Not really.All polititians are fair game with me!
But, people who think this country is great because of "government" & more government piss me off.
But, people who think this country is great because of "government" & more government piss me off.
There is lots of oil left, the problem is it is not economically viable to get it out of the ground in many cases.
edit: What he said above.
edit: What he said above.
Watch End of Suburbia. I just watched it over the weekend and it talks about peak oil production and the effect it will have. The sad part is the film was made in 2004 and you can see everything they are talking about happening right now.
Once oil production peaks (maybe it has already) it because increasingly more expensive to extract and it will only get worse. The film is both depressing and eye opening about how Subruban life has been the largest waste of natural resources ever.
Once oil production peaks (maybe it has already) it because increasingly more expensive to extract and it will only get worse. The film is both depressing and eye opening about how Subruban life has been the largest waste of natural resources ever.
sooo...are we all supposed to live in high rises in the big city or something?
supposed to live like bushmen...
You have to watch it to understand.
The concept is simple. The age old idea of community and livability. The idea of not living 2 hours from the office and an hour from the store. Where you can walk or take the bus, or ride a bike to work/shop/live and not NEED a car as a single mode of transportation.
So not necessarily in a high rise, but more like a village. When gas hits above $5 a gallon, it's more than the tank of gas to get to work that will hurt most people. But the cost of food that is trucked in will get more outrageous.
You live how you want to live, but the reality is that oil will run out. They estimated a peak by 2010, but some experts think oil production has already peaked.
One of the guys in the film wrote an interesting book called The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies.
I found it interesting that they were talking about things like stocks and housing market in 2004 and you see it right now. They also talked about $4 a gallon being a ways out, but now it looks like this Summer.
oh ok...that's sounds more palatable. i had a german police officer do a ride along with me last year for some sort of exchange program. he told me that most people over there live within walking distance of everything they need. he said the church is usually the center of the town and they have their grocery/pharmacies all in close proximity. i think that's a wonderful image for community but i could not ever live in a "big city" like NY. i could handle a bunch of local "villages" as opposed to a megatropolis. it's also a lot different here in the south; out in the county (read: away from the cities) the average homeowner has about 5-20 acres of land and and a daily commute is a necessary evil. i doubt you'll ever get someone with a decent land plot to give it up for communal living but i guess we'll have to just pay the price.
me personal tinfoil hat is about to be put on with all this talk about the north american union and the RFID chip. if it ever comes down to a mandatory chip implant in order to do commerce...well, mr. manimal and family will be bunkered up somewhere in the mountains with a ton of canned goods and about 10,000 rounds of ammunition
They talk in the movie about "new urbanism" and there is a place near here that is a perfect example called Orenco Station. It's 2 blocks from 2 different Intel campuses and right along the MAX light rail.
The whole area looks like some old New York suburb with lofts above shops and a ton of apartments. There is a grocery store and a bunch of little shops like a dentist, bank, Starbucks (shocker), and 3 restaurants.
The downfall is when they started building it was hip to live there, so the lofts were like $275k and the row houses are $450k. Most are still empty, it will be interesting to see if they drop the price.
The whole area looks like some old New York suburb with lofts above shops and a ton of apartments. There is a grocery store and a bunch of little shops like a dentist, bank, Starbucks (shocker), and 3 restaurants.
The downfall is when they started building it was hip to live there, so the lofts were like $275k and the row houses are $450k. Most are still empty, it will be interesting to see if they drop the price.
Well the only reason we are able to live in the suburbs and use cars to get to work and go to stores to buy all the things we take for granted is because of cheap oil which has brought us ("us" meaning the people who can do this, roughly 15% of the world's population) so much wealth.
We should not be accustomed to this lifestyle, as awesome as it is, because it simply cannot last in the face of higher and higher gas prices. We're sort of borrowing this wealth, as the oil is 200mya and irreplacable, not to mention the earth can't sustain the pollution, intensive agriculture, and strip-mining that's worked well for 100 years.
