'Tsunami' of City Dwellers a Global Threat: Harcourt
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He was Vancouver's mayor before becoming premier of British Columbia, so no one could mistake Mike Harcourt for a city-hating, back-to-the-land kind of guy.
But his message lately paints a dark picture of city life in the future -- unless Canada shows the way in designing and building green urban systems.
Harcourt and other experts say a massive global population shift towards city life is undermining efforts to combat climate change and achieve sustainable communities.
A massive global shift
Millions of people are flooding the world's urban centres, placing increased pressure on infrastructure and available resources. According to the United Nations, the world's urban population surpassed its rural population in 2008.
As a result, city officials have to find the means to construct more buildings and roads and provide more goods and services to meet the demands of swelling communities. It also means there will be a greater need for agricultural land and access to clean sources of drinking water.
Add this to the push in developing nations to attain Western standards of living, and you get an urban tsunami, said Harcourt during a presentation held at UBC Robson Square in September. It was a theme he picked up on again when he spoke at the Resilient Cities conference last week in Vancouver.
There are already warning signs on the horizon that the full force of the tsunami will hit sooner than expected.
Harcourt, who chairs QUEST -- an action group designed to improve Canada's urban energy systems -- and is the associate director of the UBC Continuing Studies Centre for Sustainability, says that projections show a global population expansion of four billion people or more in a little more than 40 years. And 75 per cent of the 10 billion people expected to inhabit the planet by 2050 will reside in urban centres.
"It's not just the size of population growth overall," Harcourt told his Robson Square audience. "It's where it's happening; in cities."
Asia and Africa most challenged
The bulk of the population expansion will take place in the developing world, mainly in Asia and Africa, Harcourt said. This shift to city life will place a great deal of pressure on the infrastructure and services available in those urban centres.
Particularly worrying for Harcourt and his colleagues is the prospect that the developing world could end up replicating the ecologically destructive ways cities have evolved in the developed world.
China and India, Harcourt pointed out, are undergoing a rapid technological revolution in a bid to attain the modern conveniences found in the Western world -- a goal that, when coupled with population growth, could have dire consequences for the planet.
"The global population increase has gone from one billion in 1800, to two billion by 1930, to six billion by the year 2000, to eight and a half billion by 2025, to nine to ten billion by 2050. . . that's the problem; it's population growth."
Harcourt adds that while population growth in and of itself may not seem alarming, the rate at which population numbers are climbing and the extent to which this growth is occurring in cities should be raising some eyebrows.
As the equivalent of the population of two Chinas makes its way to the city from the countryside in search of jobs and other opportunities, governments will be faced with the challenge of how to manage rapid growth on an unprecedented scale.
Canada's unsustainable city-dwellers
Canada's population is already largely urban. About 80 per cent of Canadians reside in some form of urban centre. Still, Harcourt says Canadian lifestyles remain far from sustainable.
The reason? We consume significantly more resources than the rest of the world. To supply and absorb the goods, services and waste of an average Canadian would require approximately seven hectares of productive land per person. Multiply that by the 6.7 billion people living on the planet and you get a number that far exceeds the estimated 13.5 billion hectares of land and water available for human use.
That fact alone has many researchers concerned about the future sustainability of our global communities.
William Rees, whose concept of the ecological footprint has received international attention, said what Canada and the world need to do right now is establish national population policies.
This is necessary, Rees explained in a telephone interview, because not having such a policy in place will mean that communities will continue to expand at an unsustainable rate, placing even more pressure on the global ecosystems required to support human life and, particularly, modern lifestyles.
Consumption rising three times faster than population
Rees, a professor in the School of Community and Regional Planning at UBC, said his real concern is not that the global population is increasing by about one per cent each year, it's that per capita consumption is increasing at an average yearly rate of three per cent. That equals a grand total of a four per cent increase in the rate of consumption globally each year.
"Which means we're doubling our impact in about 17-and-a-half years to 20 years."
Governments will have to take the reins to avoid having a catastrophic impact on the earth's ecosystems, already stretched to the limit by demands from urban and rural dwellers alike, Rees said.
