©
Dick the bagger boy was always the first one up to the front. Dick loved the front check stand where he could bag customers’ groceries right in front of the boss’s office. Dick was always the first to volunteer—for any kind of work—as long as it was the boss, and not one of us, doing the asking.
That was a long time ago. It was my first job. This week my daughter started her first job, and it’s been fun watching her learn the ropes. But it got me thinking back to my first job and a few of the lessons I learned there.
Dick was a standout lesson. I hate to state the obvious, but he was well named. All the bosses loved Dick, but most of us barely tolerated him and a few of us found him as charming as nails on a chalkboard. A few years after graduating high school and then university Dick resurfaced as the head of a municipal department doing promotions for the city. He had a plush office, a crew of employees and a fat travel budget. A gifted talker, Dick always seemed to be promoting himself even while promoting the city. A few years later he married a wealthy man’s daughter and they had a couple of kids, I think, and several years after that he quit his plush job and dropped out of sight—I assume to live happily ever after. We never heard much about him after that.
I’m trying to think if there’s a moral to his story, but I’m coming up a bit short. Unlike Dick, I’ve been a bit of an anti-careerist, I guess. If it came to a compromise between retaining my self-esteem or keeping my job, I always knew I’d find another place to work.
I think trades guys are like that too. Because they can actually make something using their hands and not just talk about it, they seem to have a built-in bull-detector. Artists, architects and musicians seem to share this trait. People who have to produce a real product know that the proof is in the product, not in the presentation.
Lessons like this are, of course, increasingly irrelevant in our post-industrial world. Much of our work revolves entirely around presentation. Sales, marketing, law, business, consulting, counseling—entire fields of endeavour, not to mention management and supervision of all kinds—have little to nothing to do with actual personal production. Naturally careerism can factor very large in these areas of activity, and the players learn to play the careerist game at an early age.
Oddly enough, many of these careerists are also pretty good hobbyists who like to work with their hands. Dick, it turns out, got into restoring antique cars. I saw one of the finished products years ago and it was a work of art. So go figure.
In some odd way, the two towns I currently inhabit (one where I live, the other where I work) are about as different as the careerist and the tradesman. In one town one expects to find flinty, plain speaking folk who for the most part will tell it like it is. In the other town one expects to find a rather civilized, well spoken people who prefer to have their vérité wrapped in velvet, or at least that’s an image they seem cultivate. Though if one drives just a couple of kilometers out of town one expects the velvet to drop off rather dramatically.
To be honest, I can sympathize with both positions. As the old sales guys used to say, “nothing happens until something gets sold.” Which, put another way, means you can’t get anywhere without talking about it first. On the other hand, talk will only take you so far.
It’s always fun to experience both polarities close up. Yesterday we were finishing up some renovating in my new office in St. Andrews, and were feeling particularly good about how it was coming together as I locked the office door. Sharon and I packed the kids up in the van and hurried off toward St. Stephen to hit the Kent store before it closed. We had about 20 minutes to get there. I pushed it without getting too far into speeding ticket territory, and as we got within about 10 klicks from town the engine started missing slightly. I slowed down a little and turned down the radio. Sure enough, the motor was acting up. And then I checked the gas gauge. Dead empty. We made it another 3 or 4 kilometers before finally pooping out.
I set out on foot, leaving Sharon and the kids listening to the radio. The Red Rooster gas bar was only about 3 klicks ahead. I looked down at my jeans: caked white with drywall dust, one knee poking out of a ragged rip. I stuck out my thumb as the cars went by. No way would I get a ride I thought. After walking about a kilometer an SUV slowed, then jammed on the breaks, all four wheels locking up into a smoking, screeching stop. The driver was young, and from a distance might have thought I was younger too, in those jeans and hiding under my sunglasses. His dog leaned over the seat to give me a kiss of approval and off we went. He dropped me off across from the gas bar, and within minutes I had a full gas can in my hand and I was hitching back. An older man, who’d watched me arrive and fill the can, drove past me. Several other cars sped by. I picked up my pace for the long walk back. The next car stopped. They were a nice, well-spoken couple I took to be St. Andrews’ residents. Wrong. They were from St. Stephen.
