No one whose main concern is ecological cares about oil depletion, except that we'd love to see it run out immediately.  But titles like "The End of Suburbia" give us hope and feel good, regardless of whether they have any chance of convincing average people that their ecocidal lifestyles are about to end.

How do you get your older Midwest relatives to swallow the Red Pill and understand why you're obsessed with peak oil? Or your scientific and engineering friends who wrinkle their noses at the mention of eco-villages and collapse?

Tiroir A Films has just released a DVD for when End of Suburbia just won't do.

Energy Crossroads: A burning need to change course covers peak oil, climate change and some of the things we can do about them.

The tone is sober, reasonable, matter-of-fact. The speakers are scientists and technical professionals. Their command of the material inspires confidence.

Where I disagree with you is that I think that a good part of building a movement should be preaching to the choir - deepening commitment and knowledge, affirming counter-cultural values.

Right now, your radar tells you that the people in the film will be dismissed as eccentrics. I'd argue that this will be the case in any social movement. Consider the unconventional lives of a Tom Paine, Vaclav Havel or Rachel Carson. The people who have the motivation and persistence lives to pursue the unrewarding career of a critic or pioneer are going to be different than the norm.

The people I've met in the peak oil and relocalization movements are intense, bright, creative, alive. Sometimes they stand out; other times they take on the protective coloration of a business person or academic.

In many ways, the present reminds me of the early and mid-60s, a lull before a social revolution that happens more quickly than anybody expects.  The values that are unusual now will become the standard in a few years.

For example, I will bet that the tastes of Gristmill readers in food, clothes, music and even sex have more in common with the rebels of the 60s than they do with the mainstream of that period. (Good thing too, since the 50s were repressed, narrow and colorless.)

Bart
Energy Bulletin

1. Gas is $4 a gallon.   It used to be $2.   BFD.

2. People like suburbia.   They want to live here where its Green, as in trees -- not green as in someone's lime green designer Euro-cupboard in a $540,000 one-bedroom condo 24 stories in the air, something you would call Home.

3. In a few years, we'll have more energy than you can shake a stick at.

There is some reasonable expansion of "new" energy technology like solar, wind, hydrogen, and clean technology and that the IPCC was completely off base and we're not going to fry.

What then...what if it's just a big sunny suburban playland, with green parks and bike riding, and swimming pools and picnics and barbeques and kids screaming and having fun.

Oh, right.

But you're you.

Back to the misery...

Texeme.Construct(function(x)=Participation(x))

There is some reasonable expansion of "new" energy technology like solar, wind, hydrogen, and clean technology...

Will there be movement and innovation in renewables? Absolutely. Will they be sufficient to counter declines in oil and other fossil fuels? Especially in light of increasing demand from China, India and the Middle East?

Most people who have studied the question (including the military) are not as confident as you are. Oil is used for much more than powering cars -- food and manufacture, for example. Changing to new energy sources requires a change to the energy infrastructure, something that normally takes decades.

In such cases, the conservative and prudent course is anticipate and prepare. Techno-solutions? Maybe. But they are basically out of the hands of private individuals and communities. Culture change, on the other hand, can be quick and effective, and is within the capability of everyone.

For example, when a nation is forced to get along on fewer resources, as during WW2, then people turn to responses similar to those in the documentary. Victory gardens. Limits on travel. Alternative fuels.  

Bart
Energy Bulletin

Being "still" involves opening your mind and the documentary is designed to fill an open mind with not only intellectual concepts and social criticism, but empathy as-well.  Some of the characters in our film are definitely whacky (though no mention is made of the third character Kate-a "mainstream" single mom struggling to articulate solutions to peak oil and climate change).  The characters we chose to follow are the ones left out by both the mainstream media and the alternative media , and we wanted to give them a voice.  As we ask in our promotional material:  are these folks crackpots, or Cassandras?  Are they simply crazy people, or are they pioneering the DIY lifestyle changes that the mainstream will be forced to adopt as this crisis deepens?  

