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The Colonial Pipeline spill has caused 6 states (Tennessee, Virginia, Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, and North Carolina) to declare a state of emergency. Gasoline (petrol) prices on the east coast are likely to spike. Yet, most puzzling is how this vast emergency and its likely effect on cost of living has gone unnoticed by mainstream media outlets. The pipeline is owned by Koch Industries: is this why the media is silent?
[Are there any Soylentils in the affected area who can corroborate this story? Have you heard of the spill, seen long gas lines, or any price gouging? -Ed.]
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Six US States Declare Emergency after Major Gasoline Pipeline Spill; Media Almost Silent
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Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.
-- Woody Allen, "Annie Hall"
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Monday September 19 2016, @03:58PM
I believe (though I believe more crazy things) that the resilience you mention is one of the two components of the European Union's "secret blueprint plan".
I believe that the Common Agricultural Policy [wikipedia.org], which means that every EU citizen pays an arm and a leg to heavily subsidize farming all over the place, is a secret "safety buffer" for the secret plan component called "no more famine".
If you think about it, 15 years before that immensely expensive C.A.P. plan, people in Amsterdam walked 100 km to buy potatoes, or they ate cats and tulip bulbs. As Bertold Brecht [wikiquote.org] put it,
It is a very anti-capitalistic idea: food production is not for the economy, food production is for living.
Maybe I shouldn't use the word "secret" but "esoteric", because the information is hidden in plain view: it's just so boring and basic that normal people never think about it. Food comes from a supermarket in the city, right? :-)
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday September 19 2016, @04:32PM
Running a big farm to grow crops for sale is very hard work. Growing enough vegetables and keeping chickens for your own consumption is quite manageable, assuming you live at least in the suburbs or have plot of land 1/4 acre or larger. It doesn't take a university degree or a $1K Learning Annex course. Put seeds in dirt, then water them. For extra credit, add fertilizer, and weed once in a while. Anyone can do it, and in most of the world, they do. People who have never seen the inside of a school are perfectly capable of growing their own food.
The produce tastes better that way and is better for you than the tasteless objects they sell at Walmart. And for a convenience food, nothing beats walking out to your yard to pick ripe tomatoes off the vine, peppers off the plant, and basil from the herb patch to make your pasta sauce--no driving, hunting for parking spots, pushing shopping carts, waiting in line, fiddling with coupons, and ferrying back to the house involved.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 19 2016, @06:07PM
Growing enough vegetables and keeping chickens for your own consumption is quite manageable, assuming you live at least in the suburbs or have plot of land 1/4 acre or larger.
Big assumptions there.
There are advantages to people living in cities. Even from an ecological and environmental impact perspective ( http://www.citylab.com/work/2012/04/why-bigger-cities-are-greener/863/ [citylab.com] http://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/energy/environment/want-to-save-the-environment-build-more-cities [ieee.org] ). It's not the cities themselves are that wonderful for wildlife or the environment, it's more of keeping most of us and our shit in one spot. Imagine the millions of people living in cities spread out with 1/4 acre each. How much land left for other land animals? How much land for other _wild_ land animals? And how much more damage we'd cause to the world?
There's about 3.5 billion acres of arable land. That's about double the 1/4 acre per person figure you mention. That's great eh, or not? Of course land suitable for agricultural is more than just arable land but it should give you a better idea of the size of the problem.
There is no such thing as sustainable growth on a finite world and we are not far from its limits. If we want to keep billions of humans around we may not have that much room for mistakes.