere, but it stands to reason that if world oil and coal consumption is declining, then carbon emissions must be doing so as well. The economic crisis has accomplished what the Kyoto Protocol couldn't…

Consumption of goods is falling…The number of vehicle miles traveled (VMT) is falling…There are fewer cars on the road. People are junking old cars faster than new ones are being purchased. In the US, where there are now more cars on the road than there are licensed drivers, this represents an extraordinary shift in a very long-standing trend…

The world's over-leveraged, debt-based financial system is failing. Growth in consumption is killing the planet, but arguing against economic growth is made difficult by the fact that most of the world's currencies are essentially loaned into existence, and those loans must be repaid with interest. Thus if the economy isn't growing, and therefore if more loans aren't being made, thus causing more money to be created, the result will be a cascading series of defaults and foreclosures that will ruin the entire system. It's not a sustainable system given the fact that the world's resources (the ultimate basis for all economic activity) are finite; and, as the proponents of Ecological and Biophysical Economics have been saying for years, it's a system that needs to be replaced with one that can still function in a condition of steady or contracting consumption rates…

Gardening is going gonzo. According to the New York Times ("College Interns Getting Back to Land," May 25) thousands of college students are doing summer internships on farms this year…

But wait, before our cheering becomes an uncontrollable frenzy, we should stop to remember that most of these developments are due to an economic crisis that is taking a huge toll. With the possible exception of the last item on the list (and maybe some of those bicycle purchases), we're not talking about voluntary behavior that's evidence of forethought and collective intelligence. Whatever gains in sustainability these trends signify have come at an enormous cost in terms of unemployment, homelessness, and lost retirement savings…

At its core, the dilemma is this: We humans have overshot Earth's carrying capacity through overpopulation and over-consumption, and have created all sorts of other problems in doing so (such as climate change). But nature will take care of all these difficulties. Overpopulation will eventually be solved by starvation and disease. Over-consumption will be reined in by resource depletion and scarcity. Climate change will take longer to fix, maybe thousands or millions of years — assuming we don't turn Earth into Venus…

But nature's ways of solving our problems are not going to be pleasant. And so the enormous, overriding question confronting our species during the remainder of this century will be, Are we humans capable of getting out ahead of nature's checks so as to proactively rein in our population and consumption in ways we can live with?...But the items outlined above suggest that we've turned a corner. It's no longer a matter of nature "eventually" providing checks on humanity's boisterous expansionism. That's starting to happen…”

The following Somebody's Gotta Do It , is from a May 4 posting from Heinberg on the Post Carbon Institute website.

“Hi. My job is trying to save the world, and I'd like to tell you a little about my line of work… it's not all a bed of roses. The biggest problems with trying to save the world are: first, that it doesn't always seem to want to be saved; and second, that those of us trying to save it can't agree on why it needs saving or how to go about doing so… When I say "save the world," I mean preventing human civilization from collapsing in a chaotic, violent way that would entail enormous amounts of suffering and death… But not everyone who works full-time at saving the world has the same balance of priorities… This is a problem. If all of us world-savers can't get on the same page about what's wrong, our efforts are likely to lack coherence, or might even cancel one another out… Given that there isn't a consensus among us, can we world-savers accomplish anything useful?..

Historically, there has been a very close correlation between energy consumption growth and economic growth, so with less energy available it may not be possible to continue growing the global economy in customary ways. Almost nobody in the climate community wants to talk about that… the fact is, we have an economy that's designed only to grow; if it stops growing — as has happened over the past six months — the results are perceived as catastrophe. If world energy supplies are set to contract, we need a different kind of economy, one that can still function with a stable or declining throughput of materials and energy. But we're not even going to start trying to design one until more people start telling the truth about where we're headed… It's a tough balance. If you tell the truth to a fault, you don't get invited to policy seminars, and politicians avoid you like swine flu. If you sugar coat the message, you have to live with the knowledge that the vast majority of people on our planet have almost no awareness of what is about to happen to them, and you aren't telling them…