Policies, such as smart growth, have received a lot of accolade as well as some dissension from the sustainability community.
In a paper on population growth in cities Randal O'Toole questions the benefits smart growth policies have had on achieving sustainable cities.
"Thanks to smart-growth policies, Vancouver and Victoria are the least affordable housing markets in Canada," says O'Toole, a senior fellow with the Cato Institute who studies urban growth, public land and transportation issues. In the paper, published in 2009 in The Electronic Journal of Sustainable Development, O'Toole states that despite "decades of smart-growth-like land-use regulation in Europe, European travel habits are not significantly different from those in the U.S.: where Americans drive for 84 per cent of travel, Europeans drive for 79 per cent."
That's where governments need to step in, according to Rees. Smart growth principles, such as housing densification and decreasing the distance people have to travel to get from home to work and play, require government investment in affordable housing and mass transit.
Sharing sustainable solutions is a must
At the international level, it comes down to sharing the information we have about how to create sustainable cities.
The key issue here, according to Harcourt, is to not have 10 billion people living like the average Canadian does now by the year 2050.
"If the Chinese and the Indians decided to copy our kind of sprawl -- car, big house, misuse of energy, misuse of scarce natural resources -- we would need four planets, but there's only one."
The idea is to avoid a global urban tsunami where the rapid, and often unsustainable, expansion of cities results in more greenhouse gasses spewed into the atmosphere and a heavier reliance on manufactured consumer goods.
"Right now, one half of all construction is taking place in China," Rees said. "And it's inefficient construction using concrete, which is incredibly energy intensive, and the main source of energy is coal."
It's up to Canada and other developed nations, therefore, to share "our best examples of modern construction technology, for free."
Developing countries will be looking to Canada for solutions to sustainably manage large urban populations.
'If Canada can't, no one can'
According to Harcourt, who served as mayor of Vancouver from 1980 to 1986, and NDP premier of B.C. from 1991 to 1996, "If Canada can't become sustainable, no one can."
And Harcourt believes Canada can become a sustainable leader on the international stage. The best approach to setting a good example, he said, is to consume less and live more modest and less resource-heavy lifestyles.
"Where we are now, we can't sustain, and that's what sustainability is all about."
It will mean condensing cities, moving more people into smaller-sized homes located close to jobs and recreational activities. In other words, smart growth.
Economic factors are likely to convince more individuals that spending hours on the road and paying hundreds of dollars in gas money and thousands on a mortgage doesn't make good economic sense. Still, the close-quarter lifestyle of downtown city life isn't for everyone.
That brings up the difficult question of reducing pressure on the natural environment through population control.
The issue, Harcourt said, is to try to decrease the projected 10 billion people soon to arrive on earth to eight billion or less. The way to get there is not clear-cut, but Harcourt believes that the education and empowerment of women across the world is likely to result in more women choosing to have fewer children.
It may not solve all the problems associated with the urban tsunami so long as per capita consumption rates continue to rise, particularly in the developing world. It could, nonetheless, form part of future government planning, as municipalities, provinces, states and countries consider their carrying capacity and if and when to draw a line on future growth. ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
make_up_another...
28-10-2009
...sigh
I think I've officially heard the word sustainability too many times! I can't sustain another! I'd like to abstain from this word. And from 'Green'
Or 'Go Green'.
Let's see how many ways we can adulterate these ideas for fun and profit.
I'd like to suggest that all the greenwashing corporations go fuck a green duck. Oh crap now I'm doing it.
Urbanismo
28-10-2009
Mr. Nice guy
Mike, errrrrr . . . ummm . . . "and other experts", ". . . lately paints a dark picture of city life in the future -- unless Canada shows the way in designing and building green urban systems."
A ha that deadly word, "unless" again . . .
"Millions of people are flooding the world's urban centres . . ." and of course that is true. But they do not come by choice: they come because antediluvian 17th century land laws force them off their traditional lands.
http://www.theyorkshirelad.ca/New.Nanaimo.Center/new.nanaimo.center.html
And Mike, in his long political career has done zip about that.
