Embracing the Doom pt 3: Urban Adaptors and food

Spring has sprung
De grass is riz
I wonder where dem doomers is?

Spring or not, no grass will be rising in this part of Ontario for another week or more so this doomer is sitting in the basement sorting seeds, checking the calendar for planting dates and filling planting trays with starting mix in preparation for the season ahead. It’s now only 7 weeks until last frost which allowed me to plant the first of my tomatoes “Ardwyna Paste” under grow lights, joining the strawberries whose vague instructions of “plant in early spring” enticed me to start them right away. I have no doubt I planted them too early but I’m sure we can live with a few strawberry pots on the coffee table for a few weeks if needs be. My cabbage, onions and a couple of test Tomatillos are already sprouting and due to my usual planting exuberance I’ll probably have enough surplus plants to sell at this springs garage sale or give away to friends as an encouragement to start their own gardens.

As an urban adaptor with limited space it’s a daunting task trying to figure out how one will strive for any reasonable level of food security but there are options, some are quite reasonable, some require actual work and others many be a little to extreme for the more squeamish doomer (and no I’m not talking cannibalism …….. yet!)

Any discussion on food security should start the same way every energy security discussion should, simply cut back! Unless you are uncommonly active, thin and modest in your caloric intake most people could easily drop 100-400 calories or perhaps even more from their diet per day, freeing up supply for others and cutting the costs and work required to feed yourself. On average we eat too much; we eat out of boredom, for entertainment, and for simple gluttony so this is the most logical place to start the conversation.

Likewise we must take a serious look at what we eat and how we use it. The production of meat is up to 7 times less efficient than eating the grain yourself. Eating meat negatively impacts the number of people our agricultural system can support, our health, the availability and quality of our water resources and increases green house gases. In a time of hardship whole grain, bean, lentil, and tofu based meals can provide adequate protein, improve your health, save you money, all with the side benefit of treading lighter on the earth.

You should also remove the empty calories that add cost but no utility to your diet such as refined sugars, alcohol, etc and then calculate what you really need to survive. If you have the means to purchase or produce these things when times get tough great, but having a target of real needs instead of wants as a baseline is an important step in planning your food security. And before someone who knows me starts sniping and calling me a hypocrite, I admit to being an over exuberant consumer of meat and beer but I also know a time will probably come when I won’t be able to do so.

Finally we must look at our level of personal food waste and ways to reduce it, especially considering studies in the U.S place waste as high as 30%. That’s a lot of food grown, shipped, bought, and tossed out. It’s also a perfect example of low hanging fruit, an easy and free way reducing your total consumption.

Do you refuse to eat leftovers? Or maybe only use them once rather than until they run out?
Do you cut around a blemish on a fruit or veggie, or do you toss the whole thing?
Do you make stock from a turkey or chicken carcass?
When you eat out do you use the doggy bag?
Do you habitually buy lettuce every time you shop because you know you should eat more salad but end up tossing one out every weak because you could not be bothered making one?
Have you ever bought an entire container of something with an expiry date only to use a single dollop in one recipe knowing full well you have no use for the rest of the product.

We all do irrational wasteful things that endanger our food security and blow a shit load of money. I’m not saying you should not buy that container of sour cream but perhaps you should plan a menu allowing you to have leak and potato soup, perogies/tacos, baked potatoes or a homemade veggie dip all within a two weak period making use of the entire container. Don’t buy the damn lettuce unless you are committed to 2-3 salads in 4 days and eat those leftovers or convert them into new dishes like sheppard’s pie, soup, or bubble and squeak. Bake or make sauces with overripe fruit. Plan and shop to a menu and stick to it.

I’m convinced that if most people looked at the questions of how much do I need? What should I eat? And how can I fully utilize what I do have? They would only need 50-60% of their current food supply, How much effort put into gardening or stalking a deer could you save by cutting consumption by 40%? How much money would a 40% reduction save you?


Food strategies

Once you know how much food you really need you can then decide on the appropriate strategies to acquire it. All food strategies can be broken down into 3 categories, purchasing food, growing food or scrounging food.

With today’s access to a wide variety of cheap and easy foods from around the world few people even farmers make any attempt to be food independent. As adapters we will try to produce as much of our own food as possible but true independence is simply not possible. One person cannot expect to be a gardener, a herder, a butcher, a miller, an apiarist or a blessed cheese maker all in their backyard plot. Specialization and barter between many urban farmers can eliminate some of these deficiencies but there will always be some things that can’t be done on the small, local, and urban scale. This means we will always be dependent on vendors, be they grocery stores, co-ops or farmers markets to supply those things we cannot produce ourselves.

