Who here would give up their cars, change their way of life, go back to horse and buggy for

transportation among other means, as a result of this superkill? Just curious.

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ahead...a little conservation would really lessen our dependancy, bring down prices...why is conservation a dirty word with Obama?

look around your house... 95% is oil, and the other 5% came with oil.

You'd also have to include the Green Revolution and a few other things of our civilization of oil.

That said, we'd better start thinking on it, because we are at Peak Oil

reduction of CO2 while at the same time cutting consumption.

relatively speaking soon, in my lifetime soon.

But cars are just part of the problem...

:-(

We talking to each other at night with the Teevee running on the puter, with lights on is a serious part too.

Most of my house is brick and wood - made in 1940, so, chances are, the brick and wood were cultivated here. I have a good number of antiques - furniture I know was crafted in this country. I use green light bulbs.

The electronics - sure, made of oil and oil used to transport them here. I'm all for bringing electronic manufacturing back to the USA, though, and have said so a million times - on this board and off.

I realize many things are build using plastic or are transported to this country using oil, but I doubt that 95 percent of my house and the things in it. Heck - I still own and American-made TV and drive an American car.

I quit driving my car in the city now.

I bicycle everywhere within a range of 5-6 miles (weather permitting) and haven't driven into the downtown area in 7 years.

trips into Tokyo. :-)

Your town seems very well appointed for bikes. I was impressed.

and none of them involves a car. A few of them involve a bicycle for part of the way, but it's my own preference.

And yes, that's one thing I've got to say about this place, it is set up for bicycles.

By the way, when did I meet you at the bus station? Was that within the last 7 years? I'm losing track of time here. Maybe I should have said I've only driven downtown one time in the last 7 years?

Perhaps in 2002. Your friends were talking about having visited the World Trade Center just a short time before 9/11.

You picked me up at the little train station once, but for my first visit, I came on the bus from Tokyo Station.

When it rained streets turned into mud. When it was dry powdery dust would fill the air in the breeze.

:shrug:

Seriously.

Horses are a pain in the ass. Cleaning up after them is only part of the problem.

If you don't put fuel in your car for a week it's no big deal.

If you don't feed your horse for a week it dies.

And if you think runaway Toyotas were a problem imagine how much worse it would be if Toyotas could be spooked.

stuff. How many car accidents daily maime and kill people? Horse shit is good stuff. :evilgrin: The piss is a problem. Alph alpha soaks up oil. We should grow more of it if we continue killing our bodies of water at the rate we are killing them.

would go ape shit over the enslavement of poor animals and the breaking of horses is waaaayyy against the grain for most of the crowd!
branding either freeze or heat for identification methods is going to cause outrage most folks dont think about that....you could go ear tattoos but thats hard for the police to check, sorta like checking the vin, most homes except in rural areas dont have room for stables, and most folks are not savvy enough to take care of a horse, and dont kidyourself about accidents involving permanent damage and livestock including death, no seat belts on horses...on and on and on.... I would love it though, as the farming industry and agriculture in general would get a much needed shot in the rear!!

there must be structural changes. To use a "horse and buggy" you need to own horses and buggies and the land to raise them. To ride a bicycle, you need a job that isn't an hours drive a way. You also can't bike to work if you work in a 20 minute drive from your house and have to drop your kids off at school before you leave.

You can't make "organic, slow-cooked food" for your kids unless there is someone to spend hours a day preparing these meals. Is it going to be the men? Yeah, I don't think so.

We CAN make these changes--bike to work, energy-efficient vehicles, things built to last and made out of metals, etc--but we can't do it under a free market system. Or only the richest and (some) retirees will have the time and space to thoroughly enact these changes. But we can't solve these problems by a small segment of the population adhering to them. It's a material problem and it requires a materialist, not moralist answer.

enough that they would be willing to make individual sacrifice.

I'll tell ya what: I don't want to be driving a horse and buggy if all the horses and buggy-making devices are run and operated by BP & Halliburton. I would certainly give up my car to live in a sane and equitable world where I knew my neighbors and my clothes and shoes weren't made by dehumanized slaves in Chinese, Indonesian, and Latin American factories. And if I wasn't treated like a serf-for-empire, I'd like that too.