Hey Mike if you truly believe, dump your car, give your Galiano place back to its rightful owners . . . and convince Mayor. "Green" City that an insulated white tin roof beats out turf every which way . . .
http://alethonews.blogspot.com/2009/10/agw-has-most-of-characteristics-of.html
The need to be part of the herd is overwhelming . . .
And, huh, all this empty talk is becoming tiresome: not long ago he was toting Vancouver as "paradise". Wha hoppen? Just another smiley band wagoneer I guess.
Newton's second law of thermodynamics: Entropy. Nothing is sustainable.
Erstwhile mayor, erstwhile premier. Yup: nice guy but clueless and ineffectual: like totally.
Urbanismo
28-10-2009
Jaw jaw jaw
Do any of these guys. Mike, Bill, et. al, remember Victoria's Dr. Brock Chisholm?
And if they do what have they done to save the world over the last half century?
They sure as hell don't practice what they preached. And until they do they remain just another over paid bad joke . . .
dorothy
28-10-2009
There are two ways
we can do this: follow the old pattern of over-breeding, then effecting eugenics by killing each other. The quick and the dead kind of scenario. Or we could try to apply intelligence to the problem and govern our breeding carefully, but then we might end up with something similar to what evolves in the 'Dune' hexology. Because intelligence is never enough. You also need wisdom. And I'm afraid we killed all the wise ones. They weren't quick enough.
In fact, I believe the gang wars are being pursued so relentlessly, not because we really find it so heinous that these people take out one another, but more because they uncomfortably illustrate the kind of situation we're all facing in truth: Not enough turf. Not enough bread. Some will have to go. Better them than us.
Or - ???? (Now there is a job opportunity!)
freebear
28-10-2009
At least this article acknowledged that we are not sustainable
right now.
Too many 'experts' speak of becoming more sustainable and improving sustainability; which assumes/implies that we are currentlt sustainable!
The way we live is not sustainable.
And the only way we will be sustaibable is, as noted by others, by downsizing, or 'smart contraction'.
We need to do with less. Convenience is killing our planet (the only one we have remember!).
A sustainable community/city/town would exist in a 'steady state' with minor inputs and exodus.
A sustainable community is not one that grows for ever; smart or stupid!
We need sustainability.
Trouble is not enough of us want sustainability!
It means sacrifice of which so many are unwilling.
And those that profit from our denial; want to continue to profit from our unsustainable ways; and work hard to turn our wants into needs.
alive
28-10-2009
breeding for fun and profit
We could start by requiring a license to breed!
People should perhaps stop filling the world with stray cats and dogs as well as babies?
Unfortunately is appears that the less capable of taking care of themselves they are, the more they assemble new consumers in their care (or lack of).
To achieve this we have to convice the Pope that condoms are one good solution!
dave49
28-10-2009
This all implies growth, and a lot of it
This all implies a lot of growth and redevelopment. Who will pay for this? Is such activity really sustainable if it allegedly for the goal of becoming more sustainable? I don't think so.
I recall reading about China's situation three years ago. They were expecting 300 million people to migrate from rural areas to cities by 2020. This means providing infrastructure, housing, jobs, etc. Think of it, this is like building the ENTIRE urban infrastructure of Canada every year for ten years running. Mind boggling!
In that context, any Canadian leadership in demonstrating how to make cities more sustainable will be a drop in the proverbial bucket that will barely get noticed.
coyoteman
28-10-2009
The bamboozling goes on...
KWD writes, "All very interesting but nothing new. The term “smart growth” is a contradiction … it diverts attention from what should be our real goal … smart downsizing. Although Harcourt realizes this, he also knows the chances of reaching global consensus and action on population growth is remote.
Those that thrive on environmental destruction won’t have any part of willingly altering life styles and living with less. Living with less means capitalism must be redefined."
I think, the most insightful observation here. The notion of "smart growth" at this point in human history and the development of capitalism is, first, coming to us from the corporate creators of the problem in the first place, and I don't care how suddenly green the corporate hands the flag is being carried by, which should immediately raise red flags. :-) The endless growth drive need of capitalism, in population, cheap labour, war and resources extraction IS the nexus of the problem, whether done smart or dumb. Both options continue the quality of life degradation, with the scale getting ever larger and more intense, at least for "the masses" and the rest of nature.