Are we succeeding? Is the world better off because we're trying to save it? Well, maybe my opinion is inherently biased, given what I do for a living. As disappointed as I sometimes get about the near-futility of trying to wake my fellow citizens up to the fact that we're collectively driving straight toward history's biggest cliff, I don't see anything better to do with my time. Nor do I see any better hope for humanity than the efforts of the tiny number of our species who understand at least some aspect of our predicament enough to explain it to their fellows and formulate some strategic responses to it…”

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What is a Transition Town, and why not Middleville?
Saturday, May 30, 2009
By David Perkins

It begins when a small collection of motivated individuals within a community come together with a shared concern: How can Middleville and area residents respond to the challenges, and opportunities, of Peak Oil and Climate Change?

A Transition Town initiative is a community working together to look Peak Oil and Climate Change squarely in the eye and address this BIG question:
For all those aspects of life that Middleville needs in order to sustain itself and thrive, how does it significantly increase resilience (to mitigate the effects of Peak Oil) and drastically reduce carbon emissions (to mitigate the effects of Climate Change)?

Local Future believes that only by involving all residents, businesses, public bodies, community organizations and schools - will it be possible to come up with the most innovative, effective and practical ideas, and have the energy and skills to carry them out. Middleville’s future has the potential to be more rewarding, abundant and enjoyable than today, and by working together it’s possible to unleash the collective enthusiasm and genius of local residents to make this transition.

Transition Towns number over 130 worldwide, and include the US towns of Boulder and Lyons in Colorado, Santa Cruz, Sebastopol, Laguna and Pine Mountain in California, Montpelier in

Vermont, Portland in Maine, Ketchum and Sand Point in Idaho, Berea, Kentucky, and Ashland, Oregon.

The Transition Town model is a loose set of real-world principles and practices that have been built up over time, though experimentation and observation of communities as they drive forward to build local resilience and reduce carbon emissions.

Underpinning the Transition Model is a recognition of the following points, and Local Future columns will provide area residents more detail on each in the upcoming weeks.

1. Climate Change and Peak Oil require urgent action.

2. Life with less energy is inevitable and it is better to plan for it than be taken by surprise.

3. industrial society has lost the resilience to be able to cope with energy shocks.

4. Communities have to act together, and act now.

5. Regarding the world economy and the consumptive patterns within it, as long as the laws of physics apply, infinite growth within a finite system (such as planet earth) simply isn't possible.

6. Mankind has demonstrated phenomenal levels of ingenuity and intelligence as they’ve raced up the energy curve over the last 150 years, and there's no reason why they can't use those qualities, and more, as they negotiate their way down from the peak of the energy mountain .

7. If communities plan and act early enough, and use their creativity and cooperation to unleash the genius within them, then they can build a future that could be far more fulfilling and enriching, more connected and more gentle on the earth than the lifestyles they have today.

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America's Destiny - The Real "Inconvenient Truth"
Saturday, May 23, 2009
By David Perkins

“We are the hapless perpetrators of our own demise: we are driving full speed on the self-chosen “industrialization” highway toward a minefield of lethal limits to our existing lifestyle paradigm; yet we are culturally incapable of stopping or of exiting from the highway.”

Local Future believes that area residents, like most Americans, are willing to work hard, take pride in their accomplishments, enjoy their leisure, and hope for an even better life for their children. The primary intent of this weekly column is to present the best thinking and solutions available, to help the movement towards local sustainability. Every once in a while we believe it’s important to remind our readers why a “local future” is so vital. This week’s post, with permission from Chris Clugston and The Oil Drum, is that wake up call. His very detailed and documented analysis can be read in its entirety on our web site. Chris writes…

“America’s Paradox -- The cause of our “success” will be the cause of our demise…

America’s culture of persistent resource overexploitation has enabled our historically unprecedented “success”—our extraordinary American way of life. Unfortunately, our culture of persistent resource overexploitation is also responsible for our “predicament”—irreparable societal overextension. And, since we are unwilling to voluntarily relinquish our success in order to resolve our predicament, our culture of persistent resource over-exploitation will be responsible for our inevitable demise—societal collapse.

