An Open Letter to The Appalachian Communities of the Clearfork

co-a-lition - a temporary union for a common purpose

Ladies and Gentlemen of a potential coalition,

Like you, I have read for over a dozen or more years many seminar summaries, newspaper and journal articles, and entire books on the many great difficulties that exist within Appalachia. By now, we should expect to see similar writings about solutions and successes. Some of these problem presentations have been cast to justify government and agency expenditures on programs and projects. Whatever the reasons, the problems are real and they persist. Past talk and great investments do not seem to have worked. History has not been a good teacher, so I do not want to dwell on the past. There are real problems and some old ones are getting worse. Then, there are some are new ones.

Not topping but running parallel with texts and talk about Appalachia is the running commentary about the problems of rural areas … their communities, services, schools, youth, out-migrations, and local environmental and conservation issues. I do not want to repeat or re-emphasize these two tracks. I think they are real … but they are not going nowhere; they are tracks in a parking lot. Under them are three global problems that are like a sewer line leak that is forming a cavern for a sinkhole underneath the track.

The first is the world threat of detonation of a nuclear weapon. After 9/11 and uncounted suicide bombings, it is clear that life on Earth has no meaning for many people and that fragments of a social conscious can be lost. These same conditions existed in people in the past but the union with destructive power changes everything. Detonation of a bomb can change the ecology of Earth and the health and well being of major parts of society forever. This is an unthinkable problem … and thus few will think about it. Some must do so, and while no sure solution will be found, we must attempt to do so by effectively reducing the depraved conditions from which suicide bombers emerge. The potential blast is not the problem. The resulting radioactive contamination of the environment for all people for 30,000 years is the problem … and insane or irrational people do not care.

I remain convinced of the growing needs for protecting people from radioactive substances from oceanic disposals, transportation mishaps, leakages from power plants (including entire power plant failures), faulty waste disposals, and careless medical and industrial handling and disposals. This stuff can be very dangerous to us and to our children.

I have personal experience in my Ph.D. studies of the movements of radioactive-labeled substance in a forest ecosystem. It is not a condition for a high quality of life.

The next threat is profound fossil fuel shortages. I'll not argue about whether we'll "run out" of oil or coal (a debate for geologists and economists). I do know we will have shortages resulting from an easily-imagined set of influences ranging from prices to production, from tankers to taxes, from conservation policy to rationing policy. The financially well-off will buy energy supply favoritisms and the less well-off will suffer. Few people realize yet that everything is connected …by energy… and it is always being lost…and there is only one fundamental collection and storage source… and we are treating that land energy collective platform, the green-plants system, with disturbing lack of care. New acquaintance with Iraq and Lebanon conditions via TV suggest likely future conditions unless global warming is halted. There is no hope for a sane current energy policy given the power and interests of owners of oil, and thus an alternative localized strategy is needed for the future of rural people, of people throughout Appalachia. The shortages and resulting conflicts, inequities, and unjust practices may eventually cause evident social collapse.

I experienced the gasoline shortages of the 70's and gasoline prices and lines in Nigeria when there with a graduate student in the early 90's. I know of the limitations of coal and natural gas, the impacts of extracting it, and I have done energy modeling of wildlife and human ecosystems.

The next threat is that of clean ground water. Quantities and qualities of this important substance have been assumed (without definition) "great." Neither quantity nor quality is well known. Excessive withdrawal is known. Saltwater creeps inward from the coast as fresh water is withdrawn. Recharge or replacement of deep water-bodies is slow and uncertain. Recharge must come from the surface and the surface is being contaminated with a host of things unsuitable for people or animals. Much runs off the surface, no longer percolating into the groundwater reservoirs. The few people in the rural areas need water and they take it from wells if mining does not disrupt them or if it is not inadequate or polluted. The cities cannot collect their own water. Their per-capita needs of people there now seem great. Their water must come from rural areas. It must be clean, managed, not left un-tended … not polluted by road salts, mindless disposal of toxic substances, waste dumps, delinquent factories, sewage, or household products … or air-borne radioisotopes.

Cities cannot grow their own food and so rural communities have been taken over by cities, at least since Rome took over Etruria in 44bc. It goes on today, that is, on bought land called "suburbia" Cities want surrounding productive land for food and fiber…and, generally unknown, for ground water reservoir recharge. They do not want the floodwaters from these lands. People in cities can engineer and manage water once it is within the city scope, but the vast assaults of storm flows are beyond the engineering capabilities and budgets of most communities. Realizing the differences in managing urban waters and rural waters, or just the general need for lasting, careful, thoughtful care of water is now imperative. There is no more clean water left; the dirty cannot be replaced by clean; the limits have been reached; the demands have been exceeded. No more than the cream can be removed from the coffee, can many pollutants be removed from water. We need abundant water, evidently, but it must be clean. Managing rural waters for the good of us all is a more important need than ever before. "We all drink from the same trough."

I have seen modern villages in the Sahara lost to water shortages; experienced the difficulties for unstable well water supplies and quality at a rural cabin; built wildlife and fishery ponds; seen land contouring in China; modeled watersheds and monitored pesticides as potential pollutants in a forest stream.