The secret is to optimize those purchases you are required make by shopping in bulk. Now it’s understandable that most people cannot afford to buy a skid of flour even if they did have somewhere to store it but there are other ways to buy large quantities. You might find that club stores work for you despite the problems of membership fees, rarely being walkable or not always having the best prices on some items. Other alternatives include bulk food stores or even better food cooperatives that have local ownership, help form community bonds and can have access to local producers who don’t want to deal with the hassle of individual sales. If you do garden or have a useful craft you might find your co-op an ideal place to sell or trade your surplus. I think co-ops are the way to go and I would encourage anyone to join one or investigate forming a group to create one. Sadly this is not a business model that has gained much ground in Canada.

Eventually things we’ve grown accustomed to like imported off season fruits and veg may no longer be available, we must again learn to eat seasonally and preserve our local bounty just like our grandparents did.

Gardening/urban agricultural

Provided you have access to land the best way to gain food security is to grow it yourself. You may not have a lot of space, you may not have good soil but short of having 100% shade nearly every property should be able to produce at least some food. Square food gardening shows you how to get a considerable amount of produce from a limited area and even if you don’t have great soil you can always build raised beds or use container gardening. Having no gardening skills is no excuse, the ability to grow food is a basic skill that let humans form communities and civilization as we know it (not necessarily a good thing). Surely such a basic skill mastered by Neolithic man is not beyond your skills, but start now it does take time.

Starting now also gives you time to improve the fertility of your soil by adding organic matter, improving the drainage, Ph and level of helpful micro organisms. All around us there are sources of organic matter that can improve your soil, do your own composting, collect sea weed by the sea, grass clippings from your neighbors who don’t spray, leaves from a park, or ask for the coffee grounds from your neighborhood coffee shop, it’s all good. Many municipalities even have events where you can get cheap or free rain barrels, composters or compost. Soil is only poor and unproductive because you let it stay that way.

If you really don’t have enough space to garden you should look into joining a community garden program. While some areas like mine are severely limited in space (70 plots for over 70,000 population), added demand and/or advocating to businesses, towns, utilities and school boards to provide land for more community gardens should eventually create more gardening spaces. Demand municipalities support community gardens. If you can find someone who is speculating on vacant land for the long term you might even negotiate cheap leases on properties large enough to support a profit generating market garden, creating food and employment.

In your daily lives look for opportunities, perhaps a local business could be convinced to give up its lawn so employees could garden at lunch and after work and you as adviser/manager would get a portion of the garden as your own. Sell it to them as a way to help their employees save money and become healthier, a way to show they are a good corporate citizens, and a way to save money on a lawn service. The same offer could be made to use a portion of a school yard supplying both you and the cafeteria with real food all while teaching students a real skill they can use.

A sick or elderly neighbor may let you garden their yard simply to get some free produce and a little company, before too long you’ll probably find them puttering along behind your doing something they did not think they were still able to do.

I just noticed a mistake above, even if you do have 100% shade in your yard you could bring in wood shavings, logs, straw or some other appropriate medium and plant mushrooms or morels. No yard need be barren of edible life.

Somewhere between gardening and purchasing is the CSA , Community Sustained Agriculture. In a CSA you buy a share of farm’s crop for the year and each week during the growing season you receive a basket of what ever is in season. Some CSA’s require their members do labour especially at planting and picking time, others like the one we belong to does not.

All CSAs are not equal however, some are organic some aren't, I said before some may ask for your labor, most won't. Unless you eat anything it may take you some time to find a CSA that grows a selection of vegetables that suites your tastes. Our current farm did not originally meet our needs and after a summer of drowning in honeydews but no beans to speak of we dropped out for a couple of years. With better planning, experience, and more understanding of what their customers wanted we have returned to the same CSA finding a much more balanced food basket.


Guerrilla gardening is also an option, simply pick plant types that require minimum care and plant them on vacant land and hydro corridors and see what happens. You might lose it all to animals, lack of care or vandals but you might also end up with a field of squash or patch of amaranth ready to harvest come fall. If you back onto a hydro cut simply put up temporary snow fence and extend your yard past your lot line. You might get told to remove it immediately or be left alone for years to garden on free land, either way begging forgiveness is easier than asking permission.

