BULLDOZE SUBURBIA

Ecocities? Don't make me laugh... Just as Green Mayors finally arrive, the financial collapse is draining cities into poverty. San Francisco has almost half a billion dollars in revenue shortfall. Vancouver is slashing, starting with a 40 year-old plant conservatory. The only stimulus left is for the banksters and dinosaur highway projects.

It's time to call in Richard Register, one of the inventors of the ecological city concept. He knows the time is late. The climate is damaged. Energy is declining, along with the economy. Now Richard is going to take you on a lightening tour around the world, with visions from even the poorest people, with better ways to live. Maybe the big change will give us back living spaces to love.

I'm Alex Smith, for Radio Ecoshock. In our second half hour, we'll explore the currents of microscopic toxins that swirl around the globe, right into our homes and bloodstreams. We'll go chasing molecules with investigative author Elizabeth Grossman.

We'll also get expert tips on cutting your personal footprint up to 40%. That's The Economical Environmentalist, Prashant Vaze from London. He's an economist, formerly a top advisor to the British Prime Minister's office, on climate change policy. But don't expect boring wonk talk - Prashant walked the walk. He ventured to cut his personal carbon footprint drastically, while still working, seeing his extended family, and trying to live in the big city. Like the rest of us. How did he do it?

And bulldozing suburbia? Well, yes - eventually. That's the way Peak Oil and climate change take us, beyond the landscape that cheap oil and cheap money built. Read about it here.

Ecoshock 091211 1 hour CD Quality 56 MB or Lo-Fi 14 MB.

And if my blog sucks this week, it's because I have the swine flu...and it ain't pretty. Still, I think it's a good program for you again this week.

No point getting into the Copenhagen mess yet. I'll save that until we see the results, if any.

Alex.

End of the Age of Oil - 1

James Howard Kunstler lecture as 1st visiting scholar to Simon Fraser Urban Studies 080124

From the Long Emergency to new measures after Peak Oil. The best speech of the year so far.

Why the housing boom will not return, and what that means to the American economy. The disaster of investing in suburbia, as oil becomes more and more expensive, and dangerous to get.

How Nationalization of most of the oil of the world (the major companies like Shell and Exxon only deliver about 5% now, Kunstler says) - means not only will oil run out - but the countries who control it (like the Emirates, Iran, Venezuela, and Russia) will (a) keep more for their own economies and (b) send it to their friends (which may not be America....)

A whole range of social issues, tackled head on, with verve, from one of America's most articulate writers and speakers. Kunstler is the author of "The Geography of Nowhere" and "The Long Emergency" plus many other fiction and non-fiction books. His newest, a fiction novel set in the near future, after oil has run out, is titled "World Made by Hand." That comes out in March of 2008.

Meanwhile, he has been appointed the first visiting scholar to the progressive school of urban design at Simon Fraser University, in British Columbia, Canada. This speech was one of two given for that program - and the conclusion plus the lively question and answer period will follow in the Radio Ecoshock program next week. Kunstler unsettled the audience, who responded with both admiration and antagonism. A sign of a good speaker.

Part 1 of 2.

Ecoshock show 080201 1 hour CD Quality 56 MB or Lo-Fi 14 MB