The ultimate irony is that the more quickly we deplete remaining domestic and global resource reserves in futile attempts to perpetuate our American way of life, the more quickly we will reach a resource limit and trigger our Societal Collapse.

America’s Conundrum -- The only rational solution to our predicament, a voluntary transition to sustainability, is an impossible solution…

Our American way of life is enabled almost exclusively by our ever-increasing utilization of nonrenewable natural resources; yet available supplies associated with these resources are finite and are becoming increasingly scarce.

A vast majority of us are “culturally incapable” of acknowledging our predicament, much less taking meaningful action to resolve it—we suffer from societal cognitive dissonance. While we acknowledge that “we have our problems”, we consider the idea that our American way of life is unsustainable to be utterly preposterous. America will continue to grow and prosper forever—because we say it will. Our vested interest in the continued success of our American way of life is simply too great to permit us to consider any argument or evidence to the contrary.

The minority who do acknowledge the reality of our predicament will continue to insist that “they”—our political and economic representatives—“fix it”; when, in fact, we ourselves are responsible for “it”, and for the fact that it cannot be fixed—because we will not allow it to be fixed. Fixing our predicament would require that we live sustainably within our means forever—a “sacrifice” that we consider to be totally unacceptable.

The Unraveling -- We will not, therefore, take preemptive action to mitigate the consequences associated with our predicament. We will not choose to modify voluntarily our distorted, cornucopian worldview and our dysfunctional, detritovoric resource utilization behavior.

We will instead continue to use the remaining ecological and economic resources available to us in futile attempts to perpetuate our American way of life—behavior that will become increasingly desperate as we encounter increasingly severe resource supply shortages and disruptions.

We will continue to cling to the deluded belief that we can somehow substitute hope, faith, determination, technical ingenuity, and additional investment for the finite and dwindling resources that enable our unsustainable American way of life.

Warning Signs -- From the perspective of mainstream America and our “thought leaders”, both our Last Depression and our Societal Collapse will “arrive without warning” and will “catch us totally by surprise”. We will continue to misconstrue the early warning signs associated with our two impending disasters as “normal cyclical economic activity”.

Rather than sounding alarms and attempting to take meaningful mitigating action, we will instead persist in our futile attempts to remedy the consequences associated with our past overexploitive resource utilization behavior with ever-increasing levels of current and future overexploitive resource utilization behavior. These measures will, at best, temporarily defer our inevitable collapse—they will not “fix” that which cannot possibly be fixed.

“The American way of life is not negotiable” -- President George H. W. Bush.

“George who?” – Nature.”

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Farming Electrons
Saturday, May 16, 2009
By Aaron Wissner

What if farmers could earn income from generating electricity?

Earlier this month, Kathleen Law, former state-representative from Detroit, presented in Middleville on the “Renewable Energy Sources” bill, which is currently awaiting consideration in Lansing.

Under the bill, anyone generating electricity from renewable sources would be able to sign a 20-year contract with their local utility, who would then buy all of the electricity at an above-market rate.

In Germany, a similar plan is called a “feed-in tariff”.

German farmers earn more that $1 billion in revenue per year from solar panel installed on barn rooftops, according to Wind-Works.org.

Since 1999, over 200,000 direct jobs in renewable energy have been created in Germany due to the feed-in tariff law.

Michigan’s Renewable Energy Sources bill 4137 lists different rates at which the utility would buy renewable electricity. The lowest rate of 8 cents per kilowatt-hour would be for very large scale wind turbines. The highest rate of 65 cents per kilowatt-hour would be for electricity generated by rooftop solar panels.