We could just have much more efficient vehicles and that would help considerably.

And I only spend about 20 minutes a day doing it.

It's a matter of planning and eating simply. And yes, all my food is local, certified organic and cheap (because I belong to a CSA - go here to find one close to you www.localharvest.org ). We only spend about $80 a week for the entire family and we eat like kings.

One of the keys is the right cooking tools. I have really good chef knives, but the gem of my kitchen is a pressure cooker (I use a german made one that is completely silent). With a pressure cooker you can do rice in 7 minutes, beans in less than 20, a roast in about 30 minutes. My second favorite time saver is my cast iron wok.


There are ways.


FYI - I am 45, broke, with no resources but I save my pennies and buy smart. The big savings in the CSA - 1 bussel of freshly picked certified organic product a week for about $35 a week. That's over 50 - 75 % off and it's enough food to feed a family of 4 with the addition of a little protien and a little grain.

:)

If I was a Mom, I'd be using a crockpot!

I absolutely agree and endorse your post though. It needs to be social engineering. The problem with that is, the forces of inertia are strong, have deep pockets and can rely on fear to influence how the populace reacts to positive, progressive changes.

That would satisfy me :)

(and it is indeed a remote possibility) never seem to be equally afraid of the far more common possibility of getting killed or seriously injured in a car crash.

Look at your local paper one day and see the ratio of murders on buses and trains to deaths in car crashes.

Thanks for your tips though.

The latter are more intimidating.

that and some good bike lanes and I'd be happy

may want to meet you. Fuck that I still want a Corvette I am and American it's how I was raised.

but even the Amish resort to the automobile for transportation into the cities. They just don't actually drive them.

:cry:

Even in rural areas the Amish are often trucked to worksites for construction, etc.

Oil's not going to continue being as cheap as it is, when it hits 10 dollars a gallon, how many people can afford to drive?

And a personal choice.

This country, and most of its towns and cities are designed around the automobile, and its going to end in disaster for us in the next decade or so.

Obama had the backbone to tell the truth, that the party is over, and we cannot rely on oil as a source of fuel anymore and it will involve sacrifices. Then actually start a program of conservation and restructuring our cities around small, metro-only personal transportation, light rail, electric buses, and high-speed rail for inter-city/intercontinental travel(air fares will get expensive quick).

We need these programs started over a decade ago, but we haven't even begun. We are fucked.

30 years later, still plenty of oil.

I strongly support a move off fossile fuels but this "we'll be out of oil in 10 years!" meme has proved wrong for several decades already.

My best friend is a top flight lawyer in the EU who handles international oil contracts. Every day about 2 billion dollars in transactions pass his desk. His family has been in oil for generations. He is telling me that peak oil happened in 2003. The problem in the 70's wasn't supply but rather refining and transport issues that no longer exist.


We are running out. There are only so many dead dinosaur carcasses that we can suck out of the ground. It aint magical libertardian pixie dust and wishin' it ain't so doesn't make it so.

put up or shut up.

Lots of "non-negotiable" things will be on the table....

a little further down the road(less than 50 years), it will be coal, and, if we build enough nuclear plants, uranium.

For longer range trips I have my motorcycle at 60 miles per gallon..



For shorter range trips I have my bicycle at infinite miles per gallon.



And for medium range trips or when it's too hot/humid to ride my bicycle I have my electric scooter at about 25 watt hours/mile..

It was actually quite a problem in urban areas by the late nineteenth century.

And of course, the concrete streets we have now are very hard on a horse's hooves and legs, so we'd have to replace it with dirt, and you know how dusty it would be when dry or muddy when rainy.

Next, consider distance. A horse can pull a buggy about 10 miles per hour, but stamina wise it's only good for a couple of hours and then has to rest. So, if your commute is more than 20/25 miles, you're kind of out of luck.

Horse shit can be converted into something useful. And no, rubber shoes for work on pavement, and on edit yes, I know rubber requires oil.

the non-synthetic kind anyways.

with either replacement mounts tethered behind the buggy or at regular way stations along the way.


