City or Suburbs? Part II

America's suburbs offer lots of promise- open spaces, privacy, clean air, nice new homes, and much more house for the money. So why wouldn't we all want to live here?

Unfortunately, all of these promises can't be delivered. The sad truth is that the suburbs face imminent doom. That may sound dramatic, but can you remember a time when gas prices were under a dollar? Have you noticed your heating bills going up, up, up! Are you wondering what this has to do with anything??

The design of the suburbs is a very low-density design. Everything is very spread out. Essentially, when you're in the suburbs, you drive everywhere. You commute (often long distances) to work, drive the kids to school, drive to the grocery store, the doctor's office, to the gym, to the bank etc.

The problem with this is the end of cheap oil. The earth is past its peak oil production. That means its harder and harder to extract oil from the ground. We've used up the best fossil fuels and they're in limited supply. Gas and oil prices will only continue to increase, making it harder and more expensive for us to heat our homes and drive our cars.

Let's add to the fact that America is the second largest contributor of CO2 (greenhouse gas), second only to China. We have a huge carbon footprint. To calculate your carbon footprint, go here: http://www.nature.org/initiatives/climatechange/calculator/ This is quite an alarming tool. For as eco-conscious as I think I am, my footprint is still above the national average, and WAY above the world average.

This is mainly due to our dependency on the car, and our lack of a mass transit system (think the ever efficient rail system in Europe). Why don't we have a mass transit system? Why didn't we learn anything from Europe? Hmmm, maybe it has to do with General Motors buying up all the street cars in order to increase dependency on the automobile? I'm not making this up, they were actually convicted of this fraud. For more read here: http://www.xtimeline.com/evt/view.aspx?id=121722 or here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_streetcar_scandal.

Simply, the suburbs are not sustainable. We can't keep up our consumerist, car dependent society for much longer. If we don't do something about this now, we will face huge problems. Most Americans don't really want to change their cushy lifestyles however, and can't really fathom that this crisis will effect them. They think someone will come up with a solution, and everything will be fine.

I really wish that were true. But the evidence can't be argued with. If you want more in-depth information about this, I highly recommend the movie THE END OF SUBURBIA: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of The American Dream. It's very enlightening, and quite alarming!

Sadly, this is only one of the problems faced by the suburbs. Stay tuned for Part III where I divulge other disturbing issues.