[W]here does this drive for relocalizing come from? Perhaps it has to do with a vague sense of ethical rightness more than anything scientifically verifiable. University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt classifies such efforts as attempts to attain (and potentially guilt others into) a sense of moral purity. “Food,” he says, “is becoming extremely moralized these days.”

The problem, of course, is that purity is hard to come by in a world as complex as ours, and simplistic answers often have consequences that their proponents do not intend. Consumers should think twice before jumping on the localvore bandwagon.

I’m all for thinking twice before jumping on any sort of wagon, but I think Mr. Hisrich’s logic is flawed in a number of places. Read on for my point-by-point analysis of his column:

In April, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University published a study in the journal Environmental Science & Technology that all of the transportation associated with the American food supply chain accounts for only 11 percent of foods’ climate impact.

You can view the full study online. The basic conclusion that they make is that the transportation of food isn’t as big a factor in carbon footprint as the production and other factors, and so that we might be able to reduce our footprint more by changing our diet — eating less meat and dairy, which create the most pollution — than we will by changing where it comes from.

This study seems well done, and convincing in its assertion that food miles are only one part of overall considerations when it comes to the environmental impact of food choices. Of course, carbon footprint is not the only reason many people like to eat local; there are lots of other benefits, including the relationships that come with knowing who is growing your food and how, and the proud self-reliance that comes from being able to eat off of the land we live on.

And, “It’s still useful to think about transport,” says David Pimentel of Cornell University, an ecologist who has conducted life-cycle analyses of food’s energy use. He recently calculated that if a typical American drives home with a 1 pound can of corn, 311 calories of fossil fuel energy are used to transport the 375-calorie corn in the can.

In fact, by focusing on local production, emissions may actually rise. This is because growing foods in the conditions best suited to their production can often offset the relatively small impact of transportation. In the United Kingdom, for instance, fewer emissions are released by importing milk and apples from New Zealand and tomatoes from Spain than devoting the energy and resources necessary to produce them locally.

One of the core tenets of the local food movement is not only to eat food that is produced locally, but to avoid foods that can’t be produced locally. Mr. Hisrich is correct that if we try to grow avocados and oranges here in Indiana in the dead of winter, we’ll of course use much more energy to do that than someone growing those foods in a climate naturally suited for it. So while the point is technically correct, it unfairly ignores some of the ethos of the local foods movement – few people are suggesting we try to grow every kind of food here just to satisfy our “exotic” cravings.

[W]hat the growing local advocates encourage often has less to do with an actual weighing of the costs and benefits of local farming than it does with a value judgment about what should be good for rural economies. While one might be able to argue that eating local improves the lot of a particular group, it is more difficult to argue that spending more for local produce improves the economic well-being of either local shoppers or the local economy as a whole.

I’d ask Mr. Hisrich to back that assertion up with some data, the “actual weighing of costs and benefits” of which he speaks. By definition, dollars that are spent on locally produced goods and services, given to vendors that live and work here, are dollars that will tend to stay in the geographical region to be spent again on other locally produced goods and services. This is why every economic development organization in the state works to bring businesses to their towns that will pay good wages to local workers who will then turn around and spend it locally. This is why local currency and time banks are popping up everywhere, and why our own Chamber of Commerce has a “buy local” program. Just because we’re talking about food, the principles don’t become any more mysterious.

What about impoverished farmers in developing countries who merely seek the chance to compete on a level playing field? This movement provides advocates of protectionism another rhetorical tool in their effort to prevent that from happening.

Quite to the contrary, the local food movement is part of a larger cultural perspective that seeks to remove the artificial protections that prevent people from sustaining themselves on their own land-base. If you take into consideration the subsidies, trade tariffs, import/export controls, immigration policies, monopolies and compulsory price controls, and injustices related to wage and labor standards that help create the “impoverished farmer in a developing country” in the first place, it’s clear that the leveling of the playing field needs to happen well before we get to the buying choices of the end consumer.

