A few weeks ago my community had an election to decide if a new millage should be passed to raise money to build a new school. The current school is badly overcrowded and is getting harder to maintain each year because of its age. This is the second time school officials have gone before the community and asked for a millage increase, and this is the second time that they have been told "no." I don't know what will happen now.
At my company, we have the opposite problem. We have plenty of room to spare, rooms that are sitting empty with the power and heat turned off to save money. These rooms were needed at one time, before the bottom fell out of the economy. Now they are a liability.
So my proposal is, why doesn't my company lease these unused rooms to the school? It would ease some of the overcrowding and the company would get extra revenue. The students would get an exposure to the scientific field. I can think of a lot of reasons why this would be a good idea. In fact, Tom Brokaw says in his newest book that these types of partnerships may be the wave of the future. But of course, when I trotted the idea out to some of my co-workers, they said it would never work. Maybe they are right, and it wouldn't work at my company given the kinds of things we do and the security issues surrounding it. But maybe we might have to rethink some of these objections.
What if we need those rooms? someone said. Well, that would be terrific. But I don't think that is going to happen, at least not in the near future. Because I suspect the party is over.
A few years ago I read a book by James Howard Kunstler that really got me to thinking. It's called "The Long Emergency" and it describes what he thinks life will be like in the coming decades. Now, Kunstler is a snob and likes to call people names, especially people who don't share the same political views as him. But I think he is right on target with "The Long Emergency."
What "The Long Emergency" is about is the decline of oil production and its possible impacts on society. Oil and gas, being fossil fuels, are finite. The cheap stuff, the easy to get to stuff, is getting scarcer all the time. Meanwhile the world's appetite for these fuels is growing. Do you think BP really wanted to drill in the Gulf of Mexico?
There are a lot of people who scoff at the notion of "Peak Oil." I am not one of them. A lot of people don't realize that this corner of Southwest Michigan had an oil boom about 90 years ago. All that is left, besides the derricks that are rusting away in the swamps, is a derrick and a pump jack on display in front of a small town museum. Back in the 1960's and 1970's when we traveled across the state, it was not uncommon to see "oil wells" pumping away. Now, go back along the same roads and the pumps are still. So, don't tell me that oil fields can't run out.
Anyway, reading "The Long Emergency" made me look around at my community with new eyes. Supposing the school did get the money to build a new school? How long before that building would be shut down like the rooms at my company? Don't laugh. Every day I see a new "For Sale" sign go up that wasn't there before. Look at Detroit, how it has declined.
My community has built its hopes around being a bedroom community to a much larger city to the east. Here are some statistics about that larger community. Fifty percent of the children there live in poverty! The overall poverty rate is around 40 percent, and the jobless rate around 9. This part of Michigan used to have thriving factories. Now, they are pictures on the wall in museum displays. Bruce Springsteen said it best in his song "My Hometown", "these jobs are going, boy, and they are never coming back." Children are the future. If this large community has a 50 percent poverty rate among its children, what hope is there?
At the Village Council meeting a man stood up and said he was applying for a liquor license because he wants to build a new bistro/restaurant. There are already at least 10 restaurants within a 2 mile radius, ranging from an award-winning Asian bistro to a burger and shake joint. From the way he described his proposed restaurant, it will not be cheap. The council listened to him and said they would think it over. I am not on the council but if I was I would ask him, "Have you seen all the For Sale signs around here? Where do you think your customers are going to come from?" He is making assumptions that I don't think he can make. If people are out of work, if they are losing their homes to the bank, they aren't going to be eating out so much. If I were a business owner looking to establish a business in this community, I would ask myself, what does this community need that it does not already have? What do people need? Maybe he will succeed in this new restaurant, but I won't be one of his regulars. Nor will a lot of people I know. We just don't have that kind of money.
The party is over, Kunstler said in "The Long Emergency." We've been living an unsustainable lifestyle and now the bills are coming due on many fronts. Some people may have been taken by surprise when the bottom fell out in 2008; I wasn't, because this is one of the things he said was going to happen and keep happening. If he is right, we may have to rethink the way we do a lot of things.