Different rates help ensure that the farm, home or business would be able to pay off their system prior to the end of the 20-year contract

Renewable fuels would include solar, hydroelectric, wind, geothermal, landfill gas, sewage treatment gas, as well as dedicated or waste crops.

A 2 kilowatt solar system on a roof would earn about $1625 per year under bill 4137. Such a system could be installed for about $20,000 which would be paid off after about 12 years. Depending on the interest rate of financing, the payback time would be longer, but still within the 20-year contract period.

In Michigan, farmers are already earning income from wind generation at the Harvest Wind Farm near Pigeon, Michigan. Landowners lease small portions of their farm land for the base of the wind turbine tower.

At a meeting in Lansing on April 1 for bill 4137, Matt Smego, a lobbyist for the Michigan Farm Bureau, expressed that Bureau supported renewable energy generation.

Mr. Smego stated that, “While the Farm Bureau does not have a specific policy on a ‘feed-in-tariff’…we do talk about the incentives for renewables, such as tax incentives, etc.”

Mrs. Law finished the Middleville meeting by noting that bill 4137 is awaiting a hearing in the House Energy Committee headed by representative Jeff Mayes.

“The best way to see that bill 4137 gets on the agenda is to call up your own state representative, and have them ask Mr. Mayes to take up the bill”, concluded Law.

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CSA - Shared Risk Builds Community
Saturday, May 2, 2009
By David Perkins

Many area residents have seen the Middleville Farmers Market grow and flourish over the last 6 years. The Friday market has joined S&S Farm Market, the Otto Turkey and Otto Chicken farms as well as others in developing viable local food sources. The market’s become a model for others in the area.. Though Local Future believes that more is needed to create a lasting “sustainable” food program for Middleville and area residents.

Over the last 20 years, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) has become a popular way for consumers to buy local, seasonal food directly from a farmer. Here are the basics: a farmer offers a certain number of "shares" to the public. Typically the share consists of a box of vegetables, but other farm products may be included. Interested consumers purchase a share (aka a "membership" or a "subscription") and in return receive a box (bag, basket) of seasonal produce each week throughout the farming season. Consumers also share the risk of growing food with the farmers.

Shared risk is part of what creates a sense of community among members, and between members and the farmers. If a hailstorm takes out all the peppers, everyone is disappointed together, and together cheer on the winter squash and broccoli. Most CSA farmers feel a great sense of responsibility to their members, and when certain crops are scarce, they make sure the CSA gets served first.

This arrangement creates several rewards for both the farmer and the consumer.

Advantages for farmers are: 1-Get to spend time marketing the food early in the year, before their 16 hour days in the field begin. 2-Receive payment early in the season, which helps with the farm's cash flow. 3-Have an opportunity to get to know the people who eat the food they grow.

Advantages for consumers are: 1-Eat ultra-fresh food, with all the flavor and vitamin benefits. 2-Get exposed to new vegetables and new ways of cooking 3.-Usually get to visit the farm at least once a season. 4-Find that kids typically favor food from "their" farm – even veggies they've never been known to eat. 5-Develop a relationship with the farmer who grows their food and learn more about how food is grown.

There are currently 15 CSA farms in West Michigan. The Fat Blossom farm, in Allegan, explains what their farm offers with the following text from their website, www.fatblossom.com.

“We are a small farm in Southwest Michigan. Our mission is to provide delicious and nutritious food to our community. We grow a wide variety of vegetables, fruits, herbs, and flowers selected for beauty, flavor, and nutrition. We at Fat Blossom Farm are committed to sustainable ecologically-sound agriculture. We use only organic methods with a long term outlook so that what we produce is both healthy for you and the land.

"Long rotations and a broad diversity of crops ensure that the land stays in balance.

