Musings of the Ancient Agrarian. Climate Change, Bucking the Winds of Change, and Food from a Factory
In Wyoming, you still have a lot of public sentiment going the other way, but here too things are changing. Just last weekend, the Tribune ran an op ed excoriating local policymakers for not advancing the new energy producing technologies that are coming, arguing that the era of fossil fuels is coming to an end.
And as a practical matter, it is, irrespective of people's views of it.. Even if you are a diehard opponent of the concept of global warming, alternative means of producing energy are over the tipping point. I still hear people here say, all the time, "electric cars won't work here", but 1) they will, and 2) carmakers don't care about works in Wyoming. You don't build an auto industry around 250,000 drivers, after all.[1].
Indeed the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, of which I'm a member, ran an entire issue of their explorer magazine on completely switching the planet over to "alternative' forms of energy. The AAPG can't be accused of being made up of radical greenies. In its two big articles it had one that sought to point out the difficulties, but they both mapped from a scientific prospective how to do it.
Since then a cooperative made up of large power generation companies has announced that its going whole hog with power generation station for automobiles. That's really darned similiar to the old "oil companies" sponsoring gas stations, which of course they did in a major way.
Anyhow, I was surprised recently to see farmers and ranchers begin to get up and running on this, but they are. They very much are in other states. Wyoming is isolated and things like this are slow to get a foothold here, and on top of it, while nobody really wants to say it, we're still in the outgoing tide from the last oil boom, and therefore it remains the case that a lot of what seems to be the viewpoint of the state is really a vicarious view from the oil producing states much to the south of us. Politics tend to change here when busts get deep and last, as that's when the locals are most notable. And it's also the case that change is massively unsettling, and it's always instinctive to argue for the familiar rather than plan for the change that's coming.
But that's starting to occur. Indeed, the Ladder Ranch has an entire series of posts on their blog about their attendance of the recent warming conference in Scotland. That's really remarkable. When Wyoming ranching blogs start posting about things that need to be done, it's not very long before you see a rancher driving up to the feed store in an electric pickup truck. As in, like, maybe next week or so.
And they're not the only ones. Citing a need to preserve Wyoming's environment and economy, a couple of commentators in the Tribune recently posted an interesting oped, as noted.
Hutcherson, Smitherman: We’re betting Wyoming’s future on Wyoming’s past
That article commented:
As odd as it may seem, that reminded me of an Army Jody Call we learned in basic training, which went
Ain't no sense in going home; Jody's got your girl and gone.
Ain't no sense in looking back; Jody's got your Cadillac.
Ain't no sense in looking down; Ain't no discharge on the ground.
I guess that's all the antitheses to the bumper stickers around here that use to plead for "one more oil boom" with the promise "I won't piss it away". It's a lot like a hard core drinking asking for one more drink, you're not going to stop
Thatts a big part of the problem with Wyoming's economy, actually.
What I mean by that is looking back, and looking back to the immediate past, rather than the longlasting and enduring past.
Anyhow, getting back to the Ladder Ranch blog entry, that post has this comment.
I guess it shows a contrarian streak, but as a geologist/amateur historian, in addition to being an officer of the court, it actually is pretty simplistic. It just requires doing it. That may require a sudden public consensus, but if this blog here shows anything, people are actually amazingly capable of doing that. People can, and do, change their opinions on things on a large scale, overnight.
And young people are. Young Republicans, who otherwise don't share much in point of view with Democrats, agree that this is a big problem. Given as the politics of the country is in the firm grip of the nearly dead hands of ancient, ancient politicians, that may not be obvious, but as we literally have a political leadership that's so old that the barque over the River Styx will soon be threatened to be full to overcrowded with American politicians, we may see a change in views here much quicker than we might otherwise be inclined to suppose.
None of which is what this post is about.
Due to Twitter, I ran across some items where soy boy metrosexuals are imagining an agricultural free world with all food made in labs.
As in 100%.
This, they imagine, will solve the whole problem.
First of all, that would create a new problem. The modern world is antithetical to our natures to start with. We're born to be hunters, farmers, and pastoralists, not cubicle dwellers and office workers. Most Americans hate their jobs because modern work sucks.
