I got off of the four lane freeway on Friday.  I traveled through the remains and remnants of Iowa’s past that somehow survive in the present.

 

During travel between Cedar Rapids and Mount Pleasant to pick up a friend arriving from the West Coast via cross-continental rail, I drove through Crawfordsville, Iowa.  What once had been one of Iowa’s one thousand self-sufficient towns is now almost a ghost town.

 

There are still plenty of people alive and well in Crawfordsville, but the businesses that once served them are mostly dead.  There is no grocery store.  There is no gas station.  There is no Main Street Café to get the morning news with your morning coffee. 

 

What remains are a cluster of comfy, modest homes, a bank branch and a church.  Thankfully, there is a post office to maintain a living link with the rest of humanity.

Fortunately, there is an elementary school.  Without the peal of laughter from a crew of kids in the schoolyard getting the place ready for fall class, this town would feel eerily ghostly; devoid of human voice… a silent soundstage for a re-run of T.V.’s Twilight Zone.

 

At one time, Crawfordsville had it all;  places to work, cafes’ for chatter, the local grocer and barber, a place to gas up the car to get you on down the road.  Crawfordsville and a thousand other dying Iowa towns once were self-sufficient centers of human life.  You could work, worship, recreate, and purchase everything that you really need every day of your life without going anywhere else.   At that point in time, road travel was one of life’s pleasures, not an absolute necessity for survival.

 

Who killed Crawforsdville?  The same voracious villains that killed the American Cable Car Company; The Fast Car Culture built a billion dollar bypass around Crawfordsville.

 

Up through the 1930’s no one really needed a car in any major city in America. The efficient and punctual electric cable cars of locally owned and operated transit systems would happily carry you to work, to a movie downtown or to the local merchants that would meet your every need.  Life worked, -and with a much lower stress level.

 

Standard oil, Firestone Tire and a few Wall Street scions incorporated The American Cable Car Company. Their only business activity was to quickly shut the whole system down -and put sustainable American cities on the scrap heap of U.S. History along with thousands of fully functional cable cars that were simply trashed.

 

Cash for Clunkers is simply one more futile patch of on the fraying cloth of our auto-centric, totally unsustainable oil guzzling economy.  In the USA we do not design public infrastructure for people, we design it all for cars.  This all costs hundreds of billions, but who cares?… -as long as the currency press at the FED runs 24/7.

 

After a devastating 5,000 year flood, Cedar Rapids has begged for over a year to finally get a few million when it actually needs 5 billion just to come back to point zero and make a new start. The Feds yawn and move like turtles smoking pot as they take months to shuffle a few dollars to Iowa.  But just let Wall Street, The Oil Boys and now this Cash for Clunkers Auto Deal let out even a whimper of pain, and miraculously, a few more Billion are delivered within days. 

 

One of the great small cities in Mid America is mercilessly left to wither and die, -but all stops are pulled out for one more billion dollar life support injection to feed the endless addiction of the oil guzzling car culture.  Don’t kid yourself that Billions for Clunkers will make one whit of difference in the actual scheme of life.  Addicts only grab for the feel good moment, all reality and responsibility is simply ignored.

 

What we are killing in Crawfordsville and Cedar Rapids are actually what America needs to survive on the long haul.  We need sustainable cities and self-sufficient towns where Iowans walk or bike to work, to recreate and shop locally to provide all necessities of life -while your old Clunker or shiny new Prius both sit in the drive.

 

What killed Crawfordsville will eventually kill America.  If we do not change our mindless, consumptive, climate changing ways, it will eventually kill us.

 

The lack of intelligence displayed in Washington is a frightening sight to behold.  Our blue and brown suited Senators debate cap and trade for years as we throw billions at the oil guzzling monster in our midst.  We place a single finger in one end of the dike, while a raging flood spills around the broken down dam.  

 

Detroit and Wall Street say jump, and our blindly obedient political mercenaries simply say “How high, Master?”

 

In our officially sanctioned national culture Cars and Oil are sacred, but life is damn cheap.  Our nation lays down trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of human lives to keep the black slime flowing, but we don’t spend a thin dime on sustainable life support systems that could actually make life possible, probable and actually delightful for our grandchildren.

 

The most important renewable energy is the energy that we do not use.  Rebuilding Iowa towns based on intelligent energy conservation needs to be our highest priority.  Washington just does not get it, so we need to take up our Iowa work ethic in spades and do for ourselves. 

 

We need to resuscitate Crawfordsville, our thousand other dying small towns and our Iowa Cities with efficient new sustainable operating systems. I propose that Iowa engage in the most productive economic development initiative in the history of our state;

Transition Towns/Sustainable Cities.  We can direct our own state funds to build the efficient community infrastructure needed so that we walk or bike to our lives.  We can build self-sufficient towns and sustainable cities as the foundation of Iowa’s economy.

 

In this kind of town, we work, recreate, worship, and shop within our own immediate neighborhoods.  This transformational energy revolution is called conservation.  Key elements that are required are political will, the strong Iowa work ethic and local entrepreneurship to put this all in place.   The first thing we need is the vision and the motivation to get started immediately.   Time is burning up faster than a gasoline fire.

 

As a few final futile patches like this last round of Billions for Bozos inevitably fray and fall off, Iowa can be far down the road to building a sustainable society.

 

 

Author's Website: www.soyawax.com

Author's Bio: Michael Richards is a life long innovator, entrepreneur and author. His most recent book is; SUSTAINABLE OPERATING SYSTEMS/The Post Petrol Paradigm (available on line at; www.amazon.com Mr. Richards has presented as an author, speaker and conference leader at universities and conferences in USA,Asia and Europe this year. Contact at 319-213-2051 USA. Michael Richards is the inventor of soybean oil wax replacements for petroleum wax. He serves as President of Soyawax International, a US firm that ships product to 25 nations. Michael Richards is the founder of a not for profit research and educational organization; SUSTAINABLE ECOLOGICAL ECONONIC DEVELOPMENT (S.E.E.D.) SEED orgainizes conferences for city, state and governmental organizations to work on conversion to sustainable economic alternatives.

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