By encouraging communities to be more self-reliant, we actually help all communities move toward being able to make a sustainable living for themselves.

John Cloud, however, points out that local does not necessarily mean safe. When he asked Joseph Mendelson III, legal director of the Center for Food Safety, a liberal Washington group that supports strong organic standards, whether local food should be favored, Mendelson replied, “I don’t know what local means. Do they use local pesticides? Does that mean the food is better because they produce local cancers?”

This is an unnecessarily flippant remark in a serious conversation, but I’ll address it anyway. Not every local food effort advocates the banning of all pesticides and chemicals from the growing process, and communities can set their own standards as they see fit.

The point is that when you can visit your local grower and see what practices they use to create the food you eat (or perhaps even help yourself!), you have much more control over and knowledge about what you put in your body. We only have to look back to this past summer and remember the food-borne illnesses that came from unsupervised, poorly conducted growing processes in an industrial agriculture setting to see how the safety of our food is improved when we’re more engaged in where it comes from.

So, back to the original suggestion Mr. Hisrich shared:

So where does this drive for relocalizing come from? Perhaps it has to do with a vague sense of ethical rightness more than anything scientifically verifiable.

I’ll promise not to be insulted by the suggestion that people in the relocalization movement only make certain decisions just because it might be the right thing to do, if Mr. Hisrich promises not to be insulted by my suggestion that he doesn’t quite know what he’s talking about here.

All across the country and world, communities are experiencing the forced contraction that comes with rising energy costs, failures of over-dependence on the global economy, and the isolation and disconnection of the culture of “suburbia.” Communities that are working to reclaim their identities and self-reliance are finding positive ways to move past those contractions, taking matters back into their own hands instead of waiting for the next factory closure or government bailout to set the course.

The local food movement is a core part of this, and while participating in it will mean different things for different communities, it deserves a bit more consideration than Mr. Hisrich’s column gives.  I do really appreciate that he’s taken this issue on and generated some conversation around it! I hope he’ll join us at the next 100-Mile Radius Potluck here in Richmond so we can continue that conversation together.

Oh my.

Not surprisingly, the ad and the related propaganda from its sponsoring organizations like the American Immigration Control Foundation and the Federation for American Immigration Reform continues the trend of dehumanizing people trying to immigrate to the U.S. from Mexico. With language that minimizes the social context and pumps up the fear factor (“we don’t have the capacity to assimilate the newcomers”… “adds a large burden”… “excessive legal quotas”… “lawlessness”… “threatens the American way of life”…), it encourages us to forget about why someone might be immigrating, or what happens to them once they get here, and instead focus entirely on what an inconvenience it might be to our daily lives. “I don’t want to sit in traffic any more than I need too, not with gas prices the way they are! Darn Mexicans!”

But more disturbing and a bit more surprising to me is the attempt to tie something like traffic congestion to a single factor like the number of people entering the country illegally over the Mexico border, and to brazenly suggest that we can hold off traffic congestion just by addressing that issue. They even go on to suggest that economic prosperity in many southern cities is threatened by traffic congestion because it makes it harder to attract new business. Oh, and it’s an significant environmental issue too…the immigrants are basically choking the spotted owl with their own bare hands.

This is too much. I understand that for many political players, they know they can’t win an argument about an issue unless they force us to look at it at such a macro level that removes all notion of humanity and relationship from the picture. But to plant the insidious seed that uses the difficulties that come with higher oil and gas prices and the ridiculousness that is the U.S. transportation system and car culture against the people who wish to cross our borders is a kind of twisted tactic at a whole new level.

Of course, since so many people in this country do externalize the responsibility to make our daily commutes faster, cheaper, easier, this tactic just might work. We want the government and other entities to “do something” about gas prices, about traffic congestion, about economic vitality of our cities. If the magnifying glass focuses in on a single factor that can be addressed with such apparent ease and moral clarity (“just shut down the border…it’s our country!”), we might just latch on to that and run with it.

