Climate change and rural adaptation "Down Under"

By Geoff Cockfield, Associate Professor at University of Southern Queensland (Australia)

Earlier this month, some Australian news media ran articles about a future in which average temperatures would increase by six degrees. Previously discussed scenarios were generally limited to ‘plus two’ to ‘plus four’ futures. But with the failure of efforts to curtail greenhouse gas emissions, evident in the very modest progress on mitigation from the latest UN climate talks in Doha, and rapid industrialisation in China and India, more dramatic change is being considered.

In Australia the ‘Millennium’ drought of 2002-2009 provided a picture of what such a future might be like, at least for us. Since 1970, rainfall trends have generally conformed to climate change models that suggest less rainfall in the southern and western areas, with some increases in the tropical and sub-tropical areas. If current trends continue, they will contribute to the reshaping of rural areas.

Climate Change Hotspots in Australia
Source: WWF, click on the image to enlarge.

Rural trends in Australia

The demographic trend is to fewer people on farms, in small agriculture-dependent towns and in remote areas, other than where there are mining projects. Higher temperatures, less water for irrigation and large high-tech farms will leave an even more sparsely settled inland. Already, 80 percent of people live within 100 kilometers of the coastline, with 64 percent of those in five major metropolitan areas. Climate change will add to the reasons for people to move.

The ‘long dry’ as well as the wages paid in the burgeoning mining sector accelerated the long-term trends of farm aggregation and the replacement of labor with large-scale machinery, especially in Western Australia where the dry years continued through 2011 and 2012. Farmers are reducing livestock numbers, especially sheep, with some farmers especially affected by having to shoot starving animals during the worst of the drought. The economic effects of the decrease in livestock numbers flow through regional meat processing businesses and contractors such as shearers, accelerating the overall decline of small rural towns.

The hot conditions, which disproportionately affect the elderly, will tend to leave some inland areas as places to work for periods of time, rather than places to live in the long term. Other disadvantages could include greater exposure to mosquito-borne diseases such as Dengue and Ross River fevers, as the tropics ‘expand’ south and the increasing costs of energy and transport as a result of the new national carbon tax (http://www.carbonneutral.com.au/organisations/the-carbon-tax.html).


Threatened water supplies

This coastal and urban migration will place even greater pressure on urban water supplies. During the Millennium drought, the five mainland state governments all developed desalination plants for each of their major cities. These have however, proved costly to build and run. From 2007, the Federal Government promoted the use of recycled water. However, there remains a real resistance to full-contact uses of this water, illustrated by the resounding defeat of a recycling proposal in my home city of Toowoomba in a referendum. The problems of desalination and recycling led some state governments to seek more water from river systems, including those providing most of the water for irrigated crop industries.

Irrigation in the Murray Darling Basin is a source of
contention among conservationists and farmers.
Source: The Guardian

The Millennium drought highlighted long-term conflicts over water, especially around Australia’s most agriculturally important river system, the Murray-Darling Basin. The rice industry, an important exporter in the central Basin areas, was in virtual shutdown for two years because of the shortage of irrigation water. The dry conditions also increased political negotiations to manage water allocations in the Murray-Darling Basin, which crosses four states. The negotiations resulted in a process whereby the Federal Government will ‘buy’ back water licenses, which will reduce irrigated crop production in some areas and further reduce the size of some regional economies.

There are some, including in the Opposition political parties, who argue that there is still scope for an expansion of irrigated agriculture in the northern areas, effectively reconstructing Australian agricultural geography.  However, scientific and economic reviews are cautious given the erratic rainfall, uncertain environmental impacts of development, and the remoteness of suitable sites.

Rural adaptations in Australia

The early signs of climate change are driving various adaptations. There is research on animal and human housing insulation, alternative energy strategies for rural and remote areas, and alternative crops and crop production. Mitigation policies, such as carbon tax provide opportunities for carbon farming, including land management for conservation purposes that will yield income. This may be especially important for Aboriginal communities managing traditional lands. In addition, rural areas will provide the sites for other forms of energy generation, including solar and wind, although there are some local objections to wind farms.