But yah - horses are not for fast transit over long distances. For that we need maglev trains.

http://www.nissanusa.com/leaf-electric-car/index?dcp=ppn.39666654.&dcc=0.216878497#/leaf-electric-car/index

I will keep the gas car for road trips, 16 more payments to go, but everyday can easily be done in an electric
so fall of 2011

I went into debt for a hybrid so I didn't have to give the oil bastards one more cent than I had to and wish I had looked more at electric. Electric may be the next. :hi:

All I need to do is move to a city whose lifestyle precludes having a car. San Francisco is first in mind. NYC, several European cities.

I can use public transportation and as soon as things break to allow me more time, that is exactly what I plan to do for work. I did the park and ride thing. Not bad at all. But I haven't had time to time the longer leg of the trip yet. Tough on time being the middle of a sandwich.

Sadly, the reality of most American cities is that of unwalkable distances between places.



(instead of disparage I initially wrote discount but then I thought of the Sesame Street character)

workable in this fashion for most, but with improved public transportation, we cut cut out some cars if people were willing, and soon even if they are not.

We can't have it all. In my life, I noticed that all these toys and gadgets, all this technology has been enslaving me to corporate america without bringing any happiness.

So much of it seems like a sordid joke when you look at all the plastic littering this country and the wars we wage against innocent people to sustain our way of life.

Dishwasher? Why? It takes less time to wash everything by hand, dry it and put it away than to load it up, waste all that water and energy, wait for it to dry and then put it away.

Washing machine, dryer, stove and refrigerator? Unfortunately, I'm still stuck but my utility bills have dropped dramatically.

Car? Only to drive to/from work until I can quit and work closer to home.

Eggs? A few chickens in the backyard cut down on pesticide and provide healthy, nutritious eggs. I wish I had the courage to kill them and eat them. The veggie garden is abundant and I know what's in the veggies. Same with the eggs.



I realize it's only a small start but I figure if you put one foot in front of the other everyday, you'll get there.

I'd change it all in a heartbeat and go back to the horse and buggy. What you just described is my dream,



This catastrophe is making my need to break as free as possible, from what I consider madness, even more urgent.

I know all about dishpan hands and I even use palmolive when it's on sale or I have a coupon. :evilgrin: Working on it.

We will very shortly begin the serious transition to electric
cars, and any city in the US that expects to have a future is aleady
seriously working on better mass transit, light rail etc.

month too.

we Arizonans don't have that luxury.

that is not about a choice you will make. It is about a reality that is coming to your awareness in leaps, bounds and with many, subtle whispers. This is, in many respects, the end of the world as we know it The emphasis is on the how we know it part and how we came to know it and who told us how to know it and why.

If you don't understand what sustainable is, then I can see how this does not hit you in your survival Chakra sufficiently enough for it to be a rational and realistic concept to find agreeable or even, comprehensible.

While the wealthy will try to retreat into pockets of affluence that are based on the old paradigm, the rest of you will either come to understand and flow appropriately with the nature and requisites of the transition we are going through, or you will struggle horribly with the cognizant dissonance that the media and government inject as a an insincere remedy from, and shrewdly calculated diversion to the actuality of what we are experiencing, now.

We have always proved to be an adaptable species, despite how solid and stubborn we experience ourselves to be. At this stage, many of us see how toxic and viral we have become to our own environment in general and many of us know that this is a very vital point of reckoning for the continuation of our overtly egotistical and acquisitive species, right now. We are alive at a time when will might see how the final war of greed and profit against nature and sustainability will turn out. Will we evolve beyond our suppositions about our stature here on the planet and in the Universe, or will be destroy ourselves, (all disenfranchised, innocent lives included) trying to prove that our leaders rights are not wrongs at all?

We will all be very lucky if the next generation will even be able to live as luxuriously as the Amish do today, even if we see pockets of ultra-wealth that create citadels of opulence here and there in the post-capitalistic aftermath. While the results may be varied and based on location, imagine a world made by hand, based on local resources and availability and far more in tune with the environment and nature as if life depended on it ... which it ultimately does, in the end.