But we’d be forgetting that even with high gas prices, we continue to produce more and more vehicles to the point where we almost have 1 car for every 1 person in the United States, the most in the world. We’d be forgetting that we continue to shun the construction or revitalization of mass transit options so that we can instead preserve the individual freedoms and seeming divine right to drive any where at any time. We’d be forgetting that we don’t zone or plan our cities and communities to be walkable, bike-friendly, or even generally easy to get around in a car, further necessitating longer trips in the car just to get to basic services. We’d be forgetting that we’ve ignored or downplayed the implications of increasing carbon emissions and energy consumption long before the immigration issue was such a focus point in U.S. politics.

I think we should talk about the increasing population in the U.S. and the troubles it creates when unchecked. I think we should talk about traffic congestion and transportation issues here. And I think we should talk about U.S. immigration policy. But these are complex issues with many influences at work, and it’s disingenuous at best to shift the singular blame for any of them onto people who are immigrating to this country; they likely have the least amount of responsibility and power to solve the problems that we created for ourselves long before they thought about coming here.

1. The price of a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline in the U.S. will hit $6 a gallon sometime this Summer, and perhaps $10/gallon or more by the end of the year. Measures will be taken by the federal and state governments to temporarily alleviate the financial burden on some people, but nothing sustainable. Some people will not be able to get to work at all, while others will have to carpool more, take the bus, ride their bikes, and walk.
2. The U.S. will initiate military action against Iran, probably in the form of heavy air-strikes. There will be no clear notion of victory or desired outcome other than to significantly destroy the country’s own infrastructure, especially targets related to nuclear facilities. This action might be justified to the American people by…
3. An apparent attack on one or more U.S. locations, resulting in significant loss of life or infrastructure.
4. The U.S. airline industry will significantly cut back or even cease flight schedules as we’ve known them, and air travel will (once again) become a privilege reserved for the rich and famous who can afford private flights. Any frequent flier miles you’ve accumulated will become worth near nothing.
5. Most grocery stores will significantly scale back their inventories and restocking schedules, and significantly raise prices on what remains. Obtaining food from non-local sources, even basic staples, will be difficult at best, and most communities will begin to take emergency steps to feed their residents.

Hey, look, I don’t like the thought of these things happening any more than the next person, but perhaps there’s some value in naming what might be, even if it seems a bit outlandish or gruesome. Maybe if we believe these things are possible, we might feel more prepared to prevent or deal with them if they do happen.

What do you think? Too cynical? Worse? What are some other scenarios?

I’ll just say right now that this book is really going to tick off a lot of people, especially those who might trend toward an unquestioning loyalty to a certain current U.S. President and his policies. Heck, the book cover is going to tick those people off. It says some stuff that will seem pretty outrageous to many, treasonous to some, and perhaps worthy of retaliation to a few. For his sake, I hope Mr. Alten has thought that part through well enough, but I commend him for staking a successful writing career on it.

As engaging of real world issues as the book was, I fear that the weak and much too nicely wrapped up ending of The Shell Game is a sign of the extreme difficulty in actually achieving the lofty state of affairs that the world reaches in Alten’s telling. By 2012, corrupt government officials are being held accountable, the media is willing to report on meaningful issues that affect the future of our culture, Presidential campaigns are fairly funded by federal election funds, lobbyists and 527s are outlawed, rigged touch-screen voting machines are exposed, the Saudi Royal Family is exiled, Ethanol is on its way to replacing gasoline at the pump, and wind turbines are powering 50 percent of American homes. And unfortunately, quotes from John Lennon (“imagine…”) and Gandhi (“be the change…”) top it all off. It’s a great vision, it really is, but come on.

The Shell Game isn’t for everyone, and again, it’s going to tick a lot of people off. But if you like to be challenged a bit and if you’re curious about what a novel cut from the cloth of real events, real questions about 9/11, and real oil-related troubles that lie ahead might look like, it’s worth trying on.

Of course, the question after a talk like that will always be “what happens now?” – what conversations will be started, what doors did I open (or close), what actual impact will be made? Whatever happens, it continues to feel like a privilege to be able to connect and share with decision-makers and community-builders in the place I call home.