At my company, we have the opposite problem. We have plenty of room to spare, rooms that are sitting empty with the power and heat turned off to save money. These rooms were needed at one time, before the bottom fell out of the economy. Now they are a liability.
So my proposal is, why doesn't my company lease these unused rooms to the school? It would ease some of the overcrowding and the company would get extra revenue. The students would get an exposure to the scientific field. I can think of a lot of reasons why this would be a good idea. In fact, Tom Brokaw says in his newest book that these types of partnerships may be the wave of the future. But of course, when I trotted the idea out to some of my co-workers, they said it would never work. Maybe they are right, and it wouldn't work at my company given the kinds of things we do and the security issues surrounding it. But maybe we might have to rethink some of these objections.
What if we need those rooms? someone said. Well, that would be terrific. But I don't think that is going to happen, at least not in the near future. Because I suspect the party is over.
A few years ago I read a book by James Howard Kunstler that really got me to thinking. It's called "The Long Emergency" and it describes what he thinks life will be like in the coming decades. Now, Kunstler is a snob and likes to call people names, especially people who don't share the same political views as him. But I think he is right on target with "The Long Emergency."
What "The Long Emergency" is about is the decline of oil production and its possible impacts on society. Oil and gas, being fossil fuels, are finite. The cheap stuff, the easy to get to stuff, is getting scarcer all the time. Meanwhile the world's appetite for these fuels is growing. Do you think BP really wanted to drill in the Gulf of Mexico?
There are a lot of people who scoff at the notion of "Peak Oil." I am not one of them. A lot of people don't realize that this corner of Southwest Michigan had an oil boom about 90 years ago. All that is left, besides the derricks that are rusting away in the swamps, is a derrick and a pump jack on display in front of a small town museum. Back in the 1960's and 1970's when we traveled across the state, it was not uncommon to see "oil wells" pumping away. Now, go back along the same roads and the pumps are still. So, don't tell me that oil fields can't run out.
Anyway, reading "The Long Emergency" made me look around at my community with new eyes. Supposing the school did get the money to build a new school? How long before that building would be shut down like the rooms at my company? Don't laugh. Every day I see a new "For Sale" sign go up that wasn't there before. Look at Detroit, how it has declined.
My community has built its hopes around being a bedroom community to a much larger city to the east. Here are some statistics about that larger community. Fifty percent of the children there live in poverty! The overall poverty rate is around 40 percent, and the jobless rate around 9. This part of Michigan used to have thriving factories. Now, they are pictures on the wall in museum displays. Bruce Springsteen said it best in his song "My Hometown", "these jobs are going, boy, and they are never coming back." Children are the future. If this large community has a 50 percent poverty rate among its children, what hope is there?
At the Village Council meeting a man stood up and said he was applying for a liquor license because he wants to build a new bistro/restaurant. There are already at least 10 restaurants within a 2 mile radius, ranging from an award-winning Asian bistro to a burger and shake joint. From the way he described his proposed restaurant, it will not be cheap. The council listened to him and said they would think it over. I am not on the council but if I was I would ask him, "Have you seen all the For Sale signs around here? Where do you think your customers are going to come from?" He is making assumptions that I don't think he can make. If people are out of work, if they are losing their homes to the bank, they aren't going to be eating out so much. If I were a business owner looking to establish a business in this community, I would ask myself, what does this community need that it does not already have? What do people need? Maybe he will succeed in this new restaurant, but I won't be one of his regulars. Nor will a lot of people I know. We just don't have that kind of money.
The party is over, Kunstler said in "The Long Emergency." We've been living an unsustainable lifestyle and now the bills are coming due on many fronts. Some people may have been taken by surprise when the bottom fell out in 2008; I wasn't, because this is one of the things he said was going to happen and keep happening. If he is right, we may have to rethink the way we do a lot of things.
