August 3rd, 2007
BY Joel S. Hirschhorn author of Delusional Democracy and Friends of the Article V Convention
The incredible collapse of the Minneapolis bridge will send a message to the nation that has been repeatedly sent for decades, but that our political system has refused to effectively respond to. America’s physical, engineered infrastructure has been in desperate need for massive spending to repair and replace, but the multi-trillion-dollar cost has been rejected by local, state and federal politicians.
First, understand that I have a professional background in this area. My career started as a metallurgist, than I obtained a Ph.D. in Materials Engineering and became a full professor of metallurgical engineering at the University of Wisconsin, Madison where I taught about mechanical metallurgy and failure analysis, and in my consulting practice regularly worked on explaining actual failures of products and systems.
Many academic and professional groups have for many years produced countless reports on mounting unpaid public costs for updating our crucial physical infrastructure, including bridges, but going way beyond those to, for example, roads, water and sewer systems, tunnels and much more. Make no mistake: The deeply researched and totally supported case for a massive national infrastructure spending program could not have been clearer. But spending on infrastructure is not sexy and politicians at ALL levels of government have found countless excuses for not facing the totality of the problem. Instead, public spending is dribbled out, dealing with the most urgent problems or, worse yet, the ones that are the most visible to the public. But unaddressed are massive numbers of problems, such as the Minneapolis bridge and thousands more bridges, that our bureaucratic system has learned to game, postpone, rationalize and, therefore, put the public safety at considerable risk.
As a metallurgist I can pretty much assure you that if there is a technically honest and complete investigation, the ultimate explanation of the Minneapolis bridge failure will be related to fatigue cracking in the metal structure. Already, news reports have revealed some prior observation of a fatigue problem with the bridge and that the bridge had a relatively low rating of four out of a possible nine, showing that it was structurally deficient. The game played by virtually all government agencies is to find excuses for delaying the most costly repair or replacement of bridges and other parts of our physical infrastructure. As just another example, in most older urban areas there are constant repairs of busted underground water pipes. What is really needed, but avoided, is a total replacement of very old underground pipe systems - in many places 100 or more years old!
Government inspection programs have been terribly compromised over many years. The incredible political pressures to minimize spending on infrastructure have filtered down to the people, procedures and technologies used to examine bridges and other things. When it comes to bridges it is also important to admit that many aspects of our automobile addiction have raised risks, including enormously greater numbers of vehicles creating heavy traffic during much of the day in urban regions. Add to this the massive increase in vehicle weight resulting from the incredible increase in monster SUVs, as well as huge increases in large truck traffic.
The Minneapolis bridge collapse happened during evening rush hour because that was a period of maximum stress, and that would be the trigger for expanding existing fatigue cracks. Once fatigue cracks get to critical sizes they grow and propagate very rapidly, producing powerful loads and stresses on remaining steel components and creating what appears to be a virtually instantaneous bridge collapse.
The remaining public policy question is clear: Will the nation spend what is necessary? Seven other major bridge collapses in the last 40 years have not done the trick. Inadequate bridge inspection has been a frequent documented problem, as well as some design defects. Many people have already died from bridge failures. But still the nation’s elected officials have not bitten the bullet and agreed to spend trillions of dollars over several decades to bring America’s physical infrastructure up to the most modern standards.
Think about all this the next time you go over a bridge.
[The author can be reached through Delusional Democracy.]
August 3rd, 2007
By Carolyn Baker of Speaking Truth to Power
The 2004 documentary, “End Of Suburbia”, produced and edited by Barry Silverthorn and written and directed by Greg Greene, was a stunning and chilling cinematic landmark which placed the issue of Peak Oil and its consequences squarely on the world stage and connected the dots between the unsustainable suburban lifestyle and perilous issues of the twenty-first century such as food production, population die-off, and economic meltdown. Recently, Greene and producer, Dara Rowland, have released the sequel, “Escape From Suburbia” which examines the journeys of several individuals who have fled or are in the process of fleeing from civilization. It highlights how they are building new lives and new subcultures which offer the possibilities of deepened humanity and sustainability. Unlike “End Of Suburbia”, “Escape” spends less time interviewing the usual Peak Oil experts and follows the escape routes of ordinary people who are passionate about removing themselves from a culture of over-consumption and extinction.