And there’s where all that stereotyping will get you. Well-spoken people live in St. Stephen. Dick could talk—and work with his hands. And tradesmen can be pretty damned good talkers, too, especially when you’re paying by the hour.
But when you’re starting your first job every lesson is fresh. There are no stereotypes, just your own insecurities and inexperience and a whole new wonderful world out there. And you get a paycheque to boot. Now what could be finer than that?
If I had to answer, I’d have to say “enjoying your end-of-career job as much as your first.”
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Highways and empires
©
For such a small province why does New Brunswick have so many superhighways? The prairie provinces, for the most part, only have the two-lane Trans-Canada. PEI doesn’t have much in the way of divided highways, either. I can’t imagine Newf having a lot. Nova Scotia has the four-lane connection from Halifax to the New Brunswick border. But New Brunswick, with its 750,000 population puts them all to shame.
By the end of this year there’ll be a new US-Canada border crossing in St. Stephen. In five year’s time—we’re told by the government—the highway between our new border crossing and Saint John will be four-laned. Sure, it’s going to be safer, I guess. But is it really worth the investment?
That depends. Canadians always seem to be making overtures to the Americans. We’re always the first to build inviting roads to their borders, I assume to carry our goods to their markets. But if that were really the case, why wouldn’t we be building more railroads? After all, shipping by rail is about 7 times more economical than highway trucking. So maybe I’m missing something.
One of the things that’s hard to miss is the fact that a lot of the money for New Brunswick’s new highway construction comes from the federal government. It’s probably a lot easier to get “infrastructure” money from the feds than it is, say, to get more money for healthcare or welfare or assistance for seniors. So instead of improving our social services for the less financially endowed, we get more highways. This, of course, doesn’t hurt the local Irving oil refineries, although I hardly thing they need the extra business.
Meanwhile, back here in the St. Stephen area, the Baileyville mill has shut down across the river. And with that shutdown comes the shutdown of our local railway spur line, which reportedly received about a half a million dollars from the Domtar mill in Baileyville. So, no mill, no half million, no rail service.
I find this more than a little disconcerting, given the fact that the planet will be running out of fossil fuels sometime around the middle of this century. Why on earth would we be investing in a mode of transportation—the highway system—that’s 700% less fuel-efficient than an older technology—rail?
The only reason I can conjure up is that the province wants more tourism. Maybe, we think, if we have the best highway system we’ll get a lot more tourists. And if that’s really the reason, I think we’re completely cracked. Why? First, tourists don’t come for the highways. They come for the attractions—like culture, beautiful scenery and exciting things to do. They have highways at home. Second, superhighways homogenize the tourism experience. Once a tourist is on a big highway, it takes a lot to get them to turn off the highway. So they keep going until the highway ends—in places like PEI, where they can visit Anne of Green Gables.
But, for the sake of argument, let’s suppose that the province’s highway building is a good thing. So, if the plan is to have a four-lane divided highway running all the way from the New Brunswick–Nova Scotia border all the way to St. Stephen and the US border, where is all that traffic going to end up? Well, once in the States, the traffic will end up back on the dangerous little Route 9 “Airline” heading 2 hours through the backwoods to Bangor, where it can finally hook up to the I-95 headed south.
The only decent proposal that we’ve heard over the past couple of years was the plan to build a toll highway east–west across Maine to shortcut traffic from St. Stephen to Montreal, cutting a couple of hours off the northern route up through Edmundston.
Empires like the US run on the quality of their roads. The Roman Empire was successful, in no small part, due to the engineering and build-quality of its roads—linking the empire east to west and north to south. But empires can overextend themselves, too.
Spain, the longest running empire of the last millennium, had more wealth from its gold and silver mines than any other country in the world. According to Ronald Wright in “What is America”, Spain’s American mines produced nearly three-quarters of the world’s gold and even more of its silver. Its wealth came so easily that it was just as easily squandered on mindless religious wars against not one—but almost all of its neighbours. By the end of its three-hundred-year reign as world superpower it was one of the poorest countries in Christendom. Meanwhile, Britain, with less access to material wealth, had become the workshop of the world.
If this sounds vaguely familiar, it should. Today China is the world’s workshop, while the US has exhausted most of its domestic oil, is fighting on two fronts, and seems to be angling to fight on two more in Iran and Pakistan. The recent financial crisis should be a dire warning about America’s future, should it continue its breakneck spending. And it’s to that future we’re building our new four-lane roads.