The ultimate facade of politics served by media is a facade that will eventually yield, unequivocally, to the underlying facts and balance of nature and anything that moves against that will be a will to perish rather than to grow and prosper. No matter how much we would wish to uphold and verify our simple and temporary perspectives, it is clear that nature will prevail and we are going to face a point where we accept that and align ourselves to it as our origin and ultimate end, or we will fight against it and gnash our teeth all the way to our certain demise. That is not at all complex, nor is it difficult to understand. Not one philosophy, religion, or any other human idea will circumvent the underlying facts that have led to our existence and interaction with this seemingly complex system of life.

desert states can create massive solar panel farms for electricity

deciduous forest areas can grow hemp to replace almost any petro-derived product (bio-plastic) including car bodies.

light rail (with storage for bikes on board) can replace one-person commutes on interstates.

I hope that this disaster will spur enough disgust to energize Americans to look beyond oil and stop listening to idiots like Limpballs and the I-quit-a-rodder.

LOL! :toast:

Exactly where did you plan to put all the horseshit in this Brave New World?

The reality is that horses are not an environmentally sound method of travel. Cars are better. Whether we run those cars on electricity or fossil fuel is the issue. Whether we use solar, wind, wave, and water or fossil fuels is the issue.

I'm not willing to fundamentally change the world, because that won't happen. What can happen is we ratchet our way over to more sane approaches to energy production.

Deep water drilling is a problem that should be addressed as a free standing issue. It's not worth the risk.

they used the manure on their gardens-and they didn't have rampant climate change or oil spills. However, wind and solar offer a better alternative these days, along with EVs and a high speed MagLev monorail system. The age of oil WILL come to a close, like it or not.

There were horse shit filled, muddy streets. They used manure on their gardens, but they also spilled their sewer everywhere with little regard for ground water.

It's ludricous to suggest horse travel is a realistic alternative in today's world. If you live in a rural area, you can ride a horse around. If you live in a city, as most of the population does, you cannot.

still drive, use electricity, have tons of shit made of plastic, and despite howling on a computer (that uses electricty made by a coal-fired powered plant) how evil it all is, aren't going to change a damned thing about how they live. BUT, complaining about it on a message board will make you pure. or something. there are people on this thread who put their money where there mouth is though.

solar energy very effectively. That institution is the local jail or prison.

New jails have been located away from the central city. They usually have ample space around them for a solar field.

They have an available cheap workforce to do maintenance and repairs. In the case of prisons, they have a workforce that could fabricate solar panels cheaply.

And they have a facility in which everything is electronic, all the jail cell locks, lights, and in which those must be used 24 hours a day.

Those who live in states where solar is a reasonable choice could advocate that their local jail start the conversion.

Prisons actually have a terrible time manufacturing things because outsiders don't want them to compete with private business on the goods that they make.

But solar panels--no one else is doing it on a large scale and it's difficult to compete with the Chinese prices.

So, let the prisoners manufacture solar panels for their own facilities.

:D Examination of deep water drilling as a method of obtaining oil needs go no further than April 20, 2010 and was known well before that, but greedy fucks did it anyway.

They need room. They need paddocks and pastures. They need to be able to graze and run freely.

I agree that we need to look at ways to trim back our demand, from throw away plastic to compelling consumptions.

Down to about 1 gallon a week. Maybe I just need a buggy. lol

:hi:

What?!

There are no solutions in between those extremes.

:shrug:

"Who here would give up their cars, change their way of life, go back to horse and buggy for transportation among other means, as a result of this superkill?"

So, yes, you did say that.

Your question is:

Who would...

1. Give up your car.
2. Change your way of life.
3. Go back to horse and buggy for transportation ("among other means" implies options like the horse and buggy - chariot? Rickshaw?)

as a result of this superkill.


It's a ridiculously framed question that attempts to force us to choose between the absurd system we have now and the absurd system that existed 100 years ago.

If you intended to ask something else, you should have framed it differently.

would do it!!

I don't think anyone ever suffered from mass transportation -- very convenient!

But, keep in mind, btw, that MILITARY is the largest user of oil products --

so ending the MIC would be a good thing .... in many, many, many ways!!

A while back, I was actually thinking about the idea of getting a horse. Except that I don't have a back yard. Plus I live in Phoenix, AZ, so I wouldn't be okay with it unless I could provide the horse with cool shelter.