Remember, if you’re interested in having me give this talk to your group or organization, just let me know.

It turned into one of my most intense speaking experiences to date.

I’ve given presentations and led discussions about a lot of different stuff, but they usually trend toward technology topics with which I’m very comfortable and have lots of experience talking about. They also tend to be specific enough that I don’t have to demonstrate a greater understanding of the universe or tie a whole bunch of big themes together. But in “Going Local,” it was about taking a hard look at how we (humans) got into the mess we’re in (energy crisis, climate change, economic collapse, widespread war and injustice) and making some very specific recommendations about what to do about it on the local level. Personal suggestions. Things that might offend, or at least cause discomfort. Things I’ve had a hard time saying out loud before.

It was also a kind of culminating presentation for me. The place where community-building, good communication and discussion, concerns about the energy and climate crises, and creating a vision for the future of Richmond meet is a nexus where I’ve been spending more and more of my own personal energy lately. There’s minimal personal risk in talking about optimizing a website for Google’s search engine, but when you’re talking about the sustainability of our lives in the place we call home, it somehow feels more edgy, vulnerable, scary.

Despite my anxiety, I think it turned out quite well. What’s more, I think it started some good conversations, some of which are still going on. I was grateful that the talk was not only attended by the somewhat academic population at whom it was originally targetted, but also local economic development officials, business owners, sustainability educators, friends, and at least one member of the media. Thanks to everyone who came and who shared your feedback.

For those who were there, I’ve posted the “menu” of suggested action items for futher comment and expansion, over at ProgressiveWayneCounty.org. And if you weren’t there, the suggested items may make more sense when you hear the rest of the spiel – I’m available to give the talk to your group or organization if you want. I’m ready to face the discomfort again, knowing how important having these conversations might be, trusting that I still have much to learn, and hoping that it will get easier each time.

I, having met Richard Heinberg and read his book The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies, of course presumed it was something related to addressing the impact of the end of abundant, cheap oil. The cover has a very similar image that complements the book’s exploration of our relationship to oil. But when I visited the website that the postcard mysteriously directed me to, I found that it was an ad for…a credit card company. Their solution to the energy crisis? Gas credits when you make lots of charges on your card. You know we’ve reached a new level (high or low, I can’t say) of public attention to the state of affairs when credit card companies think they can make a few dollars off of people who are worried about our dependence on oil.

If you’re interested in a more effective approach than “going into debt for Mother Earth,” you could join me at the upcoming Fourth Annual Conference on Peak Oil and Community Solutions, in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where Heinberg will be speaking. It’s always a smashing good time, grounded in an accessible exploration of real community-based solutions.

I’m so glad that the Chamber is focusing on the relationship between agribusiness and the energy crisis that we face as a nation and as a planet. I’m also glad that the solutions we’re talking about are keeping in mind a systems approach – how the inputs and outputs from a particular industrial or energy-generating process can be used as efficiently as possible.

But I hope that whatever solutions we pursue take into account that there is a tremendous amount of energy that goes into making our agricultural system work, and so any energy solutions derived from it must take that cost into account. The USDA recently noted that ethanol generates little more energy than it takes to produce. Some scientists have shown that ethanol production consumes 6 units of energy for every 1 it produces.

Richard Manning, in his Harper’s 2004 essay The Oil We Eat, says:

“Ever since we ran out of arable land, food is oil. Every single calorie we eat is backed by at least a calorie of oil, more like ten. In 1940 the average farm in the United States produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil energy it used. By 1974 (the last year in which anyone looked closely at this issue), that ratio was 1:1. And this understates the problem, because at the same time that there is more oil in our food there is less oil in our oil. A couple of generations ago we spent a lot less energy drilling, pumping, and distributing than we do now. In the 1940s we got about 100 barrels of oil back for every barrel of oil we spent getting it. Today each barrel invested in the process returns only ten, a calculation that no doubt fails to include the fuel burned by the Hummers and Blackhawks we use to maintain access to the oil in Iraq.”