So what of the future of St. Stephen—and the other nearby towns—after the new border crossing opens, and especially after the four-lane links the border to Saint John? Well, the smart money in St. Stephen will cluster around the first on ramp near the high school. It wouldn’t be hard to picture a Super 8 motel or Best Western out there, along with a Burger King and McDonald’s, and a big Irving Blue Canoe. That kind of shift of commercial energy will definitely pull the town’s focus permanently away from the downtown. That’s just the way it is with freeways, cars and parking lots. Downtowns need people, not cars.
As for St. Andrews, St. George and the other off-highway towns, life will go on much as always. Curious visitors will stop in; most will drive by. Saint John will kick up its highway marketing a notch, to encourage traffic to pull in there, first.
So it’ll be more of same—for the short term. But longer term, the US is going to hit the end-of-oil wall, not to mention the ultimate end-of-empire economic wall. When that happens, our highway could just be a final escape route for a lot of US refugees. Though by that time most of us won’t be around to see it.
For such a small province why does New Brunswick have so many superhighways? The prairie provinces, for the most part, only have the two-lane Trans-Canada. PEI doesn’t have much in the way of divided highways, either. I can’t imagine Newf having a lot. Nova Scotia has the four-lane connection from Halifax to the New Brunswick border. But New Brunswick, with its 750,000 population puts them all to shame.
By the end of this year there’ll be a new US-Canada border crossing in St. Stephen. In five year’s time—we’re told by the government—the highway between our new border crossing and Saint John will be four-laned. Sure, it’s going to be safer, I guess. But is it really worth the investment?
That depends. Canadians always seem to be making overtures to the Americans. We’re always the first to build inviting roads to their borders, I assume to carry our goods to their markets. But if that were really the case, why wouldn’t we be building more railroads? After all, shipping by rail is about 7 times more economical than highway trucking. So maybe I’m missing something.
One of the things that’s hard to miss is the fact that a lot of the money for New Brunswick’s new highway construction comes from the federal government. It’s probably a lot easier to get “infrastructure” money from the feds than it is, say, to get more money for healthcare or welfare or assistance for seniors. So instead of improving our social services for the less financially endowed, we get more highways. This, of course, doesn’t hurt the local Irving oil refineries, although I hardly thing they need the extra business.
Meanwhile, back here in the St. Stephen area, the Baileyville mill has shut down across the river. And with that shutdown comes the shutdown of our local railway spur line, which reportedly received about a half a million dollars from the Domtar mill in Baileyville. So, no mill, no half million, no rail service.
I find this more than a little disconcerting, given the fact that the planet will be running out of fossil fuels sometime around the middle of this century. Why on earth would we be investing in a mode of transportation—the highway system—that’s 700% less fuel-efficient than an older technology—rail?
The only reason I can conjure up is that the province wants more tourism. Maybe, we think, if we have the best highway system we’ll get a lot more tourists. And if that’s really the reason, I think we’re completely cracked. Why? First, tourists don’t come for the highways. They come for the attractions—like culture, beautiful scenery and exciting things to do. They have highways at home. Second, superhighways homogenize the tourism experience. Once a tourist is on a big highway, it takes a lot to get them to turn off the highway. So they keep going until the highway ends—in places like PEI, where they can visit Anne of Green Gables.
But, for the sake of argument, let’s suppose that the province’s highway building is a good thing. So, if the plan is to have a four-lane divided highway running all the way from the New Brunswick–Nova Scotia border all the way to St. Stephen and the US border, where is all that traffic going to end up? Well, once in the States, the traffic will end up back on the dangerous little Route 9 “Airline” heading 2 hours through the backwoods to Bangor, where it can finally hook up to the I-95 headed south.
The only decent proposal that we’ve heard over the past couple of years was the plan to build a toll highway east–west across Maine to shortcut traffic from St. Stephen to Montreal, cutting a couple of hours off the northern route up through Edmundston.
Empires like the US run on the quality of their roads. The Roman Empire was successful, in no small part, due to the engineering and build-quality of its roads—linking the empire east to west and north to south. But empires can overextend themselves, too.