The conclusion of ESCAPE has Guy Dauncey, the president of the BC Renewable Energy Association, articulate a vision of what sustainable suburbs might look like in the future.  But at the core of his massage is a passionate plea to all of us (and especially the skeptics) to find hope and build positive solutions.

Finally, Mr. Roberts admits to enjoying our movie.  Well- DUH!!  Is it not about time that we can watch a movie about all these catastrophes and come away feeling lighter, with a greater sense of hope and determination?

greg greene writer | director The END of SUBURBIA ESCAPE From SUBURBIA EVOLUTION SUBURBIA (2010)

That might be a bright future for him, but for me it's tragically short-sighted.  It should be obvious that the impact of suburbia goes way beyond the energy economy.  The destruction of biodiversity on all scales is what makes me miserable, if I think about it too long.

Leopold (Round River) said "One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist ... sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise."

Bailo evidently belongs to the community Leopold was referring to.

"The conclusion of ESCAPE has Guy Dauncey, the president of the BC Renewable Energy Association, articulate a vision of what sustainable suburbs might look like in the future.  But at the core of his massage is a passionate plea to all of us (and especially the skeptics) to find hope and build positive solutions."

... so perhaps the movie addresses the issue.

Does anyone have a realistic plan for rehabilitating suburbia?

Though I might not have much sympathy for those folks -- including myself -- who moved to suburbia more recently, the earlier inhabitants and their descendants, in my opinion, deserve some compassion from the rest of us. Those moving to suburbia in the 50s were not aware of how their collective decision would harm our environment. They were simply searching for a better life according to an earlier set of values. Their children and grandchildren were obviously not responsible, but now it's the lifestyle they are most familiar with.

Environmentalists can applaud the rising price of energy and look forward to the collapse of suburbia, the return of people to urban areas, and the rise of a relatively sustainable culture, but what can be done to ease the transition?

I suppose one option is a market solution... the price of energy and driving rises. People decide to abandon their suburban homes and automobiles. But... who is going to pay off those mortgages? Are people literally going to abandon their homes, declaring bankruptcy? How will they buy or even find money for renting new homes? And when they return to urban areas, demanding housing, will the cost of housing rise and create a cascade of unanticipated problems? If they move closer to their job, lose that job, and end up commuting in the opposite direction, how does that reduce dependency on cheap energy? Or is everyone supposed to move every time their job moves? I  guess we don't really care about building stable communities.

I believe it would be better to rehabilitate the suburbs. This means photovoltaics and other sources of energy that remove houses from the grid. Outreach programs to help people telecommute or work fewer days if they have to commute. The ongoing search for better personal transportation. Education and laws that encourage placing houses in a way that preserves contiguous wildlife habitat. Establishing native ecosystems, rather than lawns, around homes. Encouraging fruit and vegetable gardens to reduce dependence on industrial agriculture. Smaller school districts so children don't have to be bussed to school.

But then I suppose there is a bit of a dilemma. Rehabilitate suburbia and it will never die. More people will want to move there. Rehabilitation essentially enables further destructive behavior.

Is there a middle way?

It would be interesting to see the following poll and comments regarding it...

(A) Let suburbs collapse, economically, and those living there figure out how to cope with it.

(B) Federal or state tax payers purchase and recycle suburbia, convert it to farm or natural areas, and those living there decide which city to move to.

(C) Make suburbia environmentally friendly.

(D) Other.

I originally wasn't interested in the movie, but after reading Greg Greene's comment I look forward to seeing it. Sounds like he might be looking for a practical solution to this very difficult problem.

Don't expect to be spoon-fed the solutions to the crisis in our films.  As citizens facing this uncertain future, what we need most is to be courageous and show leadership, at the same time as we listen to others and practice empathy.  These are personal qualities which will help empower our communities as we struggle to make the difficult choices ahead, and this is ultimately what ESCAPE articulates.

thanks for all your support out there folks!

greg greene writer | director The END of SUBURBIA ESCAPE From SUBURBIA EVOLUTION SUBURBIA (2010)

Bailo looks forward to a "a big sunny suburban playland, with green parks and bike riding, and swimming pools and picnics and barbeques and kids screaming and having fun."