"We choose our vegetable varieties based on flavor and nutritional value. We grow a large number of heirlooms and some newer varieties that have been traditionally bred for high vitamin and antioxidant levels. We DO NOT grow any GMOs (genetically modified organisms).”

It's a simple enough idea, but its impact has been profound. Tens of thousands of families have joined CSAs, and in some areas of the country there is more demand than there are CSA farms to fill it.

CSAs aren't confined to produce. Some farmers include the option for shareholders to buy shares of eggs, homemade bread, meat, cheese, fruit, flowers or other farm products along with their veggies.

The CSA model is just one of the ways CSA farms market their produce. They may also go to the farmers market, do some wholesale, sell to restaurants, etc. Still, the idea that "we're in this together" remains.

Local Future understands that growing a CSA community will take time, work and co-operation, yet, reliable food sources, local sustainability and community will become more and more important in the future as cheap fossil fuel supplies diminish.

Local residents interested in participating in a CSA or with questions, contact David Perkins.

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Food, Feed, Fuel and Survival
Saturday, April 25, 2009
By David Perkins

The United States Department of Agriculture (UDSA) uses the word food to describe what humans eat and the word feed to describe what farm animals eat. The USDA also uses the word crops to describe the major food and feed plants. Most of the cultivated area in the US is devoted to four such crops – corn, hay, soybeans and wheat. Corn and hay are used primarily to feed livestock, mostly beef cattle and dairy cows. Corn is also a major source of food sweeteners.

In 2008 farmers in Barry County planted 46,000 total acres. Over 83% of these were in corn, yielding over 5,000,000 bushels. The state of Michigan planted 2,400,000, total acres, over 89% in corn, yielding over 295,000,000 bushels. Over 83% of Barry County’s planted crops are primarily for cattle feed and sweeteners. There are important, small farms that grow food locally and according to the Organic Agriculture report for 2006, all of Barry County has between 100 to 500 acres planted in organic crops.

Local Future believes area residents should get to know their local food growers this year. Stop by the local farm markets, ask their names, visit their farms, and most importantly, buy their food. Ask if they are interested in creating a CSA -- Community Supported Agriculture program (more about this in a future column). These farmers are area residents' best hope for healthy and sustainable future.

Pat Murphy, living in Yellow Springs, Ohio, population 3600, slightly larger than Middleville’s and author of Plan C – Community Survival Strategies for Peak Oil and Climate Change writes:

“The US has abandoned almost all sustainable practices of living and replaced them with practices that require fossil fuel energy…The unfortunate result is that, particularly in the developed world, much knowledge and many ordinary physical talents have been lost…with food this loss of traditional skills is particularly dangerous…

…the fossil fuel revolution, beginning in the mid 40’s, was based on miracle seeds – so called High Yielding Varieties (HYVs) which were designed to increase production. But HYVs significantly outperformed traditional varieties only in the presence of adequate irrigation, agricultural petrochemicals and natural gas based fertilizer….

We can start to analyze the food habits of Americans by walking the aisles of a supermarket. There are 300,000 food and beverage products in the United States, and an average supermarket carries 30,000 to 40,000…The amazing choices are merely different recipes, or in the parlance of the grocery manufacturing industry, different brands. Call it what you will – Wheaties, Wheat Thins, Yippee, Zoom, Real Crisp, Morning Delight or any other marketing name – breakfast cereals and snacks, like so many food products are basically wheat or corn with sugar, salt and oil added. Factories combine white wheat flour, hydrogenated soybean oil and corn sweeteners with flavoring and coloring from chemicals in various ways to create much of the food Americans eat…

What I have called nutritious foods are those that are minimally processed and which contain more vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals than manufactured products. They are also food that requires more care and attention in growing and harvesting. These foods do not deplete the soil as much, require less fossil fuels, and are not subsidized as heavily as US grain and oil crops. Essentially they contribute to health both because they are more nutrient intense and also because they are lower in fats and refined carbohydrates.

