Memphis Tomorrow?
Memphis Tomorrow: A vision of the future from a Peak Oil perspective
October 2011-The interim mayor, who replaced Mayor Herenton after his death in 2010, is leaving office. He decided not to run for election. While the city has started to see an increase in population (from immigration and whites moving back into the city), there are large national and international issues beginning to buffet the city. Immigration is rising to a crisis level. In 2007, during the last opportunity to head off the crisis, it was not commonly known that Mexican oil reserves and production began to collapse. The super oil field Cantarell, which produces 1 out 50 barrels of world oil production, saw drops in output of 15 to 20% per year beginning in 2006. What also was not commonly known was that the Mexican government got half its funding from oil revenues. By 2009, Mexico became a net importer of oil. Social spending by the Mexican government collapsed by late 2009 and the country went into an economic depression. While there had been a large flow of Mexicans for the previous few years, it became a tidal wave in 2009. Memphis, like much of the southern half of the country has seen a tremendous growth in its Hispanic population.
The overwhelming majority of Mexican immigrants are decent, hardworking people who are the victims of circumstances beyond their control. Never the less, there will be increased pressure on social services, competition for low skill jobs, and crime and Mexicans will be demonized. Racial tensions will rise along with a nativist political movement. The demographics of the city will be shifting radically. Along with this social unrest, 1970’s era stagflation will be the larger economic condition gripping the nation.
Due to rising oil prices and the increasing population of the city, the mayor had been trying to revamp the public transportation system, but this is happening in every major city. So there is an initiative to get companies to have their employees work from home. At first this was enthusiastically received by local workers and marijuana dealers, but companies soon realized these jobs could be outsourced to anywhere in the world causing continued downward pressure on wages and employment.
October 2019- The mayor of Memphis will not be running for re-election again. No mayor has won re-election in Memphis since Herenton. The demographic changes of the city have been remarkable. Ten years ago, it was normal for Memphis to have a predominantly poor, African American core with smaller areas of middle or upper class white residents. The suburbs of Memphis were predominantly white and middle or upper class. This was a common American city model. Due to the rising cost of oil, Memphis shifted to a more European urban model. People with enough financial resources moved back into the city to be closer to work and other resources. The concept of commuting by car for everyday errands will be seen as reserved for only the very wealthy. Memphis was fortunate to have lots of open space within the belt way of the city to build small, efficient houses and compact neighborhoods. This has caused real estate and rental rates to soar, forcing the poor to the recently abandoned suburbs.
Over the next few years these areas of formally urban sprawl will be dilapidated. Many buildings will be looted for their wiring or anything else valuable that can be sold for scrap. Much like what happened in Baghdad in 2003. Increasingly, two or three families will be sharing those 3100 square feet houses built in the mid 2000’s. Within a few years, the lucky areas of the old suburbs that can organize and pool resources will be creating collective farms to raise food. This was one of the few benefits of suburban governments demanding larger plot sizes a generation ago. Germantown will fare the best of the suburban communities. When the light rail line was built along Poplar Avenue to support east Memphis in 2011, Germantown was able to lobby for an extension. Germantown also benefited from a relatively high population density.
Economically, Memphis will be doing about as well as other cities. It took a major hit when FedEX’s business model collapsed. Unemployment is high, but the city is still a transportation hub. Shipping by water and rail has become the dominant means of freight again. Also Memphis has access to freshwater with the Wolf, Loosahatchie, and Mississippi rivers, as well as the underground artesian wells. In 2008, MLGW won the lawsuit brought by the State of Mississippi. Even with our abundant water, strict regulations on water usage are common.
Looking back at the years 2005 to 2010, city leaders realize the missed opportunity to position Memphis in a much better long term economic position. Rather than invest the now seemingly abundant economic resources of the city in attracting renewable energy industries such as polysilicon refineries, solar panel and windmill factories etc, the city was still under the policy control of real estate developers and service industries. A prime example was the city wasting $29 million on a Beale Street riverboat landing and park. That landing was demolished to build a dock for freight barges. The entire American energy infrastructure required an overhaul in less than a generation and that required a manufacturing base. Some cities had the foresight to attract industrial investment such as Portland, Oregon and are now doing better than most cities. Memphis is behind the pack and with the intense scramble for resources everywhere unlikely to make up ground.
October 2031- It has been three years since the earthquake. 80% of the population of Memphis died. Three days after the earthquake in Memphis, St. Louis was wiped off the face of the earth as well from a quake. The central Mississippi River valley from northern end of the State of Mississippi to the Iowa border is decimated. The United States was split in half. The human and economic destruction is massive. This leads to the political partitioning of the United States into two separate countries. Resource demands are so tight that no rebuilding of Memphis is attempted. Eventually, people will migrate back into the central Mississippi Valley area in the search for water and farmland, but that will be over the course of a couple of decades.
October 2100- The world’s population peaked at 7.5 billion in the first part of the 21st century. Today, there is only 20% of that population. Resource wars and ecological disasters spurred the population collapse, but it was drops in food production resulting from Peak Oil that ultimately precipitated this die off. In 2007, it took 10 calories of oil based energy (pesticide, fertilizer, machinery operation) to produce 1 calorie of food and that’s not including the energy needed to transport the food. As oil production continued to decline and prices rose, the world simply could not feed itself.
The purpose of this post wasn’t to point out Memphis is cursed by God. It was to raise awareness of Peak Oil and possible effects it could have on Memphis. Some argue PO will not happen for 20+ years, technology will save us and some how we will keep our cars on the road. Others think we hit PO in late 2005 and it is basically too late. No matter when PO happens, and it will happen, we will have to fundamentally change energy production and usage in a very narrow window of opportunity. This will change life as we know it. Complicating this will be limited economic resources, environmental shifts from climate change, and a human population exceeding the Earth’s resource renewal capacity. Many people have not heard of PO before, but 2008/9 will be for PO what 2006/7 was to Global Warming.
posted by polar donkey at 10:41 AM
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