In other words, it might be unwise to treat an agricultural system that depends so heavily on oil as a promising option for replacing oil. (As Tom Philpott also summarized in his blog entry on the matter.)

I hope the Chamber continues to pursue these important issues, and I’m glad these conversations are happening in our community and ABOUT our community. We just need to make sure that we’re addressing the real issues that underly the energy crisis at hand.

That’s the question, indeed.

How will we survive and get around when the price of gas is too high to afford? Or, perhaps more pressing, how will we survive when there is no more gas to buy? It is always surprising to me that people are so expectant of intervention by a third party (or higher power) for any sort of resolution about this issue. Yes, the government and gas companies have obligations and interests related to the availability of resources that literally fuel their existence and our culture, but they are not the only variable in the matter. And even if they were, simple math tells us that the demand for oil will (or already has) exceed the supply in ways that essentially mean the compulsory end of our oil-using existence.

Right now you pay USD$3 for the ability to transport your vehicle about 20 miles. When you have to push that hulk of metal up and down those hills and around those corners, I bet that’ll seem like a pretty good deal.

Whether we can create a new kind of existence in the place of the current one is up to us. “Us” in the long term means “the human species,” but “us” in the shorter term means the people in our community. There will be no sustainable government intervention to help the people of Richmond, Indiana buy gas at a lower price. There will be no goodwill gesture by the gas companies to help us pay our bills and buy as much gas as we always have at the same time. There is no charity auction or community fundraising campaign that can help bring gasoline to our local pumps more cheaply so we can stop worrying about it. It won’t happen.

And yet we largely continue to insist on external resolutions instead of internal ingenuity and innovation. One might say that it’s a symptom of an egregious kind of privilege and sense of entitlement that has us asking to have our cake and burn it for transport too. Or one might say that it’s a cultural conditioning, we’ve expected from childhood for gas to flow like water when we need it, at the price that seems reasonable to us; breaks from that norm that has been in place for generations are jarring and distressing. Or one might say that we’ve just forgotten how to take matters into our own hands, how to apply a sense of entrepreneurship to the challenges that face our community. Or one might say that perhaps in this day in age, we know what we need to do, we’re just scared.

It’s scary to think about changing how I live (I can hardly stand it when the parking space on my street isn’t available), but it’s more scary to think about a world in which gas is $200/barrel, and all of the implications that would have for our way of life. I’m glad that some are willing to change their habits and way of life now; isn’t gradual change always so much more tolerable than sudden drops in quality of life? But I also fear that even the changes being made aren’t enough. We talk about managing money better to pay for gas, but we should also be talking about using less gas, or no gas. We talk about the fun of buying new hybrid cars, when we should also talk about incorporating better public transportation, carpooling, bike paths and other significant fuel efficiency measures into our strategic planning. We talk about bringing more jobs to our community that are a part of the global economy when we should also be talking about how we as a community can better survive when the global economy stops caring about Richmond, Indiana. We talk about recycling aluminum cans, but we should also be talking about completely different ways of producing and distributing the food and drinks we consume. These are all challenges we can take head on at the local and regional levels; Uncle Sam can join us if he wants, but we don’t need him.

Not so long ago, we created the fragile fuel economy we live in through a series of incredible and admirable innovations and “advancements” in the way we thought out our world and what we could do with its resources. It seems to me that it will only be similar kinds of shifts in our perspective that take us to a place where humans can live sustainably on the Earth. Short of that, rearranging our errand routes and waiting for the government to step in is only prolonging the problem, and making the particulars of the eventual solution (voluntary or involuntary) that much more uncomfortable. As author Daniel Quinn wrote, old minds think: “How do we stop these bad things from happening?” New minds think: “How do we make things the way we want them to be?” We need new minds right here in Wayne County to ask and answer that question every day – it’s not about fear, it’s about creating something better for ourselves. Otherwise, we’ll just be old minds complaining…driving around, and then eventually running, in circles.