- If you stockpile the wrong foods, you could be setting your family up to starve. It sounds harsh, but the truth is too many people with good intentions are making critical mistakes with their food stockpiles.
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By Michael Snyder, on July 20th, 2013
It is so sad to watch one of America’s greatest cities die a horrible death.
Once upon a time, the city of Detroit was a teeming metropolis of 1.8 million people and it had the highest per capita income in the United States.
Now it is a rotting, decaying hellhole of about 700,000 people that the rest of the world makes jokes about.
On Thursday, we learned that the decision had been made for the city of Detroit to formally file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy.
It was going to be the largest municipal bankruptcy in the history of the United States by far, but on Friday it was stopped at least temporarily by an Ingham County judge.
She ruled that Detroit’s bankruptcy filing
because it would result in reduced pension payments for retired workers.
She also stated that Detroit’s bankruptcy filing was ““, and she ordered that a copy of her judgment be sent to Barack Obama.
How “honoring the president” has anything to do with the bankruptcy of Detroit is a bit of a mystery, but what that judge has done is ensured that there will be months of legal wrangling ahead over Detroit’s money woes.
It will be very interesting to see how all of this plays out.
But one thing is for sure – the city of Detroit is flat broke.
One of the greatest cities in the history of the world is just a shell of its former self.
The following are 25 facts about the fall of Detroit that will leave you shaking your head…
1) At this point, the city of Detroit owes money .
2) Detroit is facing
in debt and unfunded liabilities.
That breaks down to more than $25,000 per resident.
3) Back in 1960, the city of Detroit actually had the
in the entire nation.
4) In 1950, there were
manufacturing jobs in Detroit.
Today, there are .
5) Between , 48 percent of the manufacturing jobs in the state of Michigan were lost.
6) There are lots of houses available for sale in Detroit
for $500 or less.
7) At this point, there are approximately
in the city.
of Detroit’s 140 square miles is either vacant or derelict.
9) An astounding
of the residents of the city of Detroit are functionally illiterate.
of the residents of Detroit over the age of 16 are working at this point.
11) If you can believe it,
of all children in the city of Detroit are living in poverty.
12) Detroit was once the fourth-largest city in the United States, but over the past 60 years the population of Detroit has fallen by .
13) The city of Detroit is now very heavily dependent on the tax revenue it pulls in from the casinos in the city.
Right now, Detroit is bringing in
in tax revenue from the casinos.
14) There are
“Superfund” hazardous waste sites in Detroit.
of the street lights do not work.
of the ambulances are running.
17) Some ambulances in the city of Detroit have been used for so long that they have
of the parks in the city of Detroit have been permanently closed down since 2008.
19) The size of the police force in Detroit has been cut
over the past decade.
20) When you call the police in Detroit, it takes them an average of
to respond.
21) Due to budget cutbacks, most police stations in Detroit are now closed to the public .
22) The violent crime rate in Detroit is
than the national average.
23) The murder rate in Detroit is
than it is in New York City.
24) Today, police solve
of the crimes that are committed in Detroit.
25) Crime has gotten so bad in Detroit that even the police are telling people to ““.
It is easy to point fingers and mock Detroit, but the truth is that the rest of America is going down the exact same path that Detroit has gone down.
Detroit just got there first.
All over this country, there are hundreds of state and local governments …
“Everyone will say, ‘Oh well, it’s Detroit. I thought it was already in bankruptcy,’ ” said Michigan State University economist Eric Scorsone. “But Detroit is not unique. It’s the same in Chicago and New York and San Diego and San Jose. It’s a lot of major cities in this country. They may not be as extreme as Detroit, but a lot of them face the same problems.”
A while back, Meredith Whitney
for predicting that there would be a huge wave of municipal defaults in this country.
When it didn’t happen, the critics let her have it mercilessly.
But Meredith Whitney was not wrong.
She was just early.
Detroit is only just the beginning.
When , we are going to see a wave of municipal bankruptcies unlike anything we have ever seen before.
And of course the biggest debt problem of all in this country .
We are going to pay a great price for piling up nearly 17 trillion dollars of debt and over 200 trillion dollars of unfunded liabilities.
All over the nation, our economic infrastructure is being gutted, debt levels are exploding and poverty is spreading.
We are consuming far more wealth than we are producing, and our share of global GDP has been declining dramatically.
We have been living way above our means for so long that we think it is “normal”, but an extremely painful “adjustment” is coming and most Americans are not going to know how to handle it.
So don’t laugh at Detroit.
The economic pain that Detroit is experiencing will be coming to your area of the country soon enough.Why green your head? Because the first requirement of sustainability is to change how we think. We must start by abandoning our fantasies of unlimited growth. Technology can help us, but only if we are conscious of technology's limits. Great life, like great art, only flourishes within constraints.
Primal Tears, my science fiction novel about a human-bonobo chimp hybrid teenage girl, . Please go to the to read reviews by R. Crumb, Greg Bear, Kate Wilhelm and many others.