That might be a bright future for him, but for me it's tragically short-sighted.

To me, most "Greens" are like a Bizarro version of Montgomery Burns from the Simpsons...only instead of taking their spite and hatred out on people by selling them nuclear energy, they do the reverse -- they rub their hands together with glee as they plot to take peoples' energy away.   They have no remorse for anyone or their lifestyle (unless they live in a rainforest or aboriginal condition).   They are actually a titter at the thought of some harried middle class person, trying to raise a family, running out of gas for his Ford Focus because some jock in college blew by them in an SUV and threw a beer at them.

Look, he even wears a green suit:
http://tech.blorge.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/simpson ...

Texeme.Construct(function(x)=Participation(x))

what we need is humanity in dealing with our ecological problems, and that means taking the lumps that folks like Jaballo give us with humility, and listening to what they are saying (which means cutting through hyperbole and getting at the truth).

cheers

greg greene writer | director The END of SUBURBIA ESCAPE From SUBURBIA EVOLUTION SUBURBIA (2010)

i haven't seen the film yet, by the way--i too am speaking from a general tendency i have noticed in activists, myself included.

That is - instead of talking about issues, we turn it into a psychological b.s. session.

The ploy is a common one among the pathological right. "Why do you hate America"  "Why aren't you wearing your flag pins?" "Why do you hate white people?" etc.

Let's step away from the navel-gazing and look at the issues:

1. Is it not true, David, that suburbia, car-culture and consumerism require much more energy and resources than other ways of life?

2. Is it not true that such dependence is bad for the economy and the environment? (e.g., oil revenues flowing out of the country)

3. Is it not true that with rising fuel costs, people in suburbia will be particularly hard hit, and that it would be very smart to start developing fallback strategies?

4. Is it not true that reliance on foreign sources of energy causes the U.S. to deploy its military throughout the world to ensure supplies? That we are headed on a collision course with China and other countries to get the energy to supply our lifestyles?

5. Is it not true that India and China are replicating the U.S. car culture with disasterous effects?

"i lived in a suburb for the most trying 6 years of my life (junior high and high school)."

I'm sorry this was the worst period of your life. There are others who have fond memories of growing up in suburbia and wish to continue or return to living there. The most trying years of my life were those spent trapped in an urban area, dependent on a poorly designed mass transit system, hearing sirens on the street below my one window, and listening to my wife describe how the police escorted her to our apartment door because someone was shot to death on the sidewalk out front and the shooter was still loose. I don't condemn those who enjoy living in urban areas. It just isn't for everyone. I've posted more lengthy comments on this elsewhere.

Turanga also wrote...

"it thrills me to think of suburbanites facing real financial hardship instead of what color to paint the kitchen during the fifth redecoration. the idea of a soccer mom in a bread line instead of a three martini lunch at chili's is very exciting to me."

I'm an escapee from urbia. I moved beyond suburbia, so perhaps my experience is irrelevant. Never-the-less, I would probably have the same income, same interests, and same challenges were I to have settled in suburbia.

Given a substantial reduction in our family income, not simply due to the price of gas, we're trying to decide whether we can afford to plant more than two fruit trees this spring, whether we can add a few more native perennials to our garden, or whether we can afford to continue to buy organic milk and produce. As the price of gas goes up, our investment in protecting the environment goes down. There's nothing else to cut from our budget. Does that excite you?

We're three months away from losing our house if one of us experiences a further reduction in income or we face an unexpected major expense. Perhaps the bank can foreclose on it and sell it to a wealthy lawyer or doctor who will tear out the native plants and replace them with a mowed lawn. Though why such a person would want such a small house is beyond me. Does that excite you?

We haven't redecorated the kitchen once in the past ten years. We haven't redecorated any rooms. I don't think I know anyone who's redecorated their kitchen once, let alone five times. There are better things to invest in, even when not facing financial hardship. I hope you are not too disappointed to learn that not all suburbanites are constantly redecorating.

