Jack, you are so full of hypocrisy. It’s not even funny. In one instance you criticize the pollution created by big cities and then you are happy to dump your own sewage since it is so cheap. How about minimizing your own sewage and reusing your gray water so you don’t contribute to that pollution?
and maybe you should stop making fun of bicycle commuting and instead hop on one and burn some of your excess blubber and get fit for some survival situations. =)
I doubt this will make it past your editorial.

Hey Jack, it’s much easier to label people (e.g. eco-wackos, hippies, socialists, rednecks, hillbillies or IDIOTS) and discount them than to challenge their ideas or position with logic and sound reasoning. I’m sorry for being so blunt about your weight. But I simply stated a fact.

If you want to be a role model and a spokesperson for the survival and self-sufficiency community you have to represent those ideals. And I believe being fit and healthy is one of those ideals. BTW, you don’t see Dave Canterbury, Les Stroud or Bear Grylls being overweight.

It is common practice nowadays to blame all sorts of problems on genes and heredity. I doubt you would find as many obese people in Ukraine as you would in say Dallas or Memphis. If you take that concept one step further and look at pictures of old Ukraine/Russia around the turn of the last century you would be hard pressed to find a single overweight person. Reason being they had a more active lifestyle and did not eat as much or the kinds of food we do.

Look I’m not trying to belittle the value you bring to the community. I think you are brilliant in the areas of economy, Permaculture or self-defense. But over the past year or so I have noticed you have repeatedly knocked anything that may be associated with the eco-movement.

As for bicycle commuting and environment; How could a person with half a common sense deny their lower impact on the environment in comparison to a car. How could you not see the difference in embodied energy? A typical bicycle weighs about 30 pounds vs 3000 pounds for a typical car. A whole lot more plundering has to occur to build a typical car vs that of a bike. And how about the energy efficiency of the two? This comparison would be ridiculous. Because bicycling is the most efficient form of transport known to man. Its about 10 times more efficient than WALKING! And bear in mind that cycling consumes our own renewable energy. For a car we have to invade countries, keep a massive military, pollute our water systems, and cause massive wildlife destruction.

Now I do think cars do serve a purpose (at least in today’s infrastructure) for hauling and carrying large loads. In fact I own one. But we could use it much less than we do today. In fact we will be forced to in the future as peak oil kicks into full gear.

Oh and BTW, the reason why bike commuting is for the most part impractical in Dallas is because the city was built around automobile and automobile alone. Bicycling is not a safe endeavor on those Texan roads. You don’t believe me go see what Lance has to say about it. And he lives in Austin which is probably the most bicycle friendly city of Texas.
A 30-45 minutes of morning or evening heat while riding should be a non-issue. Have you heard of Race Across America? These guys go from coast to coast in about 8 or 9 days! As survivalists we should be able to manage about an hour, don’t you think?

Here are some other benefits of bicycle commuting:
• Economical (no gas, no insurance, no registration, no gym, tax breaks, inexpensive to maintain)
• Health (movement is not just good for the body but also good for lowering road rage =)
• Independence and very little government oversight
• Less likely to break and easy to fix
• Oh yeah…and a lot fun!

I know you believe in a lot of these concepts so instead of putting bicycle commuting down. May be you should give it a shot and see if you like it.

I do agree with you about cities not being the ideal place to be in a survival situation and for the long haul. But well-designed cities do offer some advantages over suburbia and even rural areas. Energy efficiency being one of them. I know they are not as capable of producing their own food and manage their waste as well as rural areas. But with technologies like vertical gardening and composting toilets much of that can be overcome. In fact Bill Mollison has some videos on urban farming which are pretty good. And to see what is possible with urban farming, I highly recommend you see “Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil”. There is a lot of value in that video and you don’t have to be a Commie to see it =).

Hey Jack,

I’m glad you noted the Chesapeake purchase but I think you may have missed what the real goal of that new joint venture is.

The expense and logistics of actually exporting that gas is financially insane. It could never be done for a reasonable amount of money. For physical gas China is creating pipelines across Europe and building capacity for LNG (liquified natural gas) from Australia and the middle east.

The reason they bought into this is that the technology necessary to produce shale gas economically was developed in the US and is proprietary to US major oil companies. China also has large shale gas formations but no technological capacity to drill for it.

With US gas prices so low for the foreseeable future there is no investment in the nat. gas sector for the moment. Gas supply drastically outstrips demand in the US, so no gas producer is going to get funding for future domestic production right now.

China dramatically overpaid for this investment from an actual gas production standpoint because they want to be taught how to do this type of drilling. No US oil and gas investor would have matched the investment amount because of that.