It's really tough to be car-less out here, because of the strong sun/heat.

and an Aptera.Or a high speed Mag Lev National railway. That would be even better.

No car accidents, free fertiliser, takes you home safely when you're drunk...

I'll take an electric car with a side of 21st century technology, please.

the choice is not 'continue wrecking the planet' vs 'go back to horse and buggy'.

no more than one days ride,from the farthest reaches of the county,for a person traveling by horse and buggy.

I would use horse and buggy if it was not such a pain in the ass.

and expecting this response:

Trains, buses, electric cars, bike lanes, walkable communities, carpooling, energy conservation and renewables, buy local, recycling and lower consumption in general, etc etc.

You know, the sane way to go at this point. :)

but I don't mind donkeys or bicycles.

I don't like horses. They are scary.

Llamas?

I mean, anyone bigger than a kid or a skinny adult.

count me in

Plus they wouldn't generate the power to run the heat/AC. LOL

Plus the SUV would be filled w/oats,apples,sugar cubes,and who knows how many"pick-up" bags! Shoot, I wouldn't want to ride w/you!(Even w/the tails swishing)LMAO (hope you know I'm just having fun.)

Will you let me park the rig in your driveway? The smell isn't too bad after you are accustomed to it. Kind of like those garbage trucks I remember from my youth before we had garbage disposers. Not too bad in the winter, but summer was another case.

Just make sure those Clydes are carrying their usual load!

You don't have to be a fucking luddite to oppose fossil fuels.

and is a great example of the type of circular, limited "thinking" practiced in the public sphere these days.

I don't know whether the OP is serious or not.

But the fact is, THIS IS typical of some of the crap you are going to hear. This type of baiting, absurd arguments, the defensive (either/or, black/white) thinking. This is going to be the big (uncreative, no vision) argument of the gotcha crowd whose vision is as clouded as the Gulf.

So better get used to it, and get your defenses up.

I say the OP whatever the intention, is giving us a taste of what is to come. This line will be promoted everywhere now.

One in six American jobs is related to the car industry. Remember that.

makes a valid point, which is that it's not just cars that are the problem.


I've posted before, and here it is again...there are over 4,000 items which are produced from petroleum.

People still driving American made cars? Fine. But what about the plastic and vinyl and other synthetic materials that go into it?

TVs made with plastic components. Plastic ink pens. Office supplies and furniture. Medical and surgical supplies. Plastic is literally everywhere.

Cut down on emissions and pollution from cars, but we still have to deal with pollution from factories making stuff from petroleum.

And people can drive around with horse and buggy all they want and feel like they're doing something, but how does one feed that horse? Do people in the city have access to farms on which to grow hay and oats? How does one grease the wheels of his buggy? By raising pigs and using the fat?

Sadly, I don't believe that there is any turning back once a certain level of
progress is attained...

and better plastic recycling programs.

that would allow us to quit the combustion engine, we just don't have the will in a country run in part by big oil.

n/t

We didn't do much to begin with. I work at home. My wife takes the train to the city. I've simply made sure we take care of multiple errands on every trip out.

Next step is photovoltaic shingles on our roof (these) and hopefully a variance from our village to put a wind turbine next to our house (This one). Meanwhile we'll extend a new circuit to our garage so our next purchase is an electric car which will be what we use for all local driving while maintaining a fossil fuel car for longer trips. The vehicle after the electric car will be a hybrid for the longer trips.

same thing.

We try to consolidate trips.

And even though we're some 20 miles from any "civilization", we still haven't put a lot of miles on our vehicle.


Our Ford Escape, bought brand new in 2005, still only has less than 25,000 miles on it. Which I think is impressive considering where we live...

I generally don't jump on the knee-jerk bandwagon though.

rough and, at times, uncomfortable, but I'd lay money that it was a damn sight more fulfilling.

Probably would not work for me, regardless of how nice it sounds. Infrastructure and community planning would need to start all over from scratch to make this viable.

the cost of commuting by car.

When I lived in Portland, several people told me that I was paying too much rent for what I was getting, that I could live in a larger, better-equipped apartment for $200 less a month if I moved out into the boonies.

True, but the cheapest good apartment buildings were all off the transit system, and buying and maintaining a car would have wiped out any savings on rent.