Secondly, dimwitted people who imagine stuff like this are Americans or Europeans, and most people on the globe aren't. The average farmer is a lot more likely to be riding to his field on a single piston engined light motorcycle while wearing a conical hat than driving a F350 to the feed store.
Bangladeshi farmer. Wikipeda photograph by Balaram Mahalder . All rights reserved to original author. If this guy looks happier at work than you do, that's because he is. Yes, he lives in a dirt poor country, but he's working outdoors with his family wh
And not only that, part of the solution to this problem is more people in agriculture, not less, and more agriculture of a distributist and agrarian nature.
It's not necessary to have the fence to fence massive implement farms that dominate today that are fueled not only on petroleum (although that will soon change) but on debt (that won't be changing).
Which gets, in the end, to this. Hutcherson and Smitherson have a point about betting Wyoming's future on the past, but maybe we're not betting on the current future which is embedded with the past, but in a way that for some reason we can't really see.
It's odd, but even saying it requires some explanation, so perhaps that this is missed, and the fact that you have soy boy cubicle backers suggesting that everyone sitting inside in the solution to things isn't too surprising.
Wyoming has always bet its future on the extractive industries, but it wasn't those industries that built and ultimately sustained much of it. The first industry in the state was the trapping industry, which is so feral, if you will, that we don't even recognize it as such. The second one was ranching and farming. Even by the time they entered, however, there were those who promised that the future was all carbon based. And it came to very much be.
But all the while, Wyoming remained wild and it was agriculture that really preserved the land and made the state what it is and was.
Now we've entered odd times. They're odd politically, and they're odd trend wise. It's making people doubly obstinate. But larger trends don't care about obstinacy, even if they do about arguments.
Anyhow, maybe it's time to look back a bit. And by looking back, look locally, and with a Chestertonian and Leopoldian frame of mind.
That would mean accepting some limits to things.
Indeed, fairly recently, on the same day, two different blogs linked in two things about limits in the form of mobility.
The British Adam Smith Institute linked in this:
SIR SIMON INSISTS THAT WE'RE ALL TERRIBLY NAUGHTY PEASANTS
The New Mexico Place of the Governors posted this:
Group on horseback and wagons, near Cimarron, New Mexico
What Sir Simon said, was:
Travel was the great beneficiary of the leisure society. Only now are we appreciating its cost, not just in pollution but in the need for ever more extravagant infrastructure. Cities sprawl when they should be densified. Communities have become fragmented. British government policy still encourages car-intensive settlement in countryside while urban land lies derelict.
It is an uncomfortable fact that most people outside London do most of their motorised travel by car. The answer to CO2 emissions is not to shift passengers from one mode of transport to another. It is to attack demand head on by discouraging casual hyper-mobility. The external cost of such mobility to society and the climate is the real challenge. It cannot make sense to predict demand for transport and then supply its delivery. We must slowly move towards limiting it.
Here's the thing. Sir Simon may be, well, . . . right, but maybe not for the reasons he imagined. And in an era in which a contagen breaks out in South Africa, and is Colorado just a few days later, well. . .
But beyond that, looking towards more a more localized, distributist, foods system, and simply system, makes sense. We don't need food from factories, in other words.We probably need it from the backyard, and from local farmers and ranchers. And where it needs some processing, where it can be done locally, it should be.
Now, that can't be done in every instance. You probably can't grow coffee beans in Montana in your backyard, for example.[2]. But you can grow vegetables if you have much of a yard, and that's a better and more sensible product than bluegrass, which doesn't do much other than suck up water. And you can get some of your protien from fields and streams yourself. That ties you to nature and you see what's going on.
Shoot, I'd have things back at the mule power plow level if I could, which I know isn't going to be happening. But rethinking the industrial cubicle complex sure can be argued, and a lot of those who are coming up with some really radical ideas, well they need to spend a little time outdoors.
Footnotes:
1. I'm continually amazed by the argument, which you hear from all kids of people, that "well electric vehicles won't work here", with the person next citing the example of driving across the state and back in a day, or going high up into the hills.
2. Coffee does provide a good example, however, of how changes can be made by looking forward and back.
Related Threads:
The Wyoming Economy. Looking at it in a different way.
Before the Oil. And after it? The economies of Wyoming and Alaska.
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