So don't be an idiot and assume I want the entire world to live like bushmen, but don't be surprised when your lifestyle becomes more and more expensive.
ooh, that looks nice. i hope the prices plummet (and that i end up in pdx)
it is obvious that euro cities are like that for the simple reason they were constructed back when everyone walked or rode a horse.
It's a quaint idea but isnt applicable to the typical US city (Dallas or Houston or LA for example). Our sh!t's too spread out and it's too late to undo it.
I'm sure it's possible to make NE cites somewhat more eruo-typical but will probably vary from district to district.
No.. what we need to do is to figure out either how to extract more oil or find the next new energy source.
Still doesn't address the issue that we moved the the suburbs to have a better family life, yet we don't see our families because we waste 2 hours a day commuting. It's too late to reduce the sprawl but we can limit it and start building back in towards the cities to increase densities and create better town-centers (or sub-cities) within the sprawls. Just because they're already built doesn't mean they can't be improved. But it requires investment and a long-term interest which most housing developers (ahem) really aren't looking for.
One interesting point about sprawl was the idea of those areas becoming the new slums. Look at Detroit and how the lack of jobs have created huge voids in the suburbs because people can't afford to live there, or there is no reason too because there isn't any place to work.
My little town is nice because of public transportation access to work, local suppliers of produce at the farmers market, local businesses for basic needs, city owned utilities, and mostly volunteer public services like fire/police. We do our large shopping trips 9 miles away, but that's as far as it goes.
It's unrealistic to expect developers (N8 is a builder btw, he buys his plots from a developer) to lead the charge to reorganize our urban planning. Changing the make up of our communities will require a societal reorganization that I doubt our government could handle.
I agree 100% that change is necessary though. After living in NL, we chose to move back to colonial NE because of the euro-style urban planning. Bedroom communities are depressing.
Developers will have to rethink once they have lost enough due to unsold developments. The sheer number of unsold new homes here is a shining example of that. There are a growing number of builders auctions trying to unload the vacant houses they built last year.
Houses are a losing investment here, so people aren't buying/selling what they currently have. I don't see the housing market change much over the next 2 years.
I agree 100%. My point was that a developer can't initiate the change from strip-mall hell to centralized utopia on their own, that's the job of urban planners/zoning etc.
To date, developers have built what people wanted. Lately, that's meant 4500sq/ft dry-wall palaces built on defunct farmland. As mentioned here before that was subsidized by cheap fuel prices and an irrational acceptance of long commutes/crappy lives.
And that right there is the entire premise of the movie I watched on Saturday. Suburbia was created in the post WW2 era to move out of the smelly and dirty city to fine country living.
i wonder how much rent is in that fantasy world you are living in..??
realistically what you are proposing is impractical. For one thing a hell of a lot of Americans dont want to live nut-to-butt with their neighbors in some big city hell hole.
Another thing is that Americans are an inventive lot and I am pretty sure someone is going to figure out a way to get around it. I very much doubt it will involve ending urban sprawl though. I hate bad urban planning as much as the rest of you but truthfully, I dont see it ending. Too many damn many people I'm afraid.
My next home will be a loft or something with dining, bars and shopping out my front door.. maybe in downtown Denver perhaps..
irate2:
realistically what you are proposing is impractical. For one thing a hell of a lot of Americans dont want to live nut-to-butt with their neighbors in some big city hell hole.
Another thing is that Americans are an inventive lot and I am pretty sure someone is going to figure out a way to get around it. I very much doubt it will involve ending urban sprawl though. I hate bad urban planning as much as the rest of you but truthfully, I dont see it ending. Too many damn many people I'm afraid.
My next home will be a loft or something with dining, bars and shopping out my front door.. maybe in downtown Denver perhaps..
irate2:
I pay $800 a month for a house on .25 acres that is 2 blocks from the downtown area.
It's not a matter of what "most Americans want", it's a matter of what's realistic when gas is $5 a gallon.
I know you live in some magic bubble where you are unaffected by the cost of fuel, but in colder climates, heating oil and natural gas will be too expensive to heat most middle income family homes.
Might want to take a gander at that under-valued real estate chart again... most of those cities and towns are well south of the heating oil zone..