Source: AhramOnline

The prospects for rural leadership on adaptation are somewhat hindered by a reluctance to acknowledge that there is any such problem as climate change. In survey after survey, including in the US, there appears to be higher levels of ‘skepticism’, actually outright disbelief in some cases, of climate change in rural areas and especially amongst farmers. Perhaps this goes with the tendency to political and social conservatism, an anti-green tendency, or the fear of the existential threat of climate change.

Yet rural people are good at adaptation, being so exposed to natural events and volatile markets and perhaps the incremental nature of climate change will encourage innovation and adaptation that is couched in terms of addressing the existing issues that afflict rural areas.

• Do you see the same issues and dilemmas in the US, or at least in some regions?
• How do you think the US political system is coping with water conflicts?

Geoff Cockfield is Associate Professor in politics and economics at the University of Southern Queensland. His research areas include rural policy, climate change adaptation and natural resources management. Before working in a university, he worked in agriculture and in rural journalism.

One year at the Rural Futures Lab blog

By Jennifer Jensen, RUPRI Research Analyst, Rural Futures Lab

I have been managing this blog for just over one year (happy birthday, RFL blog!), and I wanted to take a break from our usual programming to take a look back at... our usual programming.

We have been proud to publish posts on a wide variety of topics of interest to rural American communities. The blog has featured researchers, students, policy experts, and community development practitioners of all stripes.

In the past 13 months, the blog has attracted readers from every state in the union except one (anyone have advice on how to break into the elusive Rhode Island market?), and from all over the world. Especially Canada.

Rural Futures Lab Director, Brian Dabson, laid out our vision for rural America in our very first post. We believe that rural America will continue to be an important contributor to national prosperity, but there is lots of work ahead to fully engage and develop our rural assets.

And what are our "rural assets"?

Photo courtesy of Jeff Yost and the Nebraska Community Foundation.

Many of our blog contributors have made the point that rural Americans themselves are a major asset. In particular, rural youth and young adults are the hope for our collective future. Our bloggers tackled this topic from many angles.

• Craig Schroeder of the RUPRI Center for Rural Entrepreneurship notes that supporting youth entrepreneurship is actually a successful economic development practice.
• Mary Snow and Noah Wilson (Rural Support Partners) and Darryl Birkenfeld (Ogallala Commons) offer personal accounts of how communities can invest in the next generation of rural leaders, right now.
• Katie McCaskey, a young entrepreneur shares her Micropolitan Manifesto.
• And Tim Collins (Illinois Institute for Rural Affairs) envisions rural schools as a vital tool for community development.

Photo courtesy of David Kay.

Another asset in rural America is our vast and diverse base of natural resources. A key question that the Rural Futures Lab is asking is how we can better manage the use and stewardship of our natural resources to benefit rural Americans, the national economy which relies on those resources, and the environment itself.

This question has led to an interesting mix of blog posts that feature the intersection between natural resources and economic development, energy, and governance issues:

• Research on economic issues ranges from how to quantify the "New Natural Resource Economy" to how the "green economy" is faring.
• In two posts, my colleague at Cornell, David Kay, explores how energy development questions get to the heart of democracy in the U.S.
• Shanna Ratner (Yellow Wood Associates) argues for new stewardship approaches across the rural-urban divide.
• A student blogger relives his research trip to West Texas and wonders how the growth of the wind industry affects community development there.

Agriculture is as important to rural America as any other industry. These days, food system research, policy, and practices are innovative and vibrant, as our bloggers have shown:

• Rich Pirog (C.S. Mott Group for Sustainable Food Systems) documents the emergence of the local food movement.
• Young farmers find a chance and a voice through the work of Jan Joannides and Renewing the Countryside.

Resources and ideas

An important feature of the blog is acting as a place to share workable ideas for communities. Our own RUPRI colleagues are a wealth of resources on the future of healthcare, defining "rural", rural-urban interdependence, resilience, and why rural America matters to the national economy.

Some of our most encouraging (and popular!) blog posts came from the rural philanthropy crowd. They have good news to offer:

• Jeff Yost (Nebrask Community Foundation) explains how "rural places have an unprecedented opportunity to transform their communities by harnessing the massive transfer of intergenerational wealth".
• Racheal Stuart (Neil and Louise Tillotson Fund) describes how social connections are making philanthropy work better in rural New Hampshire.