Spain, the longest running empire of the last millennium, had more wealth from its gold and silver mines than any other country in the world. According to Ronald Wright in “What is America”, Spain’s American mines produced nearly three-quarters of the world’s gold and even more of its silver. Its wealth came so easily that it was just as easily squandered on mindless religious wars against not one—but almost all of its neighbours. By the end of its three-hundred-year reign as world superpower it was one of the poorest countries in Christendom. Meanwhile, Britain, with less access to material wealth, had become the workshop of the world.
If this sounds vaguely familiar, it should. Today China is the world’s workshop, while the US has exhausted most of its domestic oil, is fighting on two fronts, and seems to be angling to fight on two more in Iran and Pakistan. The recent financial crisis should be a dire warning about America’s future, should it continue its breakneck spending. And it’s to that future we’re building our new four-lane roads.
So what of the future of St. Stephen—and the other nearby towns—after the new border crossing opens, and especially after the four-lane links the border to Saint John? Well, the smart money in St. Stephen will cluster around the first on ramp near the high school. It wouldn’t be hard to picture a Super 8 motel or Best Western out there, along with a Burger King and McDonald’s, and a big Irving Blue Canoe. That kind of shift of commercial energy will definitely pull the town’s focus permanently away from the downtown. That’s just the way it is with freeways, cars and parking lots. Downtowns need people, not cars.
As for St. Andrews, St. George and the other off-highway towns, life will go on much as always. Curious visitors will stop in; most will drive by. Saint John will kick up its highway marketing a notch, to encourage traffic to pull in there, first.
So it’ll be more of same—for the short term. But longer term, the US is going to hit the end-of-oil wall, not to mention the ultimate end-of-empire economic wall. When that happens, our highway could just be a final escape route for a lot of US refugees. Though by that time most of us won’t be around to see it.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
iPoding through life
©
The evening jazz show on the French CBC radio station filled the van as I drove back from St. Andrews through the rain and fog. The kids were in the van with me. I glanced over at the oldest boy between the wiper beats and flashing headlights of oncoming cars and smiled. I like driving in the rain. I like jazz, too.
I looked over at him again, and this time I could make out the trademark white line and earbud in his ear, so I reached over, took it from his ear and put it up to mine. It was an upbeat techno rock—totally at odds with my jazz on the radio. Funny. I knew that in the back seat his older sister was listening to her own iPod, and I wondered how different her song—and her mood—was from our two different versions up front.
Earlier in the day she’d handed me her earbud to listen. It was the Rolling Stones. I was a bit surprised that she had them on her iPod. Then she asked if they’d done a lot of drugs over the years because they looked pretty bad, and if I’d ever been to one of their concerts. ‘Yes’ to both questions. It was the first time in a couple of years that our musical interests had overlapped. Nice.
It got me thinking about how our life-pods keep us insulated. We grow up in our own generation with our own music and fashion. My father is still very stuck in his own musical past. To him the Big Band era of the 40s is the absolute finest, the pinnacle.
Hairstyles are like that, too. At some point our hairstyles get ‘locked in’ and stay that way for the rest of our lives. I’ve written about this before. Walking into a Tim Horton’s you can recognize the ducktail guys from the 1950s and the old hippies with wispy grey ponytails. Mullets have pretty much disappeared, but you can still find the odd one. In a few years we’ll be able to date the short hair combed forward and flipped up at the front—and the buzzcuts and shaved baldies, too.
Women’s hairstyles must be like that I think, although I don’t recognize the history of women’s styles as much. I get lost somewhere between backcombing in the early 60s and the big hair of the 80s. Except for the current do with the short cut at the back and the long Afghan dog-ears at the front. Or the other one with the comb over across the eyebrows. Those two I’ll be able to date as mid- to late-2000s.
Some sage, I’ve forgotten who, once advised that one should follow the crowd by adopting the fashion of the day, but to stand alone on matters of personal character. I hate to think that most of us do it backwards as we age—resisting the new fashion of the day but following the herd on pretty much everything else. Personally, I’m now old enough that fashion doesn’t matter that much—as long as I don’t embarrass myself by looking like a total anachronism. But I’m now a whole lot more willing to stand up and stand out for what I believe in. And maybe that’s a matter of age too, but I kind of doubt it. I think that the willingness to stand up comes from the certainty that one has nothing to lose. Nobody gets out of here alive. We’re gonna die anyway, so we may as well take a chance.