Right now I live 15 minutes away, but It's just me doing all the work and paying all the bills. In Sept I am marrying my sweetheart and moving to his house where it will be me, him, our 3 boys combined ( my 2 and his 1), a soon to be daughter-in-law and one close friend. We just planted an organic garden and the chickens are coming soon. Last year we learned to can and this year we are joining a fish co-op and buying bulk organic meat. These things are much more cost effective with multiple adults working outside the home and sharing the workload at the house.

My job is the one thing that won't be changing. I work for a small company, owned by a very liberal and progressive boss who not only pays me a decent wage but also is flexible with hours since I am a single mother. If I quit, frankly, he would be lost :)

However, I will be working from home for 2 days a week.

I would love to take a train to work, but although the train literally runs about 50 yards from my building, the closest stop is 3 miles away with no buses. In New England, that makes things much more difficult.

I would also like to see the world you all are envisioning, unfortunately it will take a vast amount of infrastructure changes to make it viable for the typical working stiff.

and far less expensive than owning one---or two or three, as many suburban families do.

My major complaint about Minneapolis is its lousy transit system, and sad to say, I know that it's better than the ones in many other cities.

Based on my ten years without a car in Portland, I try to ride the bus and train as much as possible, but since the connections don't work and the system doesn't go everywhere, I'm stuck driving. Still, I fill my gas tank only once a month.

We'd all be better off if everyone who COULD make non-auto trips, whether by transit, bicycle, or shoe leather, would do so. We'd have cleaner air and healthier people. (I realize that not everyone can do this, either for reasons of health or because they're stuck in a car-burb, but more people could take alternative forms of transportation if they actually thought about it.)

We'd all be better off if people who moved from one city to another made access to non-automobile transportation a priority, if they told real estate agents, "I can't live in this neighborhood. I'd have to drive everywhere."(I'm on what passes for a "good" bus line in Minneapolis.)

When I was car-free, I suffered no more delays than the average driver does looking for a parking space or coming out to the garage in the morning and finding the car dead. I made a point of living in a neighborhood where I could walk to the grocery store and most other essential services.

Best of all, I saw countless families with children riding the bus and light rail, and I saw how much the children ENJOYED it, especially the light rail.

We do need to question our way of life and our knee-jerk idea that driving is always best or "gives us freedom."

When my car needs expensive repairs or I have to write that insurance check, I feel like a slave to it.

build your life around being car free but it can be done.

In celebration of the oil geyser in the Gulf I bought a car just yesterday.

Party like it's 1999.

No thanks.

In NYC or DC or Boston, etc...


probably not

:7

Ottawa, Kansas and Council Bluffs, Iowa were messy enough. I can't imagine Manhattan.

:shrug:

Where are you going grow the hay for the many hundreds of millions of animals? Show me the math.

The only horse worth a damn is the iron horse.

I'm in New Mexico out in the middle of nowhere. There's plenty of grazing land and horses around these here parts. I don't relish learning how to shoot a rifle from horseback like they did in the Wild West. Contrary to popular belief, I don't think an armed society is a polite one. But if that is necessary, then so be it.

but then I wouldn't be able to answer your question.

Walking, bicycling, and a wide variety of mass transit options make a whole lot more sense to me. Car sharing programs are also a great idea.

I got relieved of my car by a thief last fall and am managing without.

If I was an alien superpower from space I'd use my phasers to destroy the working parts of every unoccupied automobile.

Scan for life forms, scan negative, your car is toast. The electrical system is fried, the windows are made opaque, the tires are melted, and every last bearing is fused. You can't even turn the knobs on the dashboard or adjust the seats. If you are standing too close, even your driver's license is toast. Better not keep it in your wallet, it'll burn your ass.

You want to keep your car safe? You have to sleep in it. But step outside for just a second, even to pee, and ZZZZAAAAAAPPPPP!!! green phaser beams from space turn it into a useless piece of metal and plastic and glass waiting for the recycling truck.

Everyone rides the train, the bus, a bicycle, or they just walk. No cars, so kick back, keep warm, and wait for the Red Cross rescue vehicles.