Here's a page from the graphic novel version, illustrated by . We never found a publisher, so it was not finished. Let me know if you have ideas for a publisher! And please buy the book. Lots of people say it's a great read, so I believe them!
Many, many thanks to all who took part in the Biochar School, Nov 7-11 at Swallow Valley Farm in Sonoma County, California. With 12 instructors and more than 40 students, we had a full house! The learning and sharing was a two-way affair, as we all learned from each other and made valuable connections across disciplines and regions.
I will be posting presentations and links to some of the videos we showed at the school on my other site,
I have posted pictures and short video clips of the Biochar School on a web album here:
And here is a web album from Art Donnelly:
This article makes the case for dedicated bioenergy crops as preferrable to crop residues for bioenergy. Perennial crops build soil carbon more easily than annual crops. Crop residue should be retained in the field to sustain soil carbon, but perennial wood and grasses can be harvested without killing the plant and disturbing soil carbon. As long as this bioenergy is grown on already degraded land, it makes sense to me.
Read more here:
In this article we show how residues for biomass are not the right approach in Europe to promote a biobased industry. We offer sound evidence that EU soils require perennial cropping systems to increase soil fertility and give several examples of energy crops that have been studied for many years and meeting that requirement succesfully.
We have a distinguished group of experienced biochar practitioners coming to teach at the Biochar School - Nov. 7-11. Don't miss this opportunity to learn from these experts. Register now at
I am reading Naomi Klein's book, This Changes Everything. This is revolutionary. Here is a quote from the intro: &The bottom line is what matters here: our economic system and our planetary system are now at war. Or, more accurately, our economy is at war with many forms of life on earth, including human life. What the climate needs to avoid collapse is a contraction in humanity' what our economic model demands to avoid collapse is unfettered expansion. Only one of these sets of rules can be changed, and it's not the laws of nature.&
November 7-11, , Sonoma County, CaliforniaSpace Limited to 50 Students. Register before October 15 to get the low early bird rate.Who should attend? Small farmers, home gardeners and anyone interested in soils, plants and small scale biomass energy. What you will learn from our faculty of 12 experienced biochar practitioners: o    No-cost and low-cost ways to make plenty of biochar for your farmo    Biochar application rates and methods for best resultso    How to make biologically active, nutrient balanced biochar fertilizer blendso    How to analyze biochar characteristicso    How to integrate biochar economically and ecologically into your farm production systemso    How to design biochar devices that capture useful energy
Here is an innovative method of testing for soil carbon:
Men’s cotton briefs can serve the needs of science when buried in a field for a few weeks. It’s a takeoff on an agronomy soil test that uses cotton swatches to measure carbon consumption by microbes.
Microbes living in soil with plenty of carbon, rich in organic matter to turn into energy, don’t have to eat the cotton. Bacteria in carbon-poor soil will eat what they can scavenge.
The “soiled underwear test” helped Clemson and North Carolina State University Extension specialists teaching a pasture ecology workshop make their points about the importance of healthy soil and how to build it from the grassroots down.
A cattle producer who understands how the interconnected web of life works can have healthier pastures that will be more resilient to drought and more productive over time.
“This is what happens when soil lacks carbon,” said Matt Poore, N.C. State animal scientist turned pasture ecologist.
Poore held up a pair of tidy-whiteys in tatters. Mostly it was the elastic waist and leg bands that remained. The demonstration showed the results of bacteria turning cotton into food. At the other end of the display, underwear that had been in carbon-rich soil were dirty but no worse for wear.
More than 15 cattle producers in the three-day course were impressed, though no one came forward for a closer look.
Finally getting around to posting some new cone kiln designs people have been sending me. Below are a few pictures, but for details, please visit
This is a modern version of the system that was used in Asia and some European cities for centuries before some English idiot invented the flush toilet. See the video in the previous post for an explanation of the whole system behind this toilet. I love the option to squat for better elimination.
There is a reason that the flush toilet is the supreme metaphor for our throwaway society. Poo and pee are the most important wastes to recycle. Plastic can sit in the landfill forever - no problem, but poo and pee need to go back on the land where our food comes from.
The 12th Annual Congress of the World Toilet Organisation (the other WTO) will be opened by Winnie Madikizela-Mandela in South Africa. This first World Toilet Summit takes place from December 4 to 6 in Durban. The prime concern of conference organizers is humane toilets for all and everywhere. An incredible 40 % of world population have no access to appropriate sanitation. However, this is to be changed with a new concept. To attain this goal, the Toilet Design Award will be awarded in cooperation of WTO with Prof. Ralf Otterpohl from Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH). With a total sum of 50,000 $, it enables the development of toilets culminating in production of prototypes. The main award for a slum-suitable toilet with excellent design will be granted to the industrial designer Sabine Schober from Hamburg during the opening ceremony of the conference by Tokyo Sexwale, current Minister of Human Settlements of South Africa. Besides its asthetic value, a characteristic of the toilet designed by Ms. Schober is that it can be used in sitting as well as in squatting manner (see photograph).
This is the cutest video! Watch it and be inspired to do something different with your waste. For some ideas, see my previous post, T.