In the same vein as begging forgiveness rather than asking permission, most municipalities will ask you to comply with bylaws before they fine you or start legal proceedings, with this in mind don’t be scared to put a ½ dozen hens or a rabbit hutch in your back yard, hell if you have a good sized yard try some miniature goats. Be mindful to raise them in extra clean conditions so smell won't bother the neighbors and so no one gets the Humane Society involved. Some municipalities in the U.S. are rescinding old rules about small livestock so push the limits and get like minded people to lobby for such changes. In Canada you can join CLUCK, Canadian Liberated Urban Chicken Club, a group that is involved in education and legal challenges to anti chicken laws.

Scrounging

There's lots of food around around if you just look for it, be it dandelions found on unsprayed vacant lots or fiddle heads and morels in the forest, you just have to put the effort in to find it. In the local green belt near my home I know I can find choke cherries for wine or jelly, crab apples for canning or jelly, sumac for fake lemonade, and morels and that’s without having any expert knowledge or having spend any amount of time actually looking. There is always something edible around if you look hard enough which brings us to the “I’m not that desperate yet” behavior of the Freegan.

The Freegan is someone who salvages edible food from the garbage. “Freegan” was originally used as a label for anti consumerism activists outraged at the 25-30% level of western food waste. These activists began to eat salvaged food from dumpsters to lower their ecological footprint and their participation in the normal consumer model. If you look around there are web sites, meet up groups and probably facebook pages dedicated to Freegan activates. While some people do this as political statement are also many people with more basic motivations like starvation who have been forced to eat this way, certainly a sad commentary on our society.

While I don’t suggest you go out and root in the garbage behind the Lowblaws or the Piggly Wiggly tonight (unless you are really desperate), there should be some procedure to intercept and utilize this food before it gets dumped like this. High quality produce or stuff set to expire the next day should be sent to shelters or food banks for immediate consumption, lower quality produce should be shipped to local farmers for animal feed and the real rotten stuff sent to composting facilities rather than the dump. Fear of litigation is scaring some retailers from donating food, even for livestock. You might however convince them its for your composter or worm farm.


We should all lobby companies to be compassionate rather than wasteful with damaged foods and we should lobby that governments alter any laws that make being responsible hard for companies.

The final scrounging pointer is to look for a gleening program. I was quite surprised to find that the York Region Food Network runs a gleening program where you can register and get notifications throughout the growing season as various participating farmers allow people to wander their fields and harvest produce that is either surplus, not of salable quality or simply was missed by mechanical harvesters. This program allows the salvage of tonnes of food for those willing to work and with no veggies left to rot in the field the quantity of harmful insects, fungus and disease in the soil for the next year’s crop is reduced. While you may end up with far too much of one item to use in a timely manner you gain the opportunity take up canning on the cheap, stock a root cellar or share with others.

Damn these posts are getting long

Associated posts

Embracing the Doom: What kind of doomer am I?

Embracing the doom pt 2: How doomy How soon?

Top doomer accessories

Renewal in Canning and Stealth Doomers

Being your own Seed Bank
.Recommend this Post

We now interrupt our normal programing for this musical interlude

OK I fully admit I've reach my curmudgeon years which can be proven by the fact I've not bought a new album in several years. It's not that I'm stealing music its just I'm either too caught up in what I think are bigger things to go looking for new music or what I hear just does not inspire me. Face it Freddie Mercury is dead, New Wave, Punk, Ska and Rockabilly have been tossed to the curb, Shane McGowan can no longer stand or sing and Elvis Costello became boring and maudlin.

That said I would ask those of you who still have an ear for new music to drop and give my cousin some feedback on his ongoing project Suns of Blindness

Thanks

Even the end of civilization needs theme music

.Recommend this Post

Fruitless Fall: Book Review

I've just finished Fruitless Fall: The Collapse of the Honeybee and the coming agricultural crisis, by Rowan Jacobsen. I found the book a fascinating look into the rise of Colony Collapse Disorder, Jacobsen explains a good deal about hive development, the life cycle of the Honeybee, the role of pollinators and their importance in the production of food, and of course the ecological and economic implications of a total collapse of the Honey bee.