Finally, most of the moms I know are busy working to keep on top of the bills. They are NOT enjoying  three-martini lunches at Chillis. They don't go to restaurants. Who can afford to eat out?

I'm sure there are people like Turanga describes, but I'm not convince they are typical suburbanites. Perhaps someone has been watching too much TV, perhaps the characters on Desperate Housewives are worthy of such loathing, but real people deserve a little more compassion.

But if you think there's not a substantial strain of contempt and disdain for ordinary Americans who live the standard American life afoot in the peak oil movement (and environmentalism too), you're not paying attention. And if you think ordinary Americans don't notice that contempt, again, look more closely.

Most people use emotional and tonal signals as a heuristic. They don't get into complicated arguments. If you approach them with an attitude of contempt, they'll tune you out and you'll never get to make your wonderfully rational arguments. It does not befit those who are serious about peak oil to ignore the issue just because it doesn't involve their beloved charts and graphs.

grist.org

"Your [Turanga's] self-awareness and wisdom are to be much lauded. Would that they were more widespread."

Which part or parts?

Despising lifestyles they themselves don't find attractive or interesting; assuming their own experience is representative of how everyone should experience growing up in an urb, suburb, or exurb; and stereotyping people based on where they live?

OR

Fighting those feelings and reaching out with compassion?

I don't read much about the issues brought up in this thread because I sense -- though I admit I could be very wrong -- that it doesn't matter how I feel, whether I'm doing other things to protect our environment, or whether I try to minimize how much my commute harms the environment. I'm just evil.

And there seems --- seems -- to be a significant number of environmentalists out there who are excited by the rising cost of energy because it will bring down a way of life they despise for a large number of reasons. There's no sign of sincere compassion for those who will be directly affected. There's little indication that the most active environmentalists want to help find ways for suburbanites to live lighter on the Earth, short of essentially asking them to pay off their mortgages, tear down their houses, and put conservation easements on the land.

As I've mentioned before... in for a penny, in for a pound. I HAVE to make suburban -- or rural or whatever you might call it -- living work. I have to commute. It is only going to get more difficult to sell a house like mine. And if I did sell it to someone else so I could return to an urban area, exactly how will that protect the environment? Obviously, I'm not the only person in such a situation. And we do not -- can't -- look forward to rising costs for energy like so many of you appear -appear -- to do.

"and yet...i fight against these feelings every time, because first and foremost, i am a compassionate humanist (well, actually, post-humanist) and a pacifist. we activists have an obligation to prevent suffering for all forms of life, including our own species. this kind of schadenfreude is absolute poison, for ourselves and for our movement.

i haven't seen the film yet, by the way--i too am speaking from a general tendency i have noticed in activists, myself included."

i wonder if you've spent a lot of time in activist communities, because if you did, you would see how these sorts of vitriolic ideas about suburbanites are almost a part of the very air we breathe. we all struggle with stereotypes. please don't attack me for actually having the guts to admit to my own.

I sense it in the local conservation organization I belong to. It is barely suppressed when urban, suburban, and rural people come together for a common cause. It's the elephant in the room. There are subjects one just doesn't discuss around fellow conservationists.

It's clear that I'm moving in the opposite direction, developing contempt or disdain for the most active environmentalists. Talk of peak oil and the collapse of suburbia -- as a positive thing -- in the same thread immediately triggers a defensive posture and reinforces my poor attitude. It reinforces the stereotypes I myself harbor and continue to build.  I will try to let go ...

Thank you for you comments on this topic.

My own story is I grew up on an exurban fringe piece of nature that has now been preserved as farmland by my parents who still live there and farm ecologically.  I on the other hand moved back into the city from whence my father had grown up. Sure it's a bit different, more diverse but the grittiness doesn't have to equate to violent danger. That's a suburban stereotype myth in my opinion.