Of all the industrialized rich nations, Americans are the unhealthiest. By way of example, the US now spends about $6000 per person per year on health care and its citizens life expectancy is 77 years, while Canada spends about $3200 per person per year on health care and Canadians have a life expectancy of about 80 years…

Meat produced by feeding corn and soybeans to animals provides much of America’s diet…

The change from eating grains directly to eating animals fed by grains has and is also causing great harm to the environment…As meat consumption increases around the world, changing our diets may prove to be as important and as difficult as changing our transportation vehicles.”

Excerpts reprinted with the permission of Pat Murphy at www.communitysolution.org

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1 Calorie of Food requires 10 Calories of Fossil Fuel!
Saturday, April 25, 2009
By David Perkins

What is “food security” and why is it unquestionably unsustainable?

The UN defines it this way: “Food Security means that food is available at all times, that all persons have means of access to it, that it is nutritionally adequate in terms of quantity, quality and variety…”

Most Middleville or Caledonia area residents expect, and depend on, easy access to their "food" stores, which, in turn, rely on being re-supplied every week.

Sharon Astyk, author of "Depletion and Abundance, Life on the new home front", writes

“Right now the average meal covers 1500 miles, and takes about 10 calories of oil and other fossil fuels to produce a single calorie of food. We are figuratively eating oil and natural gas, at a tremendous price to the environment and to our own personal food security. We are now tremendously vulnerable to famine from a combination of soil and resource depletion, growth in biofuel production, Climate Change and rising energy prices.

Dale Pfeiffer has perhaps done more research than anyone into just how vulnerable our food system is. His definitive book Eating Fossil Fuels: Oil, Food and the Coming Crisis in Agriculture lays out the issues quite clearly.

“Modern industrial agriculture is unsustainable. It has been pushed to the limit and is in danger of collapse…We have already appropriated all of the prime agricultural land on this planet; all that remains is a very small percentage of marginal lands…Even without considering energy depletion, our agriculture system is ready to collapse.”

Industrial conventional agriculture is a disaster…

Food security is going to be the central issue of this century. We are coming to the end of a great era of centralization in which most people have little or nothing to do with their food.

Every bite of food we raise for ourselves cuts back on global warming in several ways – every vegetable and fruit we raise is one that isn’t grown with heavy applications of nitrogen fertilizer…one that isn’t trucked across the country and wrapped in plastic…

This work of putting food-producing gardens, trees and shrubs on our existing properties may be the single most powerful thing any of us can do to save the world…

During World War II, both the US and Britain grew more than 40% of their produce in home gardens, including urban gardens…

The smaller the plot of land you work, the more productive it is (after some practice)…

The people who know the most about gardening where you live are other gardeners; local fellow gardeners your extension agent and certified master gardeners are among the best resources you can find You will need other information as well, but these should be your primary resources. In fact that’s true of almost all the new skills you’ll acquire over the years – the best possible way to learn is to find someone near you (remember, we’re working toward a local life) who knows what you want to learn.

The best way to get started is to get started – join a community garden or a garden club, talk to people at the extension service, read some books, and then plant some seeds. You can do it!”

Excerpts reprinted with the permission of Sharon Astyk at www.sharonastyk.com.

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Change is Coming:
Whether we like it or not;
Whether we are prepared for it or not.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
By David Perkins

Or, what will 20,000 area residents eat as the oil runs out?

What’s to worry about now? Middleville has the marketplace grocery and a maturing farmer’s market. Caledonia and Hastings have large, new super stores and developing farm markets. Local residents can also swing into a Sam's Club, Costco or Meijer store 30 minutes away, on their way to work or after a movie.

James Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency and World Made by Hand, writes

”The age of the 3000-mile-caesar salad will soon be over. Food production based on massive petroleum inputs, on intensive irrigation, on gigantic factory farms in just a few parts of the nation, and dependent on cheap trucking will not continue…We will see the return of an entire vanished social class - the homegrown American farm laboring class.