The Author spends a great deal of time explaining and critiquing the various theories for Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), and comes to show that no one theory can be pinned down as the definitive answer yet many of the problems discussed are overlapping issues each adding another level of stress to the hives until they break down in total collapse. Mankind is poisoning the land and hence the bee hives with pesticides, we are breaking the natural cycles of the hives by such actions as feeding them sugar to keep them active and breeding out of season, shipping them across the continent to overwinter and pollinate for pay, forcing them to conform to presized uniformed brood cells contrary to their natural order, and feeding them on monoculture and/or months of unnatural sugar feeding which leads to malnourished and immune suppressed hives. Once hives are too weakened and stressed they more easily fall prey to parasites, bacteria, viruses, fungus or simply become so stressed they lose the cohesive hive mind and collapse.

A great many people accept that peak oil will hurt us eventually, some saying within years others in a decade or two. A majority believe that global warming needs to be tackled immediately but realize that the biggest effects are from decades to a century out. CCD is here now and if the collapse continues at the current rate in another year or two we could lose the majority of our commercial pollinators. Such a loss will mean commercial fruit and nut production will be wiped out, vegetable yields will drop, as will some types of forage. Various animals, birds, and other insects reliant on wild fruits and nuts could also suffer food loss and population declines. Various keystone species could be lost causing unforeseen consequences.

Unless we want to follow the Chinese example of having children pollinate fruit trees using homemade dusters made of feathers and cigarette filters, or that of Mexican Vanilla growers who have to pollinate each and every flower with toothpicks, we need to address many of the issues stressing our most valuable pollinators. In the mean time stop spraying your yards and plant nectar and pollen rich indigenous plants in order to support the myriad of wild pollinators that stand between us and starvation.

Of course the collapse of pollinators could also lead to a major collapse of human populations which in the long run might make peak oil and global warming a moot point. So never mind, don't read this book it's not important, we could use a good culling.Recommend this Post

Bad Bank, Nasty bank, Profitable Bank!

From the almost too stupid to believe category!

The FDIC has criticized a Massachusetts bank which has made no bad loans for being to cautious.

The bank, East Bridgewater Savings Bank was chastised for neither "lending enough" nor "promoting it’s loan products" enough.

We are in the middle of a world wide financial shit storm and the FDIC is complaining because a bank took too little risk, what the hell is going on at the FDIC is there acid in the water cooler, a full moon, air born rabies, infectious stupidity?

Has the FDIC forgotten that its already stepped in to cover the deposits of 17 failed banks so far this year? It's only March people!!!!

Rather than complain about this bank they should be offering their management new jobs at the treasury or giving them custodial control of AIG, or Citi

.Recommend this Post

Pope supports the needless deaths of millions of Africans

Once again we see that religion and dumb ass dogma is more important than reality and compassion as the beloved Panzer Pope and Sith Lord Benedict XVI says abstinence and not condoms is the answer against Aids in Africa.

"You can't resolve it with the distribution of condoms; On the contrary, it increases the problem."

What a Moron!

This guy can’t keep his priests from diddling the parishioners, but he knows that abstinence alone will solve the problem. Yeah right, Ask Bristol Palin how abstinence works!

Last week the Catholic church was excommunicating people who helped a 9 year old get an abortion even thought she was a victim of rape, incest and was very likely to die from the pregnancy. Of course there is no word on excommunicating her evil pedophile father.

Letting delusional old men pick other delusional old men for all the top church jobs is apparently not working; I think it’s time for democratic renewal in the Catholic Church, one Catholic one vote!

Hell I'd even lie about converting just to vote for a womanRecommend this Post

Embracing the Doom Pt 2: How Doomy, how Soon?

Having arrived at the point were I’ve admitted I’m a doomer and have decided that that the only course of action for me is to adopt an “adapt in place” strategy I must start setting my priorities and start planning. To set my priorities and plan actions I must first analyse the threat, how long do I have to prepare and how bad will it get?

As with all survival planning one has to look at the possible crisis and decide how this will impact ones life. With peak Oil there has been a great deal written by the likes of Kunstler, Heinberg, Astyk and many others who have looked at the issue discussing economic impact and opportunities, social upheaval, and adapting to the new reality of a low or post carbon society.

Looking at all the scenarios put forward I’ve chosen to believe that peak oil will progress in a pattern of strong price spikes and retrenchment such as the one we are in now. The traders and markets know that a diminishing resource is a money maker but they don’t want to have just one kick at the can and will encourage volatility as a way of making the same play year after year. The pattern however cannot ignore the real decline in resources which will usually result in the top and bottom reached in any one cycle being higher than in the previous cycle. In a decade $150 oil may be considered the yearly low not the high.