There’s an aching nostalgia that comes from looking back at the wake left by our life-pod. Nothing is worse than listening to old songs. With each verse, memories of lost friends, first loves and heartbreaks and summers on the beach come flooding back. At first these memories are warm, then the realization of distance and time creeps in, and soon enough there’s that old emptiness, and finally the coldness of the grave clutching at our heart.
As the years pile onto our life-pod like miles on the odometer, our losses also pile up. That makes falling into nostalgia particularly dangerous. It makes us remember how much has been lost. Maybe we actually decide to die when we get too tired of losing.
Sitting here, I’m recollecting my own ghosts, friends—once close friends—I haven’t seen in years. A girl who taught me to waterski. The boyfriend she met at university, who became my friend and stayed a friend even after they split up. A writer I knew back home who I met again out here, and who’s gone away again. My first best friend as a kid, a diabetic at age 7, who grew up to be a snooker champion. Dozens and dozens of people—maybe hundreds. Every one now only a memory buried somewhere in my neural circuits.
It’s too lonely thinking these kinds of thoughts. But that’s the way of it—iPoding through life. Each of us is listening to our own tune. And sometimes that tune can be a sad and lonely one.
But sometimes not. This afternoon as I was renovating the new office (still) and listening to some folk singer on the Prairie Home Companion and trying to keep the kids entertained while I worked, a friend dropped by to see how I was making out. He asked if my kids wanted to hang out at his place with his boy. Sure, okay. Later, after a couple of hours messing with two-by-fours and drywall, I went over to pick up the kids and ended up watching the end of the hockey game and having a beer with him. It’s nice when the insulating iPod earbuds come off and people start listening to the same song together. While we watched the game our kids hung out around a firepit in his backyard, huddled together in the rain—exploding unopened popcans in the fire.
Had we known I think the two of us would have gone to explode popcans, too.
There’s no moral in any of this. There are times when it’s good to be inside our own life-pod and other times when it’s good to be with other people. Yes, I resent gadgets—cell phones, iPods, alarm wristwatches, whatever—creeping up my body. But all that stuff can disappear pretty quickly when real people get together to play.
Life may be short, but it’s also very, very good.
The evening jazz show on the French CBC radio station filled the van as I drove back from St. Andrews through the rain and fog. The kids were in the van with me. I glanced over at the oldest boy between the wiper beats and flashing headlights of oncoming cars and smiled. I like driving in the rain. I like jazz, too.
I looked over at him again, and this time I could make out the trademark white line and earbud in his ear, so I reached over, took it from his ear and put it up to mine. It was an upbeat techno rock—totally at odds with my jazz on the radio. Funny. I knew that in the back seat his older sister was listening to her own iPod, and I wondered how different her song—and her mood—was from our two different versions up front.
Earlier in the day she’d handed me her earbud to listen. It was the Rolling Stones. I was a bit surprised that she had them on her iPod. Then she asked if they’d done a lot of drugs over the years because they looked pretty bad, and if I’d ever been to one of their concerts. ‘Yes’ to both questions. It was the first time in a couple of years that our musical interests had overlapped. Nice.
It got me thinking about how our life-pods keep us insulated. We grow up in our own generation with our own music and fashion. My father is still very stuck in his own musical past. To him the Big Band era of the 40s is the absolute finest, the pinnacle.
Hairstyles are like that, too. At some point our hairstyles get ‘locked in’ and stay that way for the rest of our lives. I’ve written about this before. Walking into a Tim Horton’s you can recognize the ducktail guys from the 1950s and the old hippies with wispy grey ponytails. Mullets have pretty much disappeared, but you can still find the odd one. In a few years we’ll be able to date the short hair combed forward and flipped up at the front—and the buzzcuts and shaved baldies, too.
Women’s hairstyles must be like that I think, although I don’t recognize the history of women’s styles as much. I get lost somewhere between backcombing in the early 60s and the big hair of the 80s. Except for the current do with the short cut at the back and the long Afghan dog-ears at the front. Or the other one with the comb over across the eyebrows. Those two I’ll be able to date as mid- to late-2000s.