"It will only take mild-to-moderate disruptions in the supply and price of gas to put Wal-Mart and all operations like it out of business. And it will happen. As that occurs, America will have to make other arrangements for the distribution and sale of ordinary products…

"We will have to recreate the lost infrastructures of local and regional commerce, and it will have to be multi-layered. These were the people that Wal-Mart systematically put out of business over the last thirty years. The wholesalers, the jobbers, the small-retailers. They were economic participants in their communities; they made decisions that had to take the needs of their communities into account. They were employers who employed their neighbors. They were a substantial part of the middle-class of every community in America and all of them together played civic roles in our communities as the caretakers of institutions - the people who sat on the library boards, and the hospital boards, and bought the balls and bats and uniforms for the little league teams.

"We got rid of them in order to save nine bucks on a hair dryer. We threw away uncountable millions of dollars worth of civic amenity in order to shop at the Big Box discount stores. That was some bargain.

"This will all change. The future is telling us to prepare to do business locally again. It will not be a hyper-turbo-consumer economy. That will be over with…

"Change is coming whether we like it or not; whether we are prepared for it or not. If we don't begin right away to make better choices then we will face political, social, and economic disorders that will shake this nation to its foundation.”

Local Future understands that California, where Middleville and Caledonia get much of their food, is facing its worst drought in recorded history. The drought is predicted to be the most severe in modern times, worse than those in 1977 and 1991. Thousands of acres of row crops already have been fallowed, with more to follow. The snow pack in the Northern Sierra, home to some of the state's most important reservoirs, proved to be just 49 percent of average. Water agencies throughout the state are scrambling to adopt conservation mandates.

Reliable, local sources of food is one of Local Future’s goals in helping to build and enhance “community” between individuals and groups in Middleville and Thornapple Township.

Future columns will be devoted to permaculture -- individuals growing food in their yards and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) - a step beyond farm markets.

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Suggested Reading:

http://www.postcarbon.org/files/PCI-food-and-farming-transition.pdf

Should we be concerned about peak oil now?
In a word, yes.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
By David Perkins

An earlier column identified Barry County’s natural, sustainability strengths -- farm markets, protected woodlands and wetlands, open farmlands, and clean water. It’s equally important to recognize local residents’ vulnerabilities to a post peak oil world.

Middleville and Caledonia are essentially “bedroom” communities, that is, most people are required to drive 20-30 miles to work, everyday.

Last summer many area residents were paying $4.00 a gallon for gas and driving 50-60 miles, every day. Commuting was very expensive then, and it will be expensive again, when the price oil goes up.

In fact, nearly everything connected to American lifestyles will eventually cost more, since they are entirely dependent on cheap oil. They include food, transportation, concrete, asphalt, modern medicine, microchips, computers, and water distribution, as well as building alternative energy systems like solar panels, wind turbines and nuclear plants.

(See an absolutely comprehensive article, Why Western Lifestyles are Simply Unsustainable)

Peak oil is the simplest label for the problem of energy resource depletion, or more specifically, the peak in global oil production. Oil is a finite, non-renewable resource, one that has powered phenomenal economic and population growth over the last century and a half. The peak in oil production does not signify 'running out of oil', but it does mean the end of cheap oil. For economies leveraged on ever increasing quantities of cheap oil, the consequences may be dire. Without significant successful cultural reform, severe economic and social consequences seem inevitable.

Kurt Cobb of Resource Insights writes:

“My previous post on peak oil includes two significantly different timelines for the day when oil production will turn down forever. As one source said, we won't really know who is right until quite a ways after the peak. So what level of concern is appropriate given the great uncertainties surrounding this event?

Let me use the analogy of homeowners insurance. We pay for fire insurance as part of the whole package, but how many of us have actually experienced a house fire that led to an insurance claim? Very few, I would venture. So, why do we pay for it (other than because the bank holding the mortgage requires it)? The answer is because the consequences of a house fire can be so devastating. We take out insurance against rare events because of the severity of those events, not the likelihood of them.