After a brief explanation of Peak Oil, the film opens with the departure of a baby-boomer man and woman from their suburban home in Portland to an ecovillage in Canada, then moves into focusing on two gay men from New York City, Philip and Tom, who are eagerly planning their escape from the Big Apple to a venue where they can utilize the plethora of farming and permaculture skills they have intentionally acquired over the past few years. Juxtaposing these “escapees” is Kate from Toronto who strongly believes that her calling is not to escape but remain in suburbia and dig in to green it and make it truly sustainable. Interwoven with the various vignettes is Philip’s personal experiences with the 2005 Petrocollapse conference in New York and the 2006 Local Solutions To The Energy Dilemma conference in that city which he helped produce, Philip adamantly insisting that New York and cities like it are not only unsustainable but are self-destructing before his eyes. On the opposite coast in Willits, California, the film highlights a number of its residents engaged in creating a relocalized, sustainable town of 13,000 people who are energy self-sufficient and passionately involved in community building.
“Escape” is refreshing because regardless of what viewers may consider feasible or unfeasible responses to the collapse of civilization, it is a powerful testimony to the reality that we do have options and follows the path of several individuals who are seizing them with remarkable creativity. What is under-emphasized in my opinion is the urgency with which those options must be taken in the face of global warming’s rapid progression, the likelihood that we have passed Peak, and the reality of economic meltdown and a burgeoning fascist dictatorship in the United States. Some scenes, such as sections of the interview with Philip and Tom which conveyed the direness of the situation, may have been edited out in order to make the documentary more palatable to more skeptical viewers. Nevertheless, “Escape” affirms the stark reality of collapse and the glaring truth that some individuals are consciously organizing their lives around preparing for it.
At the same time, Greene leaves us with numerous unanswered questions such as: How will newcomers to an ecovillage be received, and how will they integrate into the community? Will their transition be successful in their eyes? Will they regret making the move, or will they thrive? How will two gay men navigate collapse in a homophobic world where gay and lesbian people more often than not have no connection with families of origin because they have been rejected by them? How will gay and lesbian people be received in ecovillages or communities comprised primarily of heterosexuals? What will be the specific challenges to gay men and women in a collapsing world? Will people of various ethnicities be genuinely welcomed in such communities, or will they encounter prejudice behind politically correct rhetoric? What is unique about Willits? And what will transpire in similar communities committed to self-sufficiency and relocalization? What options exist besides the creation of ecovillages? What options exist for people who want to leave the United States and live in other countries besides Canada?
For me, the most riveting and wrenching footage in the film was the destruction by the Los Angeles police of South Central L.A.’s community gardens in 2006. I was thrilled that Greene chose to include this footage because it destroys all notions of “hope” and “happy endings.” Moreover, it raises deeply disturbing questions about the extent to which ecovillages and sustainable communities will be allowed to function in the face of a dictatorial response to civilization’s collapse. I have no words to describe the sensations in my body as I watched the obliteration of the gardens in South Central by order of the L.A. City Council which had voted to replace them with a warehouse. “Rape” is the only word that even comes close to describing scenes of lush plants and fruit trees being bulldozed as those tending their former garden plots valiantly resisted police or sobbed in abject despair.
The film’s archival and current footage are masterfully woven together, along with a musical score even more haunting and appropriately timed than that of “End Of Suburbia”. So is there anything wrong with Greene’s sequel documentary? Well actually, there is: the price. Whereas “End” consistently retailed for around $25 U.S. dollars, “Escape” retails for $35 plus shipping which approaches $40, and its screening rights have been set at $1500-a marketing decision guaranteed to result in pirating and many fewer people seeing the film which in my opinion is tragic because “Escape” needs to be seen by everyone concerned about Peak Oil, climate change, and economic catastrophe.
The film is a mix of hopeful fantasies such as those offered by Kate from Toronto and Guy Dauncey, President of British Columbia’s Sustainable Energy Association, and the non-sugar-coated reality offered by James Howard Kunstler, Richard Heinberg, and Mike Ruppert. As always, these two opposite poles of reality offer the daunting challenge of holding both as opposed to eliminating one or the other.
Collapse is axiomatic and inevitable, and-human beings are not powerless in the face of it. Although in my opinion we are powerless to prevent it, we must decide how we want to live in the throes of it. “Escape From Suburbia” offers some options worth considering. They are not magic bullet remedies, and some viewers may be deluded by the more hopeful voices in the film, but overall, the usefulness of “Escape” is not even in the options it includes but in the empowerment it evokes. If nothing else, it enticingly demands that we become busy doing something, rather than nothing, in preparation for the end of earth-murdering, humanity-annihilating civilization.