While it’s probable that depletion will be more of a slow grind than some huge messy crisis there will still be fluctuations in supply and demand causing regional shortages, perhaps as soon as a year or two out. This is not just a lack of oil issue but an overall infrastructure problem as many pipelines and refineries are either too old or too poorly maintained to be reliable. Demand and refining capacity have been so closely matched in N.A. for nearly a decade that it’s been impossible to schedule full maintenance shut downs reducing both the level maintenance and upgrades on our refiners. This lack of maintenance increases the chance of breakdowns and accidents, and more accidents which are becoming a regular occurrence.

Refineries must also be designed or at least tweaked for a particular grade of oil. As more light sweet oil fields are depleted they are more often than not replaced by poorer quality heavy sour oils requiring more extensive treatments. Plant breakdowns or the lack of the right grade of crude can both cause major regional shortages even if the world market appears to have adequate supply. NA also imports a great deal of already distilled product like diesel making us reliant on someone else’s supply, refining capacity and stability. The first Crisis will likely be the end of next year when Mexico is expected to become a net importer of oil.

Of course there is always the danger huge messy crisis like a war, terrorism or political manoeuvring that cuts off supplies from the Middle East or North Africa….. yikes!

So how bad will it get?

I believe we will be living in a world where lack of energy, economic collapse and the damage done by climate change will impact food production, medical care, water supplies and even world charity to the point that a major die off of humans will occur. Yes, there will be new technologies that could mitigate some of the problems associated with peak oil and climate change but I don’t believe they will be practical, affordable, timely enough, or scalable to maintain a growing population of 6.7 billion people plus.

James Lovelock of the Gaia hypothesis fame has recently stated that he sees a world population of 1 billion people in 100 years. I wouldn’t argue Lovelock is wrong, in fact some days I actually hope he’s right and the sooner the crash the better so that the most diversity, carrying capacity and quality of life will be maintained for a smaller human race. I don’t believe that we were put here to breed the planet full and I would prefer a smaller population of healthy diverse cultures rather than a homogeneous mass of flesh choking on its own filth. A people to poor to have any culture but desperation.

Breeding is not a right that allows us to kill the beauty and genetic diversity of the planet in order to fill up all the empty space. As the only species without a natural predator and with the means to destroy it all, we have to temper all our actions even breeding with humility and responsibility. At least some of us are willing to acknowledge the need to curb rabbit like behaviour!


While shortages and crisis may or may not arise immediately, the price of heating our homes, driving, and manufacturing will continue trend higher for years if not decades before a new equilibrium is established by an entire population that has been forced to adapt. The rising costs for everything will create hardship and job displacements. Many “Normal” consumer goods will enter the realm of luxury goods and the age of consumerism will fade away. If you make your living selling anything but essentials you should expect that a change of employment will part of the adapting process.

Infrastructure and government services will both suffer as it becomes obvious that the constant growth required to sustain today’s perks on tomorrow’s earnings can no longer be counted on. Tough decisions will need to be made between roads and health care, education and social assistance but no mater what decision are made we will get less than we used to and we will be forced to become less reliant on state. (at least the libertarians will be happy)

In some countries it won’t take long for the complex systems of Western society to fall apart. In my opinion Mexico is just such country on the verge of becoming a failed state. As depletion causes oil exports dry up, Mexico will lose 40% of its direct government revenue, economic spin offs from the oil economy and lower remittances from family members working in the U.S.

Mexico is already in what can only be described as a civil war with drug lords taking over entire cities in the north as well as the treat of terrorism and insurrections in the south of the country. While some countries are destined to fail anyway for a myriad of otehr reasons, Peak oil in particular is a powerful force that will push some like Mexico over the edge quite quickly.

For us the biggest single whammy will likely be in food production where every step from planting, fertilizing, harvesting, spraying, processing, and shipping uses huge amounts of oil or Natural gas. Some farmers have found that a reduction in chemical fertilization and lower yields are better for business as the extra fertilizer costs were not justified by the yield increase. If farmers purposely lower yields to increase profit margins prices could go to the moon. Today we have increasing populations and increased asian afluence leading to higher meat consumption, any reduction in yields will quickly impact an already tight market for grain products.