The schills of "smart" capitalism are loose in the land with a new "feel good" bamboozling ideology. They are trying to reinvent themselves again to somnabulize and absorb their opposition-, as they've done many times, even just across my lifetime, from ndp social democracy which started out life as a much more radical socialism, to rock 'n roll and the long hair rebellion of the hippies, and far out clothes. Now "hip" capitalism is reinventing itself as the New Leprachauns of the Green Capitalism.
" Living with less means capitalism must be redefined"
Redefined, at least. Though I would suggest that what is really needed is the radical "democratization" of the socio-economic culture (along with the political system)", right down to its very plant and board rooms, in all sectors. The value of that, in this context, being the encouragement of a culture of "collective/community control and responsibility" for the consequences of especially economic decisions: You/we fuck up, you/we pay the price no less than if a ruling elite does it to/for you. It would bring the consequences of failure as well as the rewards down to the level of individual and community control, in a way that hasn't existed at least since the demise of primitive early tribalism. (Only now its just on a much larger scale, in a new technological age.)
Capitalism doesn't need to be just "redefined", in my view, an entire new "democracy" dynamic needs to be set loose within human socio-economic culture. This act alone, over time, carrying with it the potential consequence of "qualitatively" moving human society and its underpinning economy as far away from capitalism, as it is itself from slavery. (The echoe is there, but qualitative differences as well.)
Katatak
28-10-2009
just DO it!
Sometimes it seems like the whole bloody world is at a standstill when it comes to attaining sustainability. No one country wants to take the necessary steps, waiting instead for some kind of agreement between many nations. Look at how obstinate our federal government is on the issue.
What this world needs is one innovative country to step forward, stop talking and just show the rest of the world how sustainability can be achieved. We're basically going to have to re-imagine everything about the way our species operates in this world, especially our ideas of "growth" and that Frankenstonian monster, "the economy."
seth
28-10-2009
Telecommuting and 3 day work weeks.
Why is it that these so called experts never bring these two up when considering their silly urbanization ideas. If as many people as possible used these work alternatives, urbanization would slow to a dead halt.
Only thing stopping them are those corrupt Neocon dinosaurs that run business and government these days.
I suppose the problem is all these "experts" have a BA in film or English. Harcourt is an attorney who couldn't find his ass unless somebody kicked it.
He also threw his support to Gordo during the last election over that stupid and now thoroughly debunked "green" tax. Gordo's real estate buds make billions off downtown office building, bridges highways and ineffective transit.
Didy'a think of that Mikey when you got him reelected.
Cheap green no carbon nuclear power will improve lives in small and large third world cities ending their greenhouse gas emissions, while our cities will continue to be sooted out by these these 10 times the cost "renewables" that require maintaining the fossil fuel industry into perpetuity to load balance.
Chris Keam
28-10-2009
Here's what I'm skeptical about
If I am to believe the AGM skeptics you will have to convince me some version of the following has occurred:
Poorly-funded activist groups, in league with respected scientists worldwide, somehow convince governments that climate change is real. Despite having every reason to want to maintain the status quo, said governments (usually characterized as so incompetent they couldn't manage a lemonade stand) begin an orchestrated P.R. campaign to address the issue, spurred on by a populace eager to contemplate a disastrous future for their children and a significant change to their comfortable lives.
The world's corporations, also eager to climb on a bandwagon that will in all likelihood reshape the capitalist system join in, looking for ways to reduce profits by re-tooling to meet the demands of a green economy. The oil-producing nations, with vast cash reserves, just sit by and watch, and fail to use their economic clout to publicize the scientific data refuting climate change, even though they have everything to lose from a world that runs on sustainable energy.
Armed with a movie and some rock stars, a failed American presidential candidate hoodwinks most of the Western World and in a desire to get invited to Hollywood parties, concerned scientists the world over let this propaganda effort go by unremarked.