I have found that many Americans do not understand this simple idea. Hence, the almost complete lack of concern about our energy future. But, even if peak oil doesn't occur for 50 years, it will still occur. The downside to getting ready now is that we'd have to forgo some current consumption to pay for a new energy system…

The upside to getting ready now is that peak oil production may be nearer than most people think and waiting any longer could result in huge economic, social and ecological disruptions, disruptions that we might well rate catastrophic in retrospect.

Some observers say that failing to prepare might even spell the end of industrial civilization worldwide and lead to a cascade of events that would reduce human populations by 90 percent over the next century. Wouldn't it be prudent to take out some insurance against that, however unlikely such a scenario may seem to us now?

And the insurance we'd be taking out wouldn't be like homeowners insurance--money lost forever unless we make a claim. Instead, this kind of insurance would be an investment that pays for itself over time in a better environment and a more sustainable, decentralized, and probably more peaceful world society.

Why aren't we doing it?...”

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Great Depression or Great Disruption?
Saturday, March 21, 2009
David Perkins

Local Future members believe empty storefronts and vacant lots are sending area residents an important message. Over 152,000 sq ft of office/retail -- unoccupied in Caledonia and Middleville. More than 2 dozen partially completed housing developments in surrounding areas. Perhaps this time a full rebound from recession, or depression, is not something that can happen. Or should happen.

The following excerpts, are from an article, The Inflection is Near? by Thomas Friedman, published March 7, 2009 in the New York Times. Local Future believes this is a warning to Middleville and all Americans. Our current lifestyles are not sustainable. When Mr. Friedman, author of The World is Flat, a book on globalization and international competition, recognizes America’s lifestyles are not sustainable, local governments, such as Middleville and its citizens should take careful note.

Friedman writes:

“Let’s today step out of the normal boundaries of analysis of our economic crisis and ask a radical question: What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it’s telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall — when Mother Nature and the market both said: “No more.”

"We have created a system for growth that depended on our building more and more stores to sell more and more stuff made in more and more factories in China, powered by more and more coal that would cause more and more climate change but earn China more and more dollars to buy more and more U.S. T-bills so America would have more and more money to build more and more stores and sell more and more stuff that would employ more and more Chinese ...

"We can’t do this anymore…

"One of those who has been warning me of this for a long time is Paul Gilding, the Australian environmental business expert. He has a name for this moment — when both Mother Nature and Father Greed have hit the wall at once — “The Great Disruption.”

“We are taking a system operating past its capacity and driving it faster and harder,” he wrote me. “No matter how wonderful the system is, the laws of physics and biology still apply.” We must have growth, but we must grow in a different way. For starters, economies need to transition to the concept of net-zero, whereby buildings, cars, factories and homes are designed not only to generate as much energy as they use but to be infinitely recyclable in as many parts as possible. Let’s grow by creating flows rather than plundering more stocks.

"Gilding says he’s actually an optimist. So am I. People are already using this economic slowdown to retool and reorient economies. Germany, Britain, China and the U.S. have all used stimulus bills to make huge new investments in clean power. South Korea’s new national paradigm for development is called: “Low carbon, green growth.” Who knew? People are realizing we need more than incremental changes — and we’re seeing the first stirrings of growth in smarter, more efficient, more responsible ways.

"In the meantime, says Gilding, take notes: “When we look back, 2008 will be a momentous year in human history. Our children and grandchildren will ask us, ‘What was it like? What were you doing when it started to fall apart? What did you think? What did you do?’ ” Often in the middle of something momentous, we can’t see its significance. But for me there is no doubt: 2008 will be the marker — the year when ‘The Great Disruption’ began.”

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Local sustainability, what is it?
Saturday, March 14, 2009
David Perkins

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