The choice of where to live, relative to work, shopping (organic milk isn't sold everywhere in my town either) is crucial.  My own struggle has been reconciling self to life on small urban lot. But we've planted cherry, apple, plum, peach, pawpaw trees as well as blueberry bushes, grapes, and 4 native berry bush types for the songbirds. I can bike to work and have done so for the past 3 years, taking bus in bad weather.  My household owns and when necessary drives one of two efficient hybrid vehicles (both of which were purchased as late model used).  We also offset our carbon footprint of transportation and household energy use.

Balancing my other need for real nature experience is my volunteer work with an urban watershed group.  The river in the city is an amazing oasis... and you can do so much locally in the context of a watershed to make a positive difference.  Thus I don't need to own the patch of earth I am improving, in order to make this local part of the environment more sustainable.  But my sense of ownership by sweat equity, the results of work on the river areas, is tangible.

Truly these things involve choices and maybe not doing as many frenetic activities in a day-- but appreciating the quality of each activity one does pursue.

This film, and the discussion, may be about suburbia-- but I suspect it is more about finding meaning in one's existence not attached directly to the size of one's house or vehicle, my perception of suburbia is the values are misplaced-- that will require a titanic adjustment to become sustainable in today's world.  Suburbia may need to contract and focalize from its current diffusive form in order to right-size our collective footprint on the planet.

No response to Jabailo in this thread seems warranted for now, he seems to be trolling here with a contrarian ad hominem viewpoint that I would dispute, but why waste the pixels.

Moving toward sustainability with hopefulness, one revolution at a time.

Dara Rowland, producer, ESCAPE from SUBURBIA and EVOLUTION SUBURBIA (2010).

DR: Who are you arguing against? Nobody here disagrees with any of that.

DR: But if you think there's not a substantial strain of contempt and disdain for ordinary Americans who live the standard American life afoot in the peak oil movement (and environmentalism too), you're not paying attention.

The people I work with don't have time for 'contempt and disdain' - we're too busy! There's so much to learn, so many opportunities. People are writing books, blogging, organizing local groups, gardening, doing local politics.

Let me throw out some thoughts and see if any of them makes sense to you or other readers.

1. There is the self-righteousness endemic to almost any movement. Environmentalism may be more prone than some other movements, because it has to do with personal actions and values.

2. We Americans have built ourselves a fantasy world over the last few decades, in terms of cheap energy, economics, military power, personal spending, etc. It reached its high point with the comment of the White House aide: "We're an empire now, and when we act we create our own reality." Now we're in a phase in which reality is catching up with us. It is a bitter experience, and I'm afraid it is just the beginning (e.g., falling dollar, housing bubble burst). People are going to be touchy about criticism. For many reasons, it's important to be empathetic and not to appear to be gloating or self-righteous.

3. In terms of the environment, it is becoming clear that much of what we've accepted as normal is dysfunctional. Bitter medicine. Human nature says that if we're not careful, we'll go into denial or seek scapegoats.  That's why I think it's critical to promote POSITIVE non-partisan activities, like bicycling, local food and building community - so that people are proud of what they are doing now, rather than brooding on what happened before.

4. I sense that a key idea for you is "ordinary Americans who live the standard American life."  I know you use the term "dirty f* hippie" as a joke, but I'm guessing that at some level you place environmentalists and "dirty f* hippies" (DFHs) in opposition to "ordinary Americans".

What is weird is that in your review, you dismissed the DFHs in the documentary in funny but acerbic terms. Soon afterwards, you accuse the DFHs of 'contempt and disdain.'  WHA? Doesn't make sense - except as projection - attributing one's feelings to others.

Question for readers to ponder: which are you? DFH or Ordinary Joe?  Are these categories meaningful to you?

The cultural analysis about how a minority is created is standard stuff. I haven't seen it applied to DFHs, though.

Bart
Energy Bulletin

(Sorry, couldn't resist. Gloating is one of my weaknesses... :-)

I guess I just don't understand what all the fuss is about.