Not to be left out polar bears, complicit in the Big Lie, begin swimming out to sea, and commit sea-ppeku by drowning far from shore, in numbers and behaviour that would best be characterized as unprecedented. Speaking of unprecedented, more and more humans burn more and more fossil fuels, but this has no affect on the atmosphere, so experts put their hard-won reputations on the line to aid in the charade, when definitive proof to the contrary would probably mean a Nobel Prize, medals and ribbons galore, and the eternal thanks of an entire globe.
Have I missed anything? It's all a bit hard to swallow frankly.
Frank
28-10-2009
Chris
"Have I missed anything?"
Not much, only that the world will be saved if we make energy expensive enough that the poor won't use any because once the poor have to live like animals the rest of us can go on as usual, taking the yacht up to the cottage on Cortes for the weekend while still leaving the lights on at our place in the Lower Mainland.
carfreed
28-10-2009
warning
The warning signs have been there for decades.
When people got accustomed to getting about in automobiles we destroyed cities.
The whole downtown area should be closed to traffic and only service vehicles have road rights.
The once most beautiful place in Canada has been destroyed by automobiles.
The city is no filthy, dirty, congested NOISE ridden stinky and STRESSFUL because of this.
I cannot enjoy the Art Gallery, or attending any functions, films, events.
What a STUPID thing to do: make us share streets with automobiles.
Victoria is no horrid as well. Once quaint, it is a war zone.
The TriCities area is wall to wall malls and everybody drives everywhere.
I HATE it.!
DenisB
28-10-2009
Let's see. All we have to
Let's see. All we have to do is come up with a plan for a zero growth economy. zero population growth would end huge increased in resource needs. However, how do we support all those seniors without young ones to pay taxes. And if we do come up with a plan it'll take about 1.5 generations for the plan to reach fruitition. Political cycle = 4 years.
chances of success = zero.
solution: Enjoy what you have a let future generations worry about it. the dinosaurs becoame extinct and so to will the human race. It's called evolution.
Skywalker
28-10-2009
Let them move south.
I for one would agree to let them all move south. As long as they keep their greedy hands off our natural resources after they have moved to the city. Fat chance of that happening.
oldcynic
28-10-2009
population
Over 2/3s of BC people live in the Lower Mainland and southern Vancouver Island. Time to start spreading out more by the sounds of it. Trouble is, look at Kamloops and Kelowna....getting unsustainably large already. Sure glad we have more water than some places.
G West
28-10-2009
Even the dinosaurs are waking up
"Eleven academies in industrialized countries say that climate change is real; humans have caused most of the recent warming," admitted Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.). "If fire chiefs of the same reputation told me my house was about to burn down, I'd buy some fire insurance."
G West
28-10-2009
More from the dinos
An oil-state senator, David Vitter (R-La), said that he, too, wants to "get us beyond high-carbon fuels" and "focus on conservation, nuclear, natural gas and new technologies like electric cars." And an industrial-state senator, George Voinovich (R-Ohio), acknowledged that climate change "is a serious and complex issue that deserves our full attention."
coyoteman
28-10-2009
the dinosaurs are still among us... in fact.
"Enjoy what you have a let future generations worry about it. the dinosaurs becoame extinct and so to will the human race. It's called evolution."
Other than we can assume from this that you do not have a seed contribution to make to the future, you may still be right of course. But there is as great a likelihood that you will be wrong, especially with your obviously limited understanding of real evolution.
For example, all evolution does not proceed from lower to higher forms, as in onward and upward, but sometimes evolves backward. (Whales and penguins, but two examples that come immediately to mind.)
Likewise, it is not necessarily true that if there is a mass human extinction that occurs, that the entire species will of necessity be wiped out either. The dinosaurs are actually still amongst us, for further example, or some of them, as birds, crocodiles and komodo dragon.
So, you will excuse me if I don't join you on your party into extinction. Especially given your clearly limited grasp of the complexities of life and evolution, you are more than likely wrong anyway. I plan to live forever. And so far, so good. But even if it is only through the extended fruit of my loins. :-)
I will bid you adieu with your own certainty of extinction though. :-) I'd say, in your case at least, you're likely right. Party On!!
gerrycgc
28-10-2009
Sustainability
If enough humans die of H1N1, we may be able to be sustainable. All we can hope for is a large die-off!! Or is it kill-off. Whatever, die, and save the planet.
Orcinus Cedarbough
28-10-2009
Please meet with Gregor Robertson
I suppose Gregor Robinson should set up a consultation with William McDonough and Mike Harcourt in order to get Vancouver back on track after the developmental plundering of the Olympics.
ME2
28-10-2009
A cautionary tale?
In times long ago, just prior to its collapse, the Roman Empire had depopulated its countryside by giving its lands, farms, orchards, etc, to various oligarchs in return for various sevices rendered to its ruling class. In short order, and in the pursuance of greater profits, small holdings were consolidated into huge monocultural "agribusinesses", which allowed a more "efficient", smaller, and more easily controlled laour force.
As the cities became congested with displaced and now unemployable rural people, free food was distributed, with all going well until a 30-yr drought happened, and both the wealth and food surplusses began drying up.
Food then became heavily rationed, and so with the people becaming "restless", vaious public entertainments were provided - most notably bloody "sports'- in the huge coliseums.
Thus the origin of the term "bread and circuses", used to lull the sheeple into believing all is just hunky-dory within the boundaries of their narrow realities.
Up until fairly recently, classical historians have always viewed history only in terms of wars won and lost.
I tend to follow the more modern trend which holds that economics comes firt and armies a very dependant second.
wendy s.
28-10-2009
Tsunami/Harciyrt
Canadians who have transportation alternatives need to give up their cars. And we must convince other countries (especially China and India) that the private automobile is a hundred-year-old experiment that has failed miserably and must be abandoned. The car has probably done more damage to the earth than all other causes.
Granted, I live in the city, but I gave up my car in 1979. Despite being a member of a car co-op, I have now gone more than two years without driving at all. My guideline is to not use any kind of transportation if I can walk to my destination in half an hour or less. Good for one’s health, good for the planet. A feasible approach for you?
Urbanismo
29-10-2009
Sustainability! H1N1! AWG!
Sustainability! H1N1! AWG! Scary! Are we being manipulated?
Well AGW-istas, clearly in the majority, must be right: the earth is warming and I am to blame! What can I say?
Well, I was one, once: until I let go.
Loading up my little four stroke Yamaha isn't going to deny the birth right of my great, great grandsons one iota: I'm happy!
I still wont, though, buy out-of-season Chilean plums: they taste like cardboard!
So, I ditched the clunker and big Kits Point house. Not because I was warm, for the joy of life. That was a while ago, huh!
And I walk to the store, rain or shine: the smell of urban . . . ummmm!
Now back to AGW!
Mrs, always right, Q Public sucks her teeth, sneers, carves the roast and turn up the heat! The herd beckons . . .
Big time academics, bloated egos, fundamental apertures sniffed by pretty co-eds, trench-up more and more. Their words, Devine!
Big time architects, planners, enablers, swell: names in print, medals self-inflicted. Hey, I've bin there . . . I know . . .
Now . . .
May I tell you a little secret, sin embargo? I KNOW I AM RIGHT AND THEY ARE WRONG.
Why?
Because AGW-ists obsessively wank-off, junket the world biz class, stay in top hotels, drive clunkers, ride bikes, gobble dead animals, energetically pursing a life style totally, like totally, in apposition to the bullshit they preach.
And that gives me comfort: friends, they are, AWG-ista's subliminally admit polar bears will be okay! Our world, a basket case: NOT!
Their chosen life styles tell us so.
Tough world eh. Yup!
Urbanismo
29-10-2009
Planning students, with faux
Planning students, with faux sincerity, project theories of green sustainability. Once out side they expose their real selves: it's the regular salary and pension. Can you blame them? Cynical . . . you bet!
Chris Keam
29-10-2009
Oh Geez
I don't know why I bother but:
How does the individual failings of those who don't practice what they preach negate the science behind climate change?
coyoteman
29-10-2009
Rome Is Coming Down...
"I tend to follow the more modern trend which holds that economics comes firt and armies a very dependant second." wrote ME2.
Indeed, Me2. A good analysis.
Though it, the wars of the military, is a false stimulus over time that bleeds the economy, as well as the blood of the young, it is about the only ongoing stimulus the US has right now, to its cycle of production and consumption. At least for those involved in and profiting from the war economy, as it shovels ever greater quanties of production into the maw of their wars'ongoing destruction/consumption.
Still, over time, it produces no real values that add to the lives of ordinary people. Indeed, it robs production and financial capacity to meet their real material needs.(For health care, for example.)
The war economy is a false economy that becomes clearer and clearer, especially, though not exclusively, in defeat... as it is, the US Empire is of greater likelihood to suffer in the end. It is written there in the history of their own Vietnam and the history of all previous Empires, that of their inevitable .
And for us, its bootlick sidekick.
Armies, other than small home defense oriented forces, are really only there to aid in the plunder of the treasure, as in the resources (oil etc.), of other smaller and weaker states. Which is why, short of a serious miscalculation, Russia is unlikely to ever be attacked by the US. And why Iran understandably wants nukes.(Though, as in all thievery, it is necessary to wear a mask to hide one's real motivations.The false mask we/they typically wear over our real intentions is "democracy".)
And eventually, though it can take a very long time, sometimes, folks, even in imperialist countries, weary of sending their young to die for the plundering ends of the ruling class. (Which is why the US Empire relies more and more on the poor of other countries wanting such as citizenship, to join their army and fight their wars: Latinos etc. Whom they then anguish over, when they actually show up more and more in their White neighbourhoods.)
Oh what a tangled web they weave, when first they practice to deceive... and what a tar pit of corruption, pollution, resource depletion and land despoilation they finally create for themselves.
Rome is still coming down.
KWD
29-10-2009
acronym confusion
Coyoteman, thanks for your (earlier) comments. I agree 100%. An entirely new dynamic is required and a redefinition of democracy requires a corresponding change in our understanding of why-we-think-the-way-we-do before there will be any balancing of the democratic deficit. Unfortunately, the tendency is to look outside ourselves for answers to the problem. I hold little hope of that changing, on scale that will be meaningful.
Urbanismo; interesting read. But tell me … because my alleged mind is having difficulty following the global warming acronym laden ping pong ball much less knowing who’s winning … what’s the difference between AWG and AGW, or, for that matter, AGM (not yours)?
Two or three degress is not the answer I’m looking for.
Chris Keam
29-10-2009
telecommuting and work
I think Seth makes a valuable point upthread. I wonder why we aren't shooting for more people working from home? Wouldn't society be better off if we could repurpose the suburbs as more than just living space? I envision people free to work from home, to spend some time each day tending a vegetable garden when they would otherwise be driving to and from their work and having the kind of self-sufficiency that comes from a more DIY existence. How many people would trade the intrusion of a supervisor monitoring them by webcam and keystroke logger for a chance to bow out of at least one part of the ratrace?
KWD
29-10-2009
McLuhan's global village is here
and telecommuting is no longer the way of the future,
It's been around for more than a decade that I'm aware of, and it works better than expected.
In fact it works so well there are millions of folks that can't wait for the opportunity to suffer the intrusive webcam and keystroke logger. The problem is, they live in places like India and Malaysia.
This has resulted in a great many folks having lots of time to tend their gardens.
Chris Keam
29-10-2009
telecommuting and work
Well, I would say there's a difference between outsourcing one's job and having the same person do it in a different place. Why are we so reluctant to work from home in North America? Personal decision or corporate intransigence? A combination of both? Identifying the barriers can only help IMO.
KWD
29-10-2009
Yes, there is a difference ...
telecommuting is the tip of the iceberg; outsourcing is the part below the surface.
It's not a case of being reluctant, it's a matter of fact ... outsourcing cuts costs for the employer. Jobs are being outsourced and a great many of those jobs are middle/higher income that could very well be done here at home. The barrier has been identified ... and it's measured in dollars. Keeping the work here means less profit.
The result is a lengthening of the unemployment lines and a surge in 'university degrees' holding down multiple service sector jobs.
Sorry if I sound too critical but I've seen it happen. It starts innocently ... an offer to work at home, help get the software functioning and, voila, the next thing you know the job is in another country.