Chaaaaaaa-CHING!
there's a heavy psychic cost incurred when living in Buttholeville.
I just don't understand how you can think oil is a finite resource. When oil hits $120 a barrel, do you think it will start to go down?Might want to take a gander at that under-valued real estate chart again... most of those cities and towns are well south of the heating oil zone..
Chaaaaaaa-CHING!
So far it's going up about a buck a day. I know I will rethink my driving habits this summer, but that's because I like having money.
My house 1 hour outside Boston (1700 sq/ft on 1.5 acres in a town of ~7000) cost far less than half of what a similar spread runs close to the city. After 15 years of living in an a mid-sized city (Lowell), I'd never go back to the filth, crime, noise, ****ty schools, traffic and misery, let alone force my kids to live like that. The money I saved on the property will pay for a lotta years of commuting, and the quality of life is incomparable. I had some good times when I was younger and basically just partying all the time, but now that I'm not so much of an alcoholic, there's nothing attractive about city life for me. I'll never go back.
OK. But you also seemed to miss the point. The point is once oil production slows, it's more than just the cost of gas to commute to work. At some point, no matter how much gas costs, there won't be much anyway. Then what?
Good question. Hail Mary? Telecommute like a mofo? Open a brothel? F'it, I'm adaptable. For the meantime, I figure I'll make hay while the sun shines and let the smart people cover most of the fret-work. Figuring out how to forestall the inevitable is way beyond my own very limited scope.
do you commute an hour each way, each day? on the T, i hope?
It's $108 dollars as of close. Your chart ended in 2006 and reaches $100. It is inflation adjusted for 2006. Ie: you fail.
nate, buttholeville is a place where the top live music entertainment option is Three Days Grace and Breaking Benjamin.population; you!
Country folk can survivei wonder how much rent is in that fantasy world you are living in..??
realistically what you are proposing is impractical. For one thing a hell of a lot of Americans dont want to live nut-to-butt with their neighbors in some big city hell hole.
Another thing is that Americans are an inventive lot and I am pretty sure someone is going to figure out a way to get around it. I very much doubt it will involve ending urban sprawl though. I hate bad urban planning as much as the rest of you but truthfully, I dont see it ending. Too many damn many people I'm afraid.
My next home will be a loft or something with dining, bars and shopping out my front door.. maybe in downtown Denver perhaps..
The preacher man says it?s the end of time
And the Mississippi River she?s a goin? dry
The interest is up and the Stock Markets down
And you only get mugged
If you go down town
I live back in the woods, you see
A woman and the kids, and the dogs and me
I got a shotgun rifle and a 4-wheel drive
And a country boy can survive
Country folks can survive
I can plow a field all day long
I can catch catfish from dusk till dawn
We make our own whiskey and our own smoke too
Ain?t too many things these ole boys can?t do
We grow good ole tomatoes and homemade wine
And a country boy can survive
Country folks can survive
Because you can?t starve us out
And you cant makes us run
Cause one-of- ?em old boys raisin ole shotgun
And we say grace and we say Ma?am
And if you ain?t into that we don?t give a damn
We came from the West Virginia coalmines
And the Rocky Mountains and the and the western skies
And we can skin a buck; we can run a trot-line
And a country boy can survive
Country folks can survive
I had a good friend in New York City
He never called me by my name, just hillbilly
My grandpa taught me how to live off the land
And his taught him to be a businessman
He used to send me pictures of the Broadway nights
And I?d send him some homemade wine
But he was killed by a man with a switchblade knife
For 43 dollars my friend lost his life
Id love to spit some beechnut in that dudes eyes
And shoot him with my old 45
Cause a country boy can survive
Country folks can survive
Cause you can?t starve us out and you can?t make us run
Cause one-of- ?em old boys raisin ole shotgun
And we say grace and we say Ma?am
And if you ain?t into that we don?t give a damn
We?re from North California and south Alabam
And little towns all around this land
And we can skin a buck; we can run a trot-line
And a country boy can survive
Country folks can survive
WTF???
Fixed.