The Great Unraveling

My old friend Mark just reminded me of an email I wrote in November of 2007:

We've just returned from our stay in Yorba Linda. As I pointed out to [my wife and daughters], take a good look at the absolute high-water mark of cheap-oil-fueled suburban sprawl and materialistic obscenity. My brother-in-law lives in a neighborhood of 3000+ sq. ft. McMansions with four (!) car garages. Sometimes even a 4-car garage is not enough -- my brother-in-law's family of three owns FIVE cars, so the largest of them, a hulking SUV, has to squat in the driveway. Paging Jim Kunstler!

Already, Orange and Riverside Counties have some of the highest levels of foreclosures and stress real estate sales in the nation. On a drive out to Chino we saw, literally, thousands of acres of former farm and dairy land recently cleared for sprawl housing. But there has been no further building activity on that land in the past few months. The big earth moving machines have been taken away. Whole tracts of houses sit half finished. The biggest building companies in the county are going under. There have been housing slowdowns before, but this feels different.

This the beginning of the great unraveling.

On Friday I hiked along a ridge in the Chino Hills. A lot of it looked like it had been bombed. Charred chaparral roots from recent fires, and hundreds of small locust trees sawed in half by the worst Santa Ana winds in decades. Almost December and not a damn green thing growing but occasional patches of Curcurbita Foetidissima, leaving bright yellow "stinking gourds" littering the ground like cluster bomblets.

Rainfall declines and gasoline prices increase inexorably. Neither trend will reverse in our lifetimes. Some say the world will end in fire (climate change), others say in ice (fossil fuel depletion). I have to say I'm rooting for ice, because if it comes hard and fast enough, it could put out the worst of the fire. That might be our only shot.

But either way, the McMansions and four car garages of Yorba Linda will soon become like the vomitoria of Pompeii, an embarrassing relic of sinful excess.

Mark felt this email was prescient, and he encouraged me to share my thoughts on such issues on a more regular basis. And so, the Shrinking Pie blog is launched. My intention is to explore the political and social ramifications of an end to global economic growth, due to a global peak in cheap energy output. I'll explore that assumption in upcoming posts.

Meanwhile, thanks, Mark, for the encouragement.