Like a woman needs a fish...?

I watched the movie Cuba after Peak Oil this week, and found very interesting the fact that Cuba's initial response to the sudden loss of it's cheap, consistent oil supply (due to the collapse of the U.S.S.R.), was to import 1000's of Chinese bicycles.

There is an awful lot of conversation in the transition town community about making cities more walkable and transit friendly, however the reality is not lost on these groups that for many people, bikes may be their vehicle of choice in the face of more localized communities due to $3.00+ a litre gas.

I work in downtown Toronto, and can't help but notice the huge increase in the number of bikes on the road compared with when I lived here 4 years ago. Yes there is a fitness and lifestyle component, and certainly a “save the planet” ethos to riding your bike everywhere. Then there's that article the Star wrote several years ago (sorry, can't find the link) where they had a cyclist, a car, and a TTC rider go from Yonge and Queen to Yonge and Bloor, and the cyclist won hands down.

There is, however, that element of people who ride a bike because … well, once you have bought your bike (some of which can be had at second hand shops or kijiji for often as little as $20), it's free to ride. Notwithstanding the whole getting-soaked-in-wet-weather-and-arriving-hot-and-sweaty-in-good-weather thing. That, I guess, comes down to the whole 'The world is about to get a whole lot less convenient' thing.

I used to say in Hamilton, that you could always tell the people who rode bikes not out of choice, but out of necessity in two ways: 1) they almost never wear helmets, and 2) they often smoked while riding (clearly indicating it was not a health conscious choice).

One of my favorite stores in Hamilton (and I'm not even an avid cyclist, he's just a great guy) is Downtown Bike Hounds. Sean has positioned himself perfectly to a) equip Hamilton for the reality of bike commuting, and b) make a reasonable living in the meantime. His shop is packed with good quality refurbished bikes, and top of the line European commuter bikes. Exactly the type of bikes that will seem like a very cost effective option when oil hits $200+ a barrel.

So now that the snow seems to be gone, and the weather is warming up, I'm going to get a jump on the whole “bike commute” thing. I can easily walk to the GO bus stop, no problem, but starting Monday I'm going to start biking to the train station and catching that in, instead. I'm also going to get real used to making my Friday at 8:30 'Beer and Hard Cider' runs by bike.

Sure I'll be helping to husband what will be increasingly scarce resources, but mainly I'll be preparing myself (both in terms of physical ability and mindset) for the realities we're all going to face in the next 20 years.

What are you going to do?

The Nature of Work

Jeff Rubin et al wax fairly poetic about the way the nature of work is going to change in the Next Economy. Rubin in particular posits that many of the manufacturing jobs we have sent offshore, will be returning in a hurry once bunker fuel surcharges wipe out the difference in the lower wage costs. Good news indeed for unemployed manufacturing workers in North America. The question remains, though, who is going to be able to afford to buy a new big-screen TV or swap cell phones every 6 months?

Pretty much all the pundits agree that the next economy is going to be 'post-industrial' – or rather an economy based largely on agricultural production more than the consumption of throw-away goods.

This is probably not a bad thing.

In the few weeks since my Grandfather passed away, I have been thinking more about his legacy, specifically his DIY mentality, and how more of us are going to need to adopt just such an approach. A while ago, I also wrote about how the “homesteading crafts' are making a resurgence.

I think this time may be now for each of us to pick which homesteading craft we wish to adopt now, knowing that in an economy based on the repair of existing goods (of which there are a whole lot in the system) rather than their disposal and recycling, it would be handy to have skills in line with these needs.

In his book, The Complete Guide to ADHD, Thom Hartmann talks about how the most successful entrepreneurs (many of which live with full blown ADHD) see needs before anybody else does, and move to fill them. Well, here's your big chance.

Grandad would have had a few tricks up his sleeve. Car repair would certainly have been useful, but so would have his plumbing, gardening (he often grew his own vegetables), drywall hanging, and yes, even shoe repair skills.

Frankly, I don't know a whole lot of people who know the first thing about repairing their own shoes, but I'm keen to learn how, because in 10-15 years it may be unthinkable to throw out a pair of shoes whose sole has come loose, when for much less money you could take it somewhere and have a new one put on.

The problem, though, is where does one go to learn a fairly archaic handicraft like shoe repair? There don't seem to be any apprentice programs in Ontario, and only a limited number of stores where you can even buy basic leather and leather tools to work with. It's similar to the fictional "letter from the Future" in Richard Heinberg's Peak Everything that describes how one of the most valuable skills a backyard farmer is going to be able to have, is the ability to harvest, save, and use their own seeds. These skills are all but lost to most of us, but not entirely. My Grandad was two weeks shy of 90 when he died, and pretty much all of his secrets died with him, but it doesn't have to be that way.

We are facing the greatest loss of traditional knowledge the world has ever known as our grandparents one by one slowly slip away. Their resourcefulness, work ethic, and perhaps most importantly skills and techniques are disappearing with them.

So walk, don't run, to your grandparents home, and get them to show you everything they know about how they did things when they were growing up...because there's a pretty good chance that's how you'll be wanting to do them before too long.

I Stumbled across Raise the Hammer's extensive list of postings about Peak Oil, and thought I would continue a thread that started there a few years ago.

In many of the posts, Ryan describes how land use is going to have to change dramatically in the face of $3-4 a litre gasoline.

It has been well documented how the days of suburbia are severely numbered, and yet the question remains - all of those houses are there - without a huge quantity of fossil fuels to power the machines needed to rip them all out, the land is useless for farming. So what to do? People aren't going to be willing to abandon their houses en masse and flee for the inner cities (which would soon become unlivable) or the countryside (where they would be trapped in one location by the price of gas).

That's when the discussion around our house turned to Rail. I'm from out west, and on the Prairies, rail has an almost mythical quality to it - people I grew up with had grandparents who had been homesteaders - the area was settled that recently.

After reading a report in one of the RTH blogs about how rail was 10 times as efficient at moving people or freight as road, it got me thinking about communities out west, and how they sprang up.

Basically, the railroad companies decided where the towns would be across much of the prairies by deciding to plop down small 'whistle stop' stations that were in areas where they could reach a reasonable number of customers (for the freight, mainly) within a one day wagon ride.

Now, I don't think we'll be back to horse and buggy any time soon, but the model may not be a bad one. Hamilton right now is looking at adding a GO transit stop en route to Niagara Falls. This would mean a whole new cluster of activity and spikes in property values right around James St. North. The gentrification that has already begun would start to seriously accelerate.

All this is to say that in the world of only driving your car for 'special occasions', people are probably not going to want to just stay in their communities all the time, as walkable as they may need to be. Maybe our kids will, or theirs, but we are too accustomed to the freedom of the open road.

Maybe if we can't afford that, we'll settle for the freedom of the rails.

At the same time people are going to need to have relatively affordable access to goods - whether it be food, or building materials, or other essential items for daily living ($2.49 plastic toothbrush holders from Wal Mart do not count). Stores and businesses located to small rail spur lines, or even close to existing rail stops (which may become mixed use rather quickly) will have a decided advantage.

Hamilton, with it's extensive network of inner city rail lines and spurs, and proximity to an even more cost effective mode of transporting goods (marine!) is ideally suited to capitalizing on the skyrocketing cost of diesel which pretty much everybody who has looked at the issue agrees will be here in the next 5-10 years.

So then why then is the new president of the Chamber of Commerce threatening to bulldog through the approval of the Aerotropolis? Does he not realize that kerosene (jet fuel) is going to be every more expensive than diesel?

Somebody needs to do their homework.