De Casdeiro

Galiza podería estar relativamente preparada para o futuro, paradoxalmente, grazas ao seu relativo atraso e configuración socioxeográfica:

In a society of the future, most people would live in the villages (up to approximately 1000 people although the ideal number for human society seems to be around 150), surrounded by farmland (natural or reclaimed) from which they grow all or most of their food. (These are not necessarily the present day country villages; they are just as likely to be suburbs where gardens, parks, and unused roads and building areas are converted to agricultural land.) These villages will have basic services such as a bakery, pottery, machinery shop, carpenters, etc. One building in the village would be converted into a communal hall used as a workshop, library, school, pub, meeting place, etc.

The next up the hierarchy would be the market town, surrounded by a number of villages/suburbs. This would still have to have areas to grow food but, being larger, it could contain services that do not exist in the level below. Doctors, dentists, vets, clothing manufacturers, glassmakers, boat and cart builders, specialist traders, and so forth. As the name suggests, it would also be the place where people would travel every so often to sell their spare food and wares for other things.

Above this would be the town proper. The likely reason for retaining large settlements like this would be that they held factories and industries such as coal mining, steel works and forestry, universities (and even centres for leisure activities). These would have another level of government which would be necessary for defence, emergency services and universal matters such as money.

(Teoría do Lugar Central, en Wolf at the Door)

Seica non está describindo en boa medida un país como o noso? Hai por tanto motivos para a esperanza (cando menos en Galiza). Pero non podemos estragalos!!

[...] « Galiza sen petróleo 03 06 2008 [...]

O Banco de Terras de Galiza paréceme unha ferramenta tremendamente útil no contexto que se achega no que moita xente quererá buscar un refuxio para o autosubstento no rural. Quizáis aínda sexa demasiado cativa a oferta para toda a demanda que se prevé e o sistema morra de éxito. Esperemos que aínda que non fose creado para isto, lle poidamos sacar proveito.

Sobre o da reversión da mundialización (mal chamada “globalización”, nun deleznable calco do inglés) velaquí tedes a tradución ao castelán dun interesante artigo, publicado nun web canario sobre a cuestión do esgotamento do petróleo.

Que estupidez maiúscula están facendo na mina de Meirama!!! Dentro de pouco hanse tirar dos pelos cando haxa que sacar de aí toda esa auga para volver poñer a mina en produción para queimar o noso vello e suxo carbón!!! Por suposto esa auga quedará contaminada e xa veremos que fan con ela…

Non hai maneira de deter ese proxecto?!?!?

Copio aquí un fragmento da páxina titulada “El mundo ante el cénit del petróleo”, do wiki de CrisisEnergetica.org:

El lado amargo de la “Era del Petróleo”.

Si bien la abundante disponibilidad de petróleo ha posibilitado que un tercio de la población mundial disfrute de un nivel de vida (y de consumo energético) exageradamente superior al habido en cualquier otra época o cultura anterior, no es menos cierto que esto es posible a base de sobreexplotar los recursos naturales del planeta, aniquilar otras culturas y aprovecharse del uso de mano de obra en condiciones infrahumanas, así como de contaminar los ecosistemas a un ritmo muy superior al que pueden soportar para regenerarse. El panorama mundial en la “Era del Petróleo” actual dista mucho de ser ideal, con retos y problemas crecientes, debidos casi todos ellos a la superpoblación y al voraz consumo de bienes y servicios por parte del tercio de la población mundial más favorecido. A continuación se enumeran algunos de ellos:

- Deterioro medioambiental generalizado (efecto invernadero, deforestación, desertización, contaminación, agotamiento de recursos, extinción de especies, pérdida de biodiversidad, disminución de la capa de ozono, incremento de residuos tóxicos y radiactivos, etc.)

- Excesiva ocupación de espacios, lo que conlleva un incremento de las catástrofes humanitarias debidas a fenómenos naturales.

- Sobreexplotación de acuíferos y contaminación del agua.

- Migraciones a gran escala.