Yea, I would have preferred ESCAPE was different in some ways. But I'm glad Greg and Dara made it. Our portrayal in the film was not quite accurate, but much closer to the truth than David's review is. (By the way, Veggie Van Gogh is NOT an RV, and is highly insulted. :-)

The American Left is notorious for eating its young. The reason the US has had increasingly fascist governments since 1980 is because people like David Roberts finds it easier to criticize the twig in ESCAPE FROM SUBURBIA's eye than the log in the eye of the status quo.

Must everything be targeted to the least common denominator? "Average Joes" don't change the world; Geoffrey Moore calls these people "mice" and "laggards".

I'm proud to be criticized for not being an "average joe." Normal people don't chance things. Normal people don't change things. Normal people do as their told -- they live in Kuenstler's "concensus trance," having had, as Chomsky defines it, their "consent engineered."

Forget the "average joe." A basic tenant of social marketing (which is what ESCAPE is) is that you don't waste time on the unconvertable. Instead, you do "preach to the choir," knowing some of them will intensify their involvement and become choir directors.

I'm honoured if my portrayal in the film causes anyone to question their life. I'll bet if it does, it won't be someone whose greatest excitement is their team in the superbowl or winning $50 in the lottery or splurging by going to Olive Garden instead of McDonalds.

:::: Jan Steinman, EcoReality. ::::

"A basic tenant of social marketing (which is what ESCAPE is) is that you don't waste time on the unconvertable. Instead, you do "preach to the choir," knowing some of them will intensify their involvement and become choir directors."

I disagree. If a person presents a good solid case, backed by facts, there is a high probability of persuading your target audience to behave differently. Social marketing would be pointless if it merely preached to the choir. Jan is essentially reducing social marketing  to the role of a cheerleading squad. The goal is to design a message--built upon a sincere interest in and understanding of those you wish to reach--that the target audience can comprehend and will be motivated by.

What's the point of preaching to the choir and enlisting more choir directors from the choir if you never recruit new members for the choir?

So is ESCAPE "social marketing" or "preaching to the choir"?

But anyway, I think that towns and even cities can survive, and survive sustainably, as I've tried to argue in many of my posts.  I know NYC would be quite a trick, but the fact that you can live there without a car makes it one of the most sustainable parts of the US.

A lot of Escape from Suburbia seemed to boil down to, where's the food going to come from?  I think that the current industrial agricultural system is a ridiculously inefficient monster, and that it will be fairly straightforward to put farm belts around towns and cities.  At any rate, issues like that are what I personally find more interesting than a completely rural model -- but good look anyway, let 100 flowers bloom!

Bart, as usual, everything you say is sensible. I wish there were more like you. One note though: my review was not about how I see DFHs. I spent much of my young adult life surrounded by DFHs. I was a DFH, though of a rather callow variety (I was young). I have nothing against them. I consider folks like Jan who follow their convictions  far outside the mainstream quite courageous (hi Jan).

But if we really want people to take peak oil seriously, we have to defang it. People need a glide path from where they are to a more energy-sensible life. The bigger the jump they have to take, the fewer people will take it. What EFS offers them is a gargantuan leap -- from the average American life to this quasi-agrarian cult of true believers. The number of people willing to make that leap is going to be tiny, and thus the film is going to be ineffectual at creating real change. If anything it will reinforce all the worst stereotypes people bring to it.

What really bugs me is that I agree with Jon -- I don't think peak oil necessarily implies abandoning cities and retreating to rural collectives. That's a rather narrow and extreme school of peak oil thinking, and it's presented as the sum total. It seems almost consciously designed to marginalize the notion of peak oil.

I want change. This movie won't create any. That's the long and short of it.

grist.org

I have had several die-hard Republican-voting, corporate-employed "average Joes" come up to me after seeing An Inconvenient Truth" and ask me "is it really that bad" with actual fear in their voices. A surprisingly encouraging number of people are beginning to question the basic premises of this self-destructive potlatch ceremony we call a civilization.

I think we need to do everything we can to encourage that, and avoid the "culture war" mentality of the past, while setting an example of a vibrant and viable alternative to consumerism run amok. You may find more common ground with the guy at Olive Garden than you think. Meanwhile, keep up the good work, and keep setting that bar high!