Are you looking for connections with movers-and-shakers in rural policy at the national level? Two of our guest bloggers offer an "inside the beltway" perspective:

• The National Association of Counties (NACO) has a Rural Action Caucus that is one voice for rural counties in Washington DC.
• Sandra Rosenblith (Stand Up for Rural America) discusses a challenge for rural communities: senior housing.

Other rural-specific resources featured on the blog include:

• The Entrepreneurship Fund offers professional support for small businesses in rural America.
• Have you heard of the Internet? Tim Collins has, and he's trying to make it work for rural community building.
• Rural places are unique, and Dewey Thorbeck sees the need for a new design discipline for rural America to call its own.

Overall, it's been a great year, and we look forward to the next one. Thank you to all our guest bloggers, and to you, our readers!

If you have an idea for a blog post, please let me know (jensen@rupri.org). In the meantime, keep on reading. And please consider commenting on how your own work or community relates to work and ideas you see featured here.



About the Author

Jen Jensen grew up in suburban Washington State but fell in love with farm life as a kid during yearly summer visits to the Champlain Islands in Vermont. Later, two years in a village as a Peace Corps volunteer in Mali, West Africa, forged the link for her between community development and rural issues. Working at RUPRI as a graduate student and now a research analyst has taught her even more reasons to admire and support the diversity, beauty, and resilience of rural people and places.


Visit the Rural Futures Lab website to download informative papers on many of the issues you read about here.

Growing a green economy: How are we doing so far?

By Gary Green and Yifei Li, University of Wisconsin-Madison

As a community development specialist at the University of Wisconsin, I work with many rural communities that continue to be interested in strategies for promoting a green economy. The promise of an economy that creates good jobs, promotes social justice, and improves environmental quality is an alluring one.

Wind turbine factory in Newton, Iowa.

Proponents assume there are strategies for overcoming many of the contradictions and conflicts between economic, social and environmental goals (what some people refer to as the triple bottom line). Yet, the green economy is an enigma because there is little consensus on what these jobs are and how many currently exist.

Over the past several years, we have been looking at the size of the green economy and how communities can be more effective in creating green jobs.

What is a green job?

There is a general consensus in the literature that green jobs have three defining characteristics:

• They contribute to improving environmental quality. Such contribution can be accomplished in many ways. Some jobs deliver products that enhance the environment. Other jobs, such as smart grid operators, involve innovative production processes that reduce environmental harm during production. 
• They are decent jobs. Green jobs are decent not only in economic terms, but also with respect to working conditions, upward mobility, and other factors that impact an employee’s job satisfaction. 
• They require moderate training. Green jobs have relatively low barriers to entry; they are available to individuals with modest skills. The poor can therefore directly benefit from green job initiatives that bring them back into the labor force. Some green jobs require similar sets of skills as traditional blue-collar jobs.

These defining features do not correspond directly to actual job titles, making it difficult to assess the current state of green jobs. As a result, many academics and government agencies have tried to operationally define green jobs, and in so doing, to measure the number of available green jobs.


Barron County, Wisconsin, uses biomass to heat schools.

Examples of green industries include retrofitting, renewable energy, public transportation, and environmental resources management.

Current research

The State of Washington’s Employment Security Department has conducted annual surveys of green jobs since 2009. The Washington studies identify jobs that support four core green areas of activity – increasing energy efficiency, producing renewable energy, preventing and reducing environmental pollution, and providing mitigation or clean-up of environmental pollution. Data are collected from surveys in which employers are asked to self-identify green jobs in their establishments. The most recent wave of the Washington State study (2011) found that green jobs represent a small percentage (4%) of the labor force, and the total number of green jobs has declined.

Several other states, most notably Michigan and Tennessee, have replicated the Washington State study. These studies, however, have reached the opposite conclusion. They note that while green jobs currently constitute a very small portion of the total employment, the growth has been rapid in recent years.