Some sage, I’ve forgotten who, once advised that one should follow the crowd by adopting the fashion of the day, but to stand alone on matters of personal character. I hate to think that most of us do it backwards as we age—resisting the new fashion of the day but following the herd on pretty much everything else. Personally, I’m now old enough that fashion doesn’t matter that much—as long as I don’t embarrass myself by looking like a total anachronism. But I’m now a whole lot more willing to stand up and stand out for what I believe in. And maybe that’s a matter of age too, but I kind of doubt it. I think that the willingness to stand up comes from the certainty that one has nothing to lose. Nobody gets out of here alive. We’re gonna die anyway, so we may as well take a chance.
There’s an aching nostalgia that comes from looking back at the wake left by our life-pod. Nothing is worse than listening to old songs. With each verse, memories of lost friends, first loves and heartbreaks and summers on the beach come flooding back. At first these memories are warm, then the realization of distance and time creeps in, and soon enough there’s that old emptiness, and finally the coldness of the grave clutching at our heart.
As the years pile onto our life-pod like miles on the odometer, our losses also pile up. That makes falling into nostalgia particularly dangerous. It makes us remember how much has been lost. Maybe we actually decide to die when we get too tired of losing.
Sitting here, I’m recollecting my own ghosts, friends—once close friends—I haven’t seen in years. A girl who taught me to waterski. The boyfriend she met at university, who became my friend and stayed a friend even after they split up. A writer I knew back home who I met again out here, and who’s gone away again. My first best friend as a kid, a diabetic at age 7, who grew up to be a snooker champion. Dozens and dozens of people—maybe hundreds. Every one now only a memory buried somewhere in my neural circuits.
It’s too lonely thinking these kinds of thoughts. But that’s the way of it—iPoding through life. Each of us is listening to our own tune. And sometimes that tune can be a sad and lonely one.
But sometimes not. This afternoon as I was renovating the new office (still) and listening to some folk singer on the Prairie Home Companion and trying to keep the kids entertained while I worked, a friend dropped by to see how I was making out. He asked if my kids wanted to hang out at his place with his boy. Sure, okay. Later, after a couple of hours messing with two-by-fours and drywall, I went over to pick up the kids and ended up watching the end of the hockey game and having a beer with him. It’s nice when the insulating iPod earbuds come off and people start listening to the same song together. While we watched the game our kids hung out around a firepit in his backyard, huddled together in the rain—exploding unopened popcans in the fire.
Had we known I think the two of us would have gone to explode popcans, too.
There’s no moral in any of this. There are times when it’s good to be inside our own life-pod and other times when it’s good to be with other people. Yes, I resent gadgets—cell phones, iPods, alarm wristwatches, whatever—creeping up my body. But all that stuff can disappear pretty quickly when real people get together to play.
Life may be short, but it’s also very, very good.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Unsustainability of sustainability
©
Kids don’t like to work—at least the physical kind of work. That became painfully clear this weekend, when I asked my two boys to straighten up a pile of two-by-fours. Between smirking, jokes, dropping boards and just generally silly behaviour, the work took far too long and the pile ended up in the wrong spot.
This isn’t their problem of course, it’s mine. All kids—not just mine—need to be taught to do real work, and to have it backed up with regular routines or schedules. Homework needs to get done. Bedrooms need to be cleaned, tables cleared, dishes done, and lawns mowed.
I’m not sure if modern parents think that it’s unfashionable to have their kids learn how to do manual labour, or whether there are just too many distractions for parents and kids. Answering e-mail and keeping up Facebook pages take up the extra hours after school and after work and getting meals on the table. Who has time to micro-manage a child’s work routine? Isn’t it enough that little Justin and Jessica are getting good grades and mom can actually find a path across their bedroom floor? Besides there’s soccer, dance class, music lessons and karate—not to mention sleepovers and birthday parties with their friends.
There’s a reason why I’m puzzling over this. Within 40 years or so, our kids will be running out of fossil fuel. And that’s a daunting problem, which needs to be solved now rather than later. As one begins to think about the problem, the tougher the problem—or problems—get.
For example, in our modern agricultural economy it takes 9 to 10 (kilo)calories of fossil fuel to grow a single (kilo)calorie of food. So to put that into perspective, a tiny town of 2000 people needs about 3.5 million (kilo)calories a day—every day—to survive. That means they currently use up 35 million (kilo)calories of fossil fuel each day getting food on the table. In other words, it takes about 1130 gallons of gasoline—or almost 27 barrels of oil—to feed that small town every day.
I guess that half a gallon of gasoline per person per day doesn’t sound too excessive. Except that there’s a ridiculous amount of energy in a gallon of gas. Dr. David Pimentel, one of the academics concerned about our future without oil, calculates that the energy contained in one gallon of gas translates into one human agricultural labourer working for three weeks in the fields.
So, let’s go back to that small town of 2000 people. If they were depending on labourers instead of gasoline to get fed, they’d each require 10 farm workers to raise their food each and every day. In other words, our modern agriculture system is so inefficient it would take 20,000 workers—if oil were to vanish—to feed just 2000 people. When one factors in the agricultural harnessing of fossil fuel, it’s no wonder that the planet has undergone a human population explosion.
Given that all of us are adverse to hard physical labour, how in the world do we expect to grow our own food if and when fossil fuel gets scarce? Well, it’s not a future problem at all. It’s a problem right now. Here’s what Professor Heather MacLeod at St. Mary’s University in Halifax e-mailed me just today:
“Its amazing how unsustainable agriculture is in Canada in so many ways—including labour, with 15,000 Mexicans coming to the country every year to plant and harvest the fields. Nova Scotia farmers are worried the swine flu precautions may prevent the Mexicans from arriving in the next week or so to help on their farms. Apparently they are paid $9 an hour and work an 80-hour week to make as much money as possible before leaving. There just aren't enough local people interested in doing this work. What a crazy world. You can buy local food but the labour to produce that food has come from 4,000 miles away.
“Another concern here is the high cost of fertilizer, which is leading some Annapolis Valley farmers to use sewage sludge on their soil instead—which has traces of all the chemicals that make their way through the sewage system—nasty stuff to put on precious soil. The downside of Halifax now having a sewage treatment plant is that we have sewage sludge marketed to farmers as fertilizer.”
I suppose there’s faint comfort in knowing I’m not alone in this human energy relative to sustainability thought. But how exactly does one deconstruct 100 years of fossil fuel-driven technology? Good question, and one posed by a great documentary ‘A Crude Awakening, The Oil Crash’. Just about every aspect of the coming oil crisis is laid out—including how great a challenge it will be to replace oil.
We’re all aware by now that our enormous consumption of energy is the main contributor to the atmospheric build up of greenhouse gases, which scientists predict will lead to massive climate change within the lifetimes of our children. One has to wonder how the spike in fossil fuel consumption actually affects the spike in world population growth and the subsequent spike in greenhouse gases. If we start running out of fossil fuel in 40 or 50 years, will the human population begin to crash as well? And how about greenhouse gases? Will these too begin to decline dramatically, triggering an ice age in a hundred years or so? Who knows?
Case in point, who would have predicted the recent financial meltdown five years ago?
But I have to say that I find the whole subject of food somewhat ironic. I mean, today food is so inexpensive we’re awash in the stuff. Our garbage dumps are full of our leftovers. We—along with our neighbours and kids—fight the battle of the bulge on a daily basis. Weight loss regimes, diet pill makers and fitness franchises are making a fortune on us. Yet here I am, worrying about the future of our food supply.
Undoubtedly, there’s a lot we don’t know about the future. But, if we don’t change our habits soon, and begin to actively plan for a fossil-fuel-free future, our kids and grandkids are very likely to find out the hard way—in the form of extremely demanding physical labour. And a whole lot more.
Kids don’t like to work—at least the physical kind of work. That became painfully clear this weekend, when I asked my two boys to straighten up a pile of two-by-fours. Between smirking, jokes, dropping boards and just generally silly behaviour, the work took far too long and the pile ended up in the wrong spot.
This isn’t their problem of course, it’s mine. All kids—not just mine—need to be taught to do real work, and to have it backed up with regular routines or schedules. Homework needs to get done. Bedrooms need to be cleaned, tables cleared, dishes done, and lawns mowed.
I’m not sure if modern parents think that it’s unfashionable to have their kids learn how to do manual labour, or whether there are just too many distractions for parents and kids. Answering e-mail and keeping up Facebook pages take up the extra hours after school and after work and getting meals on the table. Who has time to micro-manage a child’s work routine? Isn’t it enough that little Justin and Jessica are getting good grades and mom can actually find a path across their bedroom floor? Besides there’s soccer, dance class, music lessons and karate—not to mention sleepovers and birthday parties with their friends.
There’s a reason why I’m puzzling over this. Within 40 years or so, our kids will be running out of fossil fuel. And that’s a daunting problem, which needs to be solved now rather than later. As one begins to think about the problem, the tougher the problem—or problems—get.
For example, in our modern agricultural economy it takes 9 to 10 (kilo)calories of fossil fuel to grow a single (kilo)calorie of food. So to put that into perspective, a tiny town of 2000 people needs about 3.5 million (kilo)calories a day—every day—to survive. That means they currently use up 35 million (kilo)calories of fossil fuel each day getting food on the table. In other words, it takes about 1130 gallons of gasoline—or almost 27 barrels of oil—to feed that small town every day.
I guess that half a gallon of gasoline per person per day doesn’t sound too excessive. Except that there’s a ridiculous amount of energy in a gallon of gas. Dr. David Pimentel, one of the academics concerned about our future without oil, calculates that the energy contained in one gallon of gas translates into one human agricultural labourer working for three weeks in the fields.
So, let’s go back to that small town of 2000 people. If they were depending on labourers instead of gasoline to get fed, they’d each require 10 farm workers to raise their food each and every day. In other words, our modern agriculture system is so inefficient it would take 20,000 workers—if oil were to vanish—to feed just 2000 people. When one factors in the agricultural harnessing of fossil fuel, it’s no wonder that the planet has undergone a human population explosion.
Given that all of us are adverse to hard physical labour, how in the world do we expect to grow our own food if and when fossil fuel gets scarce? Well, it’s not a future problem at all. It’s a problem right now. Here’s what Professor Heather MacLeod at St. Mary’s University in Halifax e-mailed me just today:
“Its amazing how unsustainable agriculture is in Canada in so many ways—including labour, with 15,000 Mexicans coming to the country every year to plant and harvest the fields. Nova Scotia farmers are worried the swine flu precautions may prevent the Mexicans from arriving in the next week or so to help on their farms. Apparently they are paid $9 an hour and work an 80-hour week to make as much money as possible before leaving. There just aren't enough local people interested in doing this work. What a crazy world. You can buy local food but the labour to produce that food has come from 4,000 miles away.
“Another concern here is the high cost of fertilizer, which is leading some Annapolis Valley farmers to use sewage sludge on their soil instead—which has traces of all the chemicals that make their way through the sewage system—nasty stuff to put on precious soil. The downside of Halifax now having a sewage treatment plant is that we have sewage sludge marketed to farmers as fertilizer.”
I suppose there’s faint comfort in knowing I’m not alone in this human energy relative to sustainability thought. But how exactly does one deconstruct 100 years of fossil fuel-driven technology? Good question, and one posed by a great documentary ‘A Crude Awakening, The Oil Crash’. Just about every aspect of the coming oil crisis is laid out—including how great a challenge it will be to replace oil.
We’re all aware by now that our enormous consumption of energy is the main contributor to the atmospheric build up of greenhouse gases, which scientists predict will lead to massive climate change within the lifetimes of our children. One has to wonder how the spike in fossil fuel consumption actually affects the spike in world population growth and the subsequent spike in greenhouse gases. If we start running out of fossil fuel in 40 or 50 years, will the human population begin to crash as well? And how about greenhouse gases? Will these too begin to decline dramatically, triggering an ice age in a hundred years or so? Who knows?
Case in point, who would have predicted the recent financial meltdown five years ago?
But I have to say that I find the whole subject of food somewhat ironic. I mean, today food is so inexpensive we’re awash in the stuff. Our garbage dumps are full of our leftovers. We—along with our neighbours and kids—fight the battle of the bulge on a daily basis. Weight loss regimes, diet pill makers and fitness franchises are making a fortune on us. Yet here I am, worrying about the future of our food supply.
Undoubtedly, there’s a lot we don’t know about the future. But, if we don’t change our habits soon, and begin to actively plan for a fossil-fuel-free future, our kids and grandkids are very likely to find out the hard way—in the form of extremely demanding physical labour. And a whole lot more.
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