On the Sunday before Independence Day WaPo has three items directly related to human settlement patterns:
In a very good front page story WaPo launches a multi-story attack on the federal farm subsidy program. This installment focuses on rice land on the Gulf Coast of Texas. A six column above the fold headline reads “Farm Program Pays $1.3 Billion to People Who Don’t Farm: HARVESTING CASH Reaping Money for Nothing” by Dan Morgan, Gilbert M. Gaul and Sarah Cohen.
In the 70s, the planning firm I managed created a plan for what we would now call a Balanced Community on a 3,100 acre rice farm immediately adjacent to the City of Angleton, TX. Angleton in Brazoria County was the municipality closest to new Gulf petrochemical facilities that was also above the HUD flood zone.
Under this plan, the Planned New Community plus existing / renewed Angleton would provide places to live and acquire services and recreation to support the new jobs in the expanding ports, refineries and related economic base activities on the Gulf. Greater Angleton was to become a place with a balance of jobs / housing / services / recreation / amenity serving these new urban activities as well as the surrounding Countryside characterized by large, prosperous rice farms.
A compact, urban enclave would have saved 10s of thousands of acres of productive farm land from scattered, low density development – what real estate agents now call ‘Cowboy Starter Kits.”
The land owners who commissioned the work had the best of intentions and sold the land and the plan to an investor who said he intended to develop just what had been planned. (The “New Angleton” plan was developed by members of the same team that did the plan for southern Louisiana outlined in “Down Memory Lane with Katrina.” 5 September 2005 at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com )
The WaPo story fills in some of the details of what federal farm policy and other counterproductive government action at all levels has done with best laid plans.
Farm subsides are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to ways that public controls, programs and incentives subsidize dysfunctional human settlement patterns. But $23-Billion a year here and $23-billion a year there and, as Sen. Everett D. said: “First thing you know you are talking real money.”
The second item is an op ed on Page B7. “The False Hope of Biofuels: For Energy and Environmental Reasons, Ethanol Will Never Replace Gasoline.” The authors from Polytechnic University of New York eviscerate the idea that ethanol can be a viable substitute / replacement for gasoline and thus support private-vehicle mobility.
Authors James Jordan and James Powell have some baggage because their Maglev Center is supported by the idea that MagLev is a solution to urban mobility. In spite of this bias, it is doubtful that they would risk using completely specious numbers. Even if the numbers they provide are off by 100 percent they establish a clear picture of the roadway ahead and the idiocy of trying to drive private vehicles – and the settlement pattern they generate – into the future.
Jordan and Powell provide the overall numbers to put in perspective the whole issue of biofuels and other energy “alternatives” which will be to topic of an upcoming column. In addition they quantify the context of Brazil in the ethanol issue which we raised in “ENERGY INDEPENDENCE AND SUSTAINABILITY” on this Blog 28 May 2006.
The bottom line is that there is no place to hide – not hydrogen fuel cells, not nuclear energy, not more off-shore drilling, not modest conservation efforts and for sure not biofuels. The United States must FUNDAMENTALLY change human settlement patterns or disappear as a viable economic entity on the planet.
Why does the United States dig itself deeper into an unsustainable settlement pattern? That is showcased in the third article.
Headline says it all “Democrats Look Beyond City Limits: Candidates Turn New Attention to ‘Rural’ (sic) Voters.”
If you do not know why that is so telling, you have some other reading to catch up on before Wednesday.
When will WaPo and mainstream media come to their senses re human settlement patterns?
Hopefully not just in hindsight.
Happy 4th!
EMR