At the national level, green jobs have been estimated with two different approaches.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Green Job Initiative has developed a comprehensive list of 333 green industries, using the North American Industry Classification System. Two types of jobs are considered by the BLS to be green – jobs in businesses that produce goods and provide services that benefit the environment or conserve natural resources, and jobs in which workers’ duties involve making their establishment’s production processes more environmentally friendly or use fewer natural resources.

The second approach is the Occupational Information Network (O*NET), which estimates green jobs from an occupational perspective. The analytical focus is thus placed on the “greening” of occupations, that is, the extent to which occupations have changed in the green economy: 

• "Green increased demand occupations" involve the same set of work routines, but the demand for such occupations increase in the green economy. A total of 64 such occupations were identified.
• "Green enhanced skills occupations" require a re-tooling of skills to better function in the green economy. Sixty occupations fall into this category. 
• "Green new and emerging occupations" are newly created occupations in the green economy. The report identified 45 such occupations, in addition to 46 candidate occupations that were previously absent in the O*NET system. 

What we know about green jobs now

It is difficult to accurately define and count green collar jobs, but most studies indicate that the green economy has yet to produce many jobs. The green sector grew at a slower rate than the rest of the economy during the Great Recession. Few of the green jobs are likely to be filled by unemployed or minority workers.

The green sector tends to be concentrated in manufacturing and export industries. These industries are vulnerable to international competition and deskilling like other manufacturing jobs. There is anecdotal evidence indicating green jobs are being outsourced and shifted to low-wage sites.

Green industries are also limited by existing subsidies to fossil fuels, especially to the oil industry. Investments and policies supporting the green economy are generally lagging in the U.S. compared to Europe and East Asia. China, for example, has six of the ten largest green companies in the world and accounts for about one-half of the world’s green jobs today.

Questions to consider for the future

A more fundamental issue is whether a green economy can be based on an economic model that assumes that growth is necessary. Is a green economy only changing the source of energy from fossil fuels to renewable energy or does it have larger implications?

A more sustainable approach to greening the economy needs to consider alternative models that are not as dependent on growth. The issue of green jobs and social justice is complicated by the fact that there also may be conflicts between workers and consumers over the benefits of a green economy. How can we promote a green economy that takes into consideration these conflicts?

About the authors

Gary Green is a professor in the Department of Community & Environmental Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Yifei Li is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Visit the Rural Futures Lab website here.

Photos provided by the author.

Energy Choices and the Long Conversation

By David Kay, Senior Extension Associate, Cornell University’s Community and Regional Development Institute (CaRDI)


I once was blind but now I see
American history was not my strong suit in high school. When I entered graduate school some years later, the already fading sign on my new office (an iconic slogan from the not too distant 1960s) prompted me to “Question Authority”. Since I didn’t quite understand at the time how important it was to understand authority in order to question it, I did not read this as an incitement to historical reflection.

Over the years as an Extension Associate at Cornell University, I developed a medley of insights and thoughts about rural and urban, home rule and regionalism, globalism and relocalization, community and identity. Only in the past few years have I begun to understand how these insights are deeply embedded in what some historians have called “the long conversation”.

This long conversation is about the distribution of collective authority in our democracy. About who gets to participate in and decide about which kinds of public decisions.

The conversation predated the founding of the country by more than a century (see for example, the Articles of Confederation of the United Colonies of New England, May 19, 1643). And it famously animated the debates in the Federalist Papers, that enduring treasure trove of wisdom sparked by the frictions between those who believed in dispersing versus concentrating power and authority.

The United Colonies of New England, 1643 (source).

The long conversation is, in fact, a never ending one. It has no universal, timeless conclusion. This realization has been driven home for me by my recent work on energy transitions.

Some controversies raised by our fossil fuel dependency are in no small measure debates about federalism, or the way authority is divided between central and distributed political units.

What is at stake? According to one author:

The choice of regulatory forum often seems to determine the outcome of the controversy. That may explain why Americans have traditionally shed so much metaphorical and genuine blood deciding what are essentially jurisdictional disputes between governmental institutions.

Consider three contemporary energy examples of the tensions raised.

1. High Volume Hydraulic Fracturing (HVHF) for Natural Gas Extraction
Hydraulic fracