Forward-thinking Steps for Progressive Communities

March 31, 2010

Introduction
For the first time in many generations, American society faces the very real prospect of a long-term economic decline resulting in a permanently lower standard of living. The causes — as I have discussed elsewhere — are rising energy costs due to the depletion of fossil fuels and environmental degradation due to unsustainable land use practices and climate change, as well as excessive complexity of societal relations and structures.

In light of this, it behooves communities large and small to prepare for these impending financial and economic changes in advance in order to prevent unmitigated societal collapse and mayhem and to allow for a smoother transition to a post-fossil-fuel economy based on principles of sustainability and local self-sufficiency. Far from lowering well-being, the steps discussed below will provide substantial benefits to communities in terms of health and welfare, community spirit, and financial and economic security. The exploitation of inexpensive fossil fuels has brought us a higher GDP at the price of weaker communities and in many cases poorer physical and emotional health. By taking measures to lessen dependency on the fossil-fuel economy, communities can actually regain much of what was lost and actually improve well-being despite drops in economic output.

Core principles for community planning

The central values embodied in the measures below are sustainability and local self-sufficiency. Sustainability means that a practice or set of practices can be performed perpetually without causing environmental degradation either locally or elsewhere. Self-sufficiency means that the material inputs required for a practice or set of practices are obtained or produced locally.

Community leaders both formal and informal need to think about the many different aspects of the community's functioning and ask the questions:

- Is this sustainable? How can it be made more sustainable?
- Are we self-sufficient in this area? How can we become more self-sufficient?
- How can we reduce energy expenditures in all our community's activities?

Asking hard questions
Community leaders need to think about a day when high energy costs and prolongued financial crisis will make the transportation of goods and services over large distances problematic. When businesses dependent upon the banking system and globalized trade shut down, where will people in the community work? How will they make a living? How will people provide for their basic needs of food, clothing, and shelter with some degree of dignity? Will every man be on his own, or will community institutions be there to provide safety and security and facilitate the growth of new economic and social relations?

Yet more specifically, how will roads be maintained if large machines become too costly to operate? If more and more people resort to burning wood to heat their homes or prepare food, where will the wood be obtained in a sustainable manner? What will replace the current sewage system when it has become too costly to maintain? What shoes will people wear after Chinese plastic goods and textiles are no longer imported? How will library books be stored when it has become too costly to heat and air condition public facilities?

Obviously, each of these eventualities must be prepared for in advance and in a well-organized fashion. This requires vision, education, and persuasion on the part of community leaders, and stronger, more decisive local government in relation to state and federal government. Otherwise, individuals will try to provide for their individual needs any way they can if local government is absent or dysfunctional. This can easily lead to deforestation and topsoil depletion (the so-called "tragedy of the commons"), epidemics of infectious diseases due to nonexistent waste disposal systems, violent competition for limited resources, and a loss of cultural, technological, and intellectual heritage.

Recommended steps for communities

(a hodgepodge of ideas in no particular order)

• Introduce a local currency. This will facilitate the development of intracommunity economic interactions, boost local self-sufficiency, and make the community less vulnerable to shocks in the national financial system. It also paves the way for local government to eventually be able to collect taxes and continue providing important services even if the national currency spirals into hyperinflation. Over time, local banking services and insurance providers may appear based on use of the local currency.
  
  
• Promote sustainable waste management systems, particularly composting toilets. Dry composting toilet technology is cheap, effective, and enhances soil. Gray water can be reused for many outdoor purposes. Local citizens must be shown how these systems work and educated about their benefits.
  
  
• Promote energy-efficient heating and air-conditioning systems to cut down on the cost of utilities for community members and public buildings while fossil fuels are still in use.
  
  
• Build new buildings in the community using zero-energy principles — that is, technologies that allow liveable indoor temperatures to be maintained passively without any fuel inputs by taking maximum advantage of seasonal sun and shade, growing plants within living spaces, and using the insulating properties of the earth as necessary given the local climate. The more widespread such structures are and the more local building materials they use, the more resistant the local community will be to energy cost fluctuations.
  
  
• Build some new buildings using locally obtainable materials exclusively as a sort of exhibit for locals to be able to visit and study. At some point in the future, they may have to build similar structures of their own.
  
  
• Subsidize (at a minimal level) the small-scale revival of important traditional trades that can function using local inputs alone. These include non-mechanized traditional clothing and shoe production, glass making, brick making, blacksmithery, woodworking, and numerous other skills from the pre-fossil-fuel economy. In the future these people will be available to train apprentices and lay the groundwork for an effective economy. Keeping their knowledge alive should be seen as similar in importance to maintaining a local museum or library.
  
  
• Promote urban and suburban permaculture. Establish partnerships between landowners who don't use all their land and the landless who would like to garden. Have open houses to stimulate public interest in permaculture and to exchange methods.
  
  
• Secure an area of non-urban land around the city to serve as a resource base for food, water, wood, building materials, and other organic and inorganic substances necessary for human life. This area must be closely monitored and protected to avoid deforestation and other kinds of ecological degradation that could threaten the community'w well-being over the long run.
  
  
• Make printouts and obtain books with key practical information for post-fossil-fuel communities and store them in multiple small libraries or vaults in the community as reference materials. This may best be done by enthusiastic individuals who take this task upon themselves.
  
  
• Promote "freecycling" and the trading of useful goods within the community. If there is a platform for information exchange among citizens, they will have a much easier time finding the things they need and everyone will be better off.
  
  
• Develop energy-efficient transportation infrastructure. Public transportation is just the first step. Next come bike lanes and dedicated bike paths. These are ways of reducing energy costs within the current economy. Further steps involve preparing the community for a transition to a post-fossil-fuel economy where infrastructure will have to be built differently in the first place due to a probable lack of large, fuel-driven machinery. At best, some electricity-driven machinery will be available to help perform large-scale projects such as road building and moving rocks and soil. At worst, these machines will not be developed in time, will be too expensive to buy, deliver, or service, or the factories that build them will be too far distant or will go bankrupt. It makes sense to take precautionary measures for the worst-case scenario. In this case, community leaders need to think about what kinds of durable road surfaces can be developed and maintained using local materials, manpower, horsepower, and simple machines alone. Some experimental pathways of this kind could be developed within or around the community
  
  
• Campaign aggressively for changes in taxation policies. Unfortunately, there are a few aspects of community life that communities do not control. Property taxes are one of the Achilles' heels of American society. They mean that everyone who owns property must engage in economic activity that produces dollars. They make it impossible to build a completely self-sufficient local community based on subsistence agriculture and local currencies. Policies such as the property tax almost guarantee that if central government and financial systems collapse, all local communities will collapse as well. Progressive local communities should lobby for changes in taxation so that one cannot be required to pay more dollars in taxes than one has earned and so that one can perpetually own property that is used to provide food and other resources, but no dollars to speak of.

Obstacles to community preparation

The steps listed here are only possible in relatively cohesive communities whose residents are committed to their community and are willing to make individual and collective sacrifices in the short term to ensure security and sustainability in the long term. Such a community is not born in a day, and there is no exact science of community building, although we know it has something to do with shared experiences, history, and traditions, as well as with economic interdependency within the community.

Many elements of strong communities have been severely compromised by modern technology and the fossil fuel economy, but community revival may still be possible for many communities. Within the community there must be a core group of people who are making visible changes in their own lifestyles and economic activities and inform their friends and neighbors about what they are doing. The influence of such people must be greater than the cumulative inertia of individuals with a leech or entitlement mentality and those who are indifferent to community interests.

Other obstacles have to do with big business, banking, and central government. Corporate bodies based in the fossil-fuel economy are interested in maintaining the status quo and thwarting movements towards local self-sufficiency where their goods and services may no longer be needed. The actions and demands of federal and state governments may become increasingly chaotic and unreasonable as financial and budget crises gather steam. To counteract these external pressures, local government must become more powerful and proactive in the spirit of direct democracy.

One of the greatest obstacles of all is the spectre of personal debt and non-ownership that hangs over most Americans. People with debts to pay off are more tightly bound materially and emotionally to the fossil-fuel economy and will have to continue working at ordinary dollar-paying jobs to make their payments. People who don't own their property will have more difficulty getting started in urban agriculture. Those who rent out property will resist at first the idea of turning the property into an urban farm. All these parties will need extra encouragement to take part in serious attempts to localize the economy.

Read more

After writing the above I found that the ideas I've written about here are embodied in the Transition Towns movement, described well here.