Fortunately for you all, I'm not an alien superpower from space. Unfortunately Mother Nature is not as respectful of life as I am. She doesn't care if you live or die. We're all short-timers in her book, and once we've sucked up all the easy oil we're gonna starve and die like locusts.

I'd get rid of it... I'd be OK with that...

Yeah this oil spill is bad; really bad. But it will get capped, and it will get cleaned up and nature will ultimately heal itself. I'll take the oil spill any day over streets that literally become rivers of shit and piss.


"A concern with clean streets and with the horse as a principal obstacle to them was nothing new. European cities had shown concern for the problem as early as the fourteenth century, as had American cities from their beginnings. But it required a more statistically minded age to measure the actual amount of manure produced by the horse. Sanitary experts in the early part of the twentieth century agreed that the normal city horse produced between fifteen and thirty pounds of manure a day, with the average being something like twenty-two pounds. Ina city like Milwaukee in 1907, for instance, with a human population of 350,000 and a horse population of 12,500, this meant 133 tons of manure a day, for a daily average of nearly three-quarters of a pound of manure for each resident. Or, as health officials in Rochester, New York, calculated in 1900, the fifteen thousand horses in that city produced enough manure in a year to make a pile 175 feet high covering an acre of ground and breeding sixteen billion flies, each one a potential spreader of germs."

And what about the horse themselves?

"If the horse, by his biological necessities, created problems for the city, the city, in turn, was a harsh environment for the animals whose possession had once been the mark and privilege of nobility. The horse belonged to the open spaces and the battlefield. In an urban setting he was, with rare exception, a drudge. City horses were notoriously overworked. The average streetcar nag had a life expectancy of barely two years, and it was a common sight to see drivers and teamsters savagely lashing their overburdened animals. The mistreatment of city horses was a key factor in moving Henry Bergh to found the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1866. When released from harness, the working steed usually was led to a crowded and unsanitary stable without adequate light or air. Only the pleasure horses kept by the city’s “swells” to drive handsome rigs in the park had access to the green fields enjoyed by their country cousins.

Many overworked, mistreated urban horses simply died in the city streets. Moreover, since asphalt-paved or cobbled streets were slipperier than dirt roads, horses often stumbled and fell. An unfortunate beast who broke a leg in this way was destroyed where it lay. (In order to minimize the risk of stumbles, some veterinarians recommended that city draft horses be shod with rubber-padded horseshoes, but few owners followed this advice.) A description of Broadway appearing in the Atlantic Monthly in 1866 spoke of the street as being clogged with “dead horses and vehicular entanglements.” The equine carcasses added fearsomely to the smells and flies already rising in clouds from stables and manure piles. In 1880 New York City removed fifteen thousand dead horses from its streets, and as late as 1912 Chicago carted away nearly ten thousand horse carcasses. A contemporary book on the collection of municipal refuse advised that, since the average weight of a dead horse was thirteen hundred pounds, “trucks for the removal of dead horses should be hung low, to avoid an excessive lift.” The complaint of one horse lover that “in the city the working horse is treated worse than a steam-engine or sewing machine,” was well justified."

http://www.banhdc.org/archives/ch-hist-19711000.html

Even though I don't believe we can ever go back, there's this to be said about the old ways...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDYK5SBnVaQ


this always brings tears to my eyes.

who care about the earth to make this decision. Many people don't think beyond their own ice box.

I've never perceived adaptation to environment and lack/availability of resource as a zero sum game.

The oil addiction is a lie perpetrated because oil means control and profit not because cars can't work on anything else.

Just give me something which doesn't use fossil fuels, that's all I'm begging for and that will make me very happy!

system. In fact I wished I lived in a city that had a good system. I love using subways/trains/buses more than driving.

Public policy and progressive change will never be achieved through personal lifestyle choices.

The catastrophe we are watching unfold, in the Gulf and everywhere else, is not the fault of the working people and their personal lifestyle choices.

The wealthy and powerful few, who did cause the catastrophe and who must be forced to change if the human race is to survive, would certainly like us all to believe that we are to blame and that we can change things by changing our personal lifestyle choices.

and it may already be too late --

I'd love to be able to ride my horses everywhere. I think humanity took a wrong turn when we abandoned horses for the evil planet wrecking automobile.

:kick: