I think nothing will work without some kind of change to the way of life. Urban living has taken people away from the land, so there is this illusion that we don’t have to participate in the ecology. Like water infrastructure, people growing up in cities expect food-on-demand … if you have the money for it.
The idea that if you want to eat an apple means going into the back yard and picking one off the tree is an alien ideas. (Kids think food comes from grocery stores, not from trees). How fresh is that, right off the tree? Yet, now we have marketing that plays into that illusion, like tomatoes on the vine and it misses the point. When I personally harvested an apple and interact with an apple tree in my back yard, I am directly participating in the well-being of the ecology.
There is no way forward for our civilization to “scale” in a way that maintains that illusion of on-demand-food. It’s how we view the world, and our way of life that needs to change.
I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but I don't like how you're going after urban living. I can rewrite what you've written, but from an urbanist perspective regarding transportation sustainability:
Rural living has taken people away from one another, so there is an illusion that we don't have to pay the true costs of travel. People growing up in towns expect cars and on-demand access to roads and gasoline and airports... if you have the money for it.
The idea that if you want to go to a friend's house you need to walk or bike there is an alien ideas. (Kids think we travel in cars, not on foot). How simple is that, riding a bike through your neighborhood? Yet, now we have marketing that plays into that illusion, like hybrids and EV cars and "eco-conscious" airlines and it misses the point. When I personally walk, bike, or take the train to my destination, I am directly participating in a sustainable transit network.
There is no way forward for our civilization to “scale” in a way that maintains that illusion of on-demand-travel. It’s how we view the world, and our way of life that needs to change.
People get attached to things, including urban living.
I am not sure what you are trying to accomplish with rewriting it from the perspective of travel. That is pretty much how I feel about travel and transport infrastructure too.
Some cultures attach a lot of importance on travel, associating it with freedom, or mobility (both in the literal sense, and as a metaphor for class mobility). Don’t get me wrong, I love to travel, to explore, to hike the wildernesses or enjoy different urban locale and take full advantage of the transport infrastructure. That doesn’t mean it isn’t an illusion.
I trying to point out that urban doesn't imply disconnected from ecology, jusy like rural doesn't imply connected to ecology.
Walking around my extremely dense city, I see plenty of people growing their own food in their little yards, probably more than I see back in my semirural hometown.
For a while I subscribed to a vegan food delivery service. The food is grown a few towns away and delivered daily by cyclists. There is nothing like that back in my hometown; I'd have to do HelloFresh or something.
Urban living is more sustainable than living in suburban sprawl. Spreading humans around and reducing our density isn't going to make it more sustainable.
>I am not sure what you are trying to accomplish with rewriting it from the perspective of travel. That is pretty much how I feel about travel and transport infrastructure too.
Then you're just a pastoralist and likely a Malthusian, not talking about ecological sustainability at all.
It feels like the argument is upside down. Civilization scaled because increased agricultural productivity allowed a smaller number of farmers to feed the rest, freeing them up to do other things. These people also naturally congregated to cities because that enabled fast exchange of goods and ideas, i.e., it was more "scalable" than having everyone scattered throughout the country.
In the modern world, it also means that cities have lower ecological footprint. Moving people around is much more energy intensive than moving food. Makes more sense to do farming across the country and concentrate the produce onto a small place packed with people.
Not necessarily saying this is a great tradeoff for individuals (who wouldn't want a backyard with an apple tree?) but in a sense, the fact that we're picturing a backyard with an apple tree instead of backbreaking work in the rice paddies throughout summer is a testament to how brutally efficient the modern agriculture is.
Logically that would make a lot of sense, if we were to design things in such a way that products are only shipped to their local urban areas. However, the modern day system has given rise to such absurdities as fruit grown in South America being shipped to Asia for packaging, and then shipped to North America for consumption. It's not that the entire system is amazingly efficient, it's that it's simply been possible because energy has been very cheap this last century. The food system will have to adapt one way or another (and I think we will), but it will probably end up being more human-labor intensive and local.
Relating to energy, one of the coming issues we will need to solve is fertilizer supply. Modern agriculture heavily depends on natural gas (via Haber-Bosch) to juice yields alongside genetic engineering. This isn't great for long-term soil health either, we just haven't been doing it long enough to see the effects of soil depletion.
You might be interested in the book Against the Grain, which argues that people didn't naturally congregate into cities like we have thought for a while.
From the wikipedia:
> Scott then asserts that the reason why hunter-gatherer societies transformed into agro-pastoral societies was due to coercion by the state. He cites research on an archaeological site in Mesopotamia named Abu Hureyra. Scott concurs with other scholars in the field that "'[n]o hunter-gatherers occupying a productive locality with a range of wild foods able to provide for all seasons are likely to have started cultivating their caloric staples willingly.'"
I don't think it is "urban living" so much as just modern living. While people in rural and suburban areas are more likely to have some form of exposure to locally grown produce, they still for the most part live in the same kind of economy as urban areas. I currently live in a suburb surrounded by strawberry farms, avocados, etc. And our grocery stores are just as likely to have strawberries and avocadoes from Mexico.
People in rural areas like where I grew up, might be more likely to have a garden, but most don't, and they still get most of their calories from the grocery store. I grew up on a cattle ranch and while that might give me more "connection" to my food, we still bought a lot of our beef at the grocery store because finishing and butchering a cow is expensive and time consuming and requires lots of long term freezer storage. Today's modern rural family is pretty similar to an urban one except they drive a lot farther to do anything.
One point I would add is that this mostly applies to the "1st world" IMO, because in many parts of the world there is local produce and meat and it's often part of the culture to grow your own (or at least to keep a few chickens and fruit trees). However, yes globally most urban dwellers get their food at the grocery store and really enjoy being able to purchase it for money.
The idea that if you want to eat an apple means going into the back yard and picking one off the tree is an alien ideas. (Kids think food comes from grocery stores, not from trees). How fresh is that, right off the tree? Yet, now we have marketing that plays into that illusion, like tomatoes on the vine and it misses the point. When I personally harvested an apple and interact with an apple tree in my back yard, I am directly participating in the well-being of the ecology.
There is no way forward for our civilization to “scale” in a way that maintains that illusion of on-demand-food. It’s how we view the world, and our way of life that needs to change.