So what? These are the three major problems that we all face. There are many ways to list problems and to assign importance to them. There are none, after many analyses, more important to the people of the Coalition than

• Radioactive pollution
• Fossil energy shortage
• Groundwater quantity and quality

Too long on diagnosis? Perhaps. Clarifying the purpose of diverse coalition needs to be an ongoing discussion. Given limited time and resources, we had better be aiming at the right target (or disease, to follow the medical metaphor) if we are serious about having major effects. We intuitively know we do not have "the solution," for there is probably none for such complexity. The libraries are full of the diagnoses. I do not think a more brief diagnosis is possible. Too long on diagnosis? Surely too short on prescription?

Most of us do not know the answer to such problems. They come only after long study. Most of us are fearful of presenting solutions for they may be for the wrong problem(mentioned above)or inadequate, or embarrassingly wrong. The social risks ahead are very great; they far exceed personal risks. I have a solution. The prescription is to develop a solution system. I call it Rural System. We must design it and then implement it, and then manage it, and then continue to forecast the future and adjust that system so that we are prepared for that predicted future. We have to start now.

Design

How will we know when we have a good design? When it meets the following criteria:
1. Addresses the three key problems (listed above).
2. Attends to local problems: employment, community stability and natural resource management.
3. Has proper size. It would silly for a small local organization to attack a multinational organization or problem. We can be very busy, expend great funds and efforts, and know before hand that there will be delays, obstructions, and probable failure. (We know that there have been exceptions.)
4. Emphasizes only rural and suburban (urban residential) (a clear decision, but only slightly limiting)
5. Sees problems as the difference in conditions between where we are now (or are soon likely to be) and where we want to be. "Where we want to be" is a statement of a set of objectives.
6. Addresses root causes and includes strategic efforts.
7. Is diverse.
8. Uses general systems theory.
9. Provides continuing significant, meaningful incentives.
10. Has measurable performance criteria, measures them, and responds to correct or adjust them.
11. Grounded in current energetic, ecologic, esthetic, and economic knowledge 12. Legal, and includes violation-related efforts that are preventative, apprehensive, and restorative.
13. Uses advances in technology including information technology, optimization, and artificial intelligence.
14. Inquiring (using past research results; sustaining applicable studies; correcting information; adding to data when appropriate).
15. Is financially self-supporting and able to sustain high quality performance. 16. Appropriate for the ecological, topographic and social conditions of the region. 17. Undergoing continual improvements, both in efficiencies and effectiveness. 18. Making timely action.
19. Self-learning, where learning is symbolized as "changed behavior."
20. Uses a 150-year planning horizon, it sliding forward one year each year.
21. Used planned synergism.
22. Uses equifinality, i.e., knowledge that there are several likely pathways to the same end state.
23. Uses the concept of "isomorphism," noting and using the similarity or sameness of systems and their potential solutions.
24. Accepts the high variability in nature, the high risks likely, and the low probability of precise estimates being made by local managers, planners, and decision makers.

This seems like an excessively long list of criteria. It may become the checklist for our successes or the one for why others have failed.

Rural System tends to fulfill those criteria.

The Radioisotope Problem

It cannot solve problem 1. It addresses it by developing a system for improving land use and food production and human needs (services, products, opportunities, views, information and ideas, memberships, and memories). It does not address how to reduce local human populations, but studies suggest lower populations are related well to higher economic conditions and potentials. It does not address reduced per-capita consumption. It struggles to improve life conditions so that erratic behaviors do not emerge from highly stressed populations of people in great need for basic life necessities. The Rural System "franchise" replicates the original design, revising and making it specific for the ecology and economics of each new region of Earth. Vast expenditures are needed to protect people from a few people causing radioisotopes of all types to enter the air, water, and food chains. Caution by all is needed but preventing the action of a few, whatever the motivation, is essential.

The Fossil Fuel Shortage Problem

No effective national "energy plan" will be agreed upon in current democratic procedures. Corporations will seek new sources and cartels will manipulate supply and demand. Rationing in every-increasing stringency will occur; there will be profound losses and costs as whole corporations, communities, and the Interstate system itself degrades. Costs of fossil energy will increase, making it unavailable to all who are already "at the financial margin" whether by birth, choice, or random events. Rural System treats the land and water "platform" as an energy-collecting surface. It may collect and use local water, tide, or wind energy, all solar driven energy sources, but these are limited sources and losses great in each transformation or transmission. It develops energy efficient living spaces and works to move ideas, not only products; to gain efficiencies; to embody energy; to work on conservation strategies; to reduce losses in secondary essential energy-fixing substances such as phosphorus. Optimization within it includes, along with bounded profits - an energetic system performance index. It builds lasting structures and tools that allow people to do work.

Local work will be instructive for developing systems for hundreds of refugee camps now needed around the world.

The Groundwater Problem

In the process of addressing the three major problem areas, Rural System develops employment opportunities, uses millions of dollars invested in research results, increases land productivity and annual profits for private land owners, and begins informed preparation for the coming very different conditions of fossil energy shortages.

The coalition and others may find real, lasting purpose in hastening implementing, using, maintaining, and adjusting Rural System for the future to improve their long-term quality of life.

Robert H. Giles,Jr., Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus, Virginia tech
Blacksburg, Virginia October, 2006

Perhaps you will share ideas with me about some of the topic(s) above at RHGiles@RuralSystem.com.

Maybe we can work together ... for the good of us all ... for a long time. Return to the top of page.