Eventually, long term, labour will be foreced to move back to agriculture to offset inaccessible energy. The labour costs of food production will soar as will retail prices. Like Victorian times, we could go back to an era where food was one of the biggest parts of a household budget.

So do we have time to adapt?

Yes and No!

Yes, we do still have time but No you cannot put it off indefinitely. Indeed the sooner you start the process the more control you will have over how you adapt and trust me you want to have some control. The choice of ignoring the issue until you are forced to change is available, waiting however will not save you money now, will not lower your carbon foot print now, will not allow you to moderate the pace of change, and instead it will be like a bucket of cold water thrown over the shower curtain on an unsuspecting victim. Zyban vs. cold turkey! It’s your call, but the choice to change can only be delayed not avoided.

You also can’t just turn a switch and say “today I use 80% less carbon, I will become food independent on Wednesday, and on Friday I will bring about world peace and create an unlimited alternate energy source”. It’s just not that easy or that quick to achieve.

The process of adapting is a journey that could take a considerable amount of time and if you stall too long, you may not have enough time. To adapt you will need to learn new skills, routines, attitudes/expectations and incorporate them into your normal life

It’s not only you that must adapt to survive; society and the market place must all adapt together. If everyone decided to eat local today there would not be enough food available in stores. If everyone tried to buy tools and seeds for this spring the market could not meet demand, if we all go to the farmers market on the same Saturday all the stalls would be sold out by 9 am. A sudden panic with everyone tyring to adapt at once when the SHTF is destined to fail making it that much more important that we all start making some changes now even if they are only small ones. There are leaders, followers and victims, and your level of preparation will be a great determinator of what you will become in the future we doomers expect.

Learning to adapt is going to be different for each person. Some people may look first at those things that give them the most bang for their buck or the low hanging fruit, others may see adaptation as an opportunity to learn some long desired skill or perhaps take a hobby to the level of small business. Someone who is infirm or has no access to land may not be able to garden yet they have a house that is adaptable to passive solar. Some adaptors may have financial resources allowing them to go off the grid while others will have no choice but learn to do without 20 electric appliances. Adapting could mean renovations to make your house more efficient or suitable for more people, something that will take considerable time or materials you might need to save for. Adapting could also mean looking for a new career path that will be in demand in a lower carbon economy. Selling speed boats and snowmobiles are definitely dead end jobs while repairing things or installing solar water heaters may be in great demand.

Regardless of the direction someones adaptions takes them it will take a considerable amount of time to reach that goal, Start Now and embrace the doom!

Associated Posts

Embracing the Doom Pt 1: What Kind of Doomer am I

Embracing the Doom Pt 3: Urban Adaptors and FoodRecommend this Post

Stupidity reigns

Like a life long smoker who goes cold turkey on this death bed, the CAW has come to terms with GM over concessions meant to make the giant zombie corporation viable, ROTFLMAO!!!!! Not bloody likely! GM's burn rate will eat up the new money in 2 quarters (at best) and sales are still falling.

Even if the CAW ratifies these changes what right does the Federal and Provincial governments have to subsidize a failed corporation that is unable or unwilling to make a quality or environmentally sound product and one that is not even Canadian?

What sense is there in perpetuating bad business models? GM has shown it's incapable of judging or meeting the needs of the market. Unable to take emissions or fuel economy seriously until they are regulated.

GM has been losing market share and money for years, why fund a proven loser?

Why try to maintain jobs in an industry destined contract not only because of over capacity, recession/depression but also peak oil?

Our governments are so eager to appear useful and buy votes that they are throwing away our hard earned money on a company that is destined to fail. It's doubtfull that any level of concessions could make a company as far in debt as GM profitable and yet these concessions still don't make them competative with Japanese car makers let alone the Korean and soon to arrive Chinese cars.

Now I’m not anti labour(I'm unionized) but I am pro reality. The best way to save manufacturing jobs is not pay them to be inefficient. 3 N.A. auto makers are at least 1 too many and unless they agree to merge and drastically contract we must let one go under. GM would appear to be in the worst shape and it should be let to die that the others might live. If one gets money they all will demand it perpetuating the fallacy that the market can sustain 3 large bloated, inefficient car makers.

If you must spend money to look like your doing something why not give it to Zenn to make a highway capable electric car?

To Rail Power to build hybrid train engines?

To Bombardier and CN/CP/Via/Go to build efficient rail links?

All things that look to the future rather than supporting the Myth that things will return to normal.

Things are not normal folks,Recommend this Post