- Tendencia al modo de vida urbano y a la pérdida del contacto con la Naturaleza, con un crecimiento desmesurado de los suburbios de las grandes ciudades.

- Desaparición de multitud de culturas y formas de vida integradas con el medio ambiente.

- Delincuencia e inseguridad

- Guerras y represiones en muchos países pobres

- Desempleo crónico en los países ricos y explotación de la mano de obra en los países pobres, donde incluso se ha extendido la esclavitud infantil

- Exagerada desigualdad entre ricos y pobres.

- Estados sociales debilitados por el poder de las multinacionales

- Masiva producción y consumo de drogas, que los países pobres se ven obligados a producir.

- Terrorismo internacional

- Problemas de salud; por desnutrición y pandemias en los países pobres, donde los servicios sanitarios son muy escasos; y por sobrealimentación en los países ricos (obesidad, cánceres, etc.), a los que se unen los problemas psicológicos derivados de sociedades deshumanizadas y competitivas, con mayores índices de depresiones, pérdida de valores, soledad, stress, etc.

Coido que apunta no mesmo sentido que o texto que eu elaborei pensando nos efectos a nivel galego.

Zac Goldsmith, do partido conservador británico, tamén prevé unha inevitable re-localización da economía e da produción de alimentos. É clave esta tendencia e todo planeamento público que non a teña en conta, será irresponsable:

I think the Government needs to set a framework. There’s a big role for ecological taxation or green taxation, which is very simply just a shift away from taxing good things, like employment, to taxing bad things, like pollution or the use of scarce resources. That as a principle has to happen, we haven’t seen really any of that in the last 10 years, but that’s something we need to push. We also need a different regulatory approach. It doesn’t mean more regulations but you do need better regulations, and there are some things which I don’t think the market alone can provide, so I think without regulation we’ll probably fish till the last fish is caught. I don’t think we’d have dealt with the smogs in London, for example, which really impacted heavily on people’s lives without regulation, so I think there’s a big role for that and that obviously is where the Government comes in.

My view is that the instant, the default position should be that decisions should always be taken at the lowest possible level, and I think the same applies to economic transactions, economic activity. So, I would like to see a return of the food economy to the human scale. We see this mad situation where tuna caught on the east coast of America is flown to Japan and processed and tinned and sent back and sold to people on the west coast of America. It’s that kind of madly wasteful system, which we can tackle. But obviously if you want to consume bananas in this country they’re not going to be local bananas, if you want to consume avocados they’re not going to be local avocados. It’s just about bringing things back to the scale at which they make most sense.

I think we’re going to see localisation of the economy in any case as a direct consequence of rising oil prices, as the cost of transporting stuff around the world increases, it’s going to make more and more sense to grow stuff, or to reduce the distance between producers and consumers, so I think that’s going to happen in any case. But obviously there are some things which are always going to be global and other things, which will move much more towards the local, to the human scale.

I don’t know whether the issue of peak oil has been taken out of context or whether it’s been blown out of proportion, but the truth is every one of our economic models, every one of our projections, all our assumptions are based on the availability of affordable oil. And, if peak oil theory is correct, and there are lots of people in the oil industry who say that it is, then we ought to know that, and I’d like to see a process where there is an audit of world oil supplies so we can start factoring the reality into our projections. Because if peak oil is true, if it’s around the corner, or if we’ve already hit it, then the impact on our lives will be far greater in the short term than the consequences of climate change. It’s a massive, potentially a massive issue. It may be nothing, it may be massive, but we ought to know the truth.

I don’t know how high up on the radar peak oil is as an issue, but you can be sure that if peak oil becomes a reality, if it starts kicking in, if we start realising that actually the peak oil theorists are correct, every one of us will feel the implications. Food prices will increase dramatically, the cost of living will increase dramatically, way more than anything we’ve seen at the moment. So, if it isn’t a big issue now, and if it is the case that peak oil is a reality, it’s going to be the biggest political issue of all.

Seguimos con estas cuestións en http://vesperadenada.org e mais en http://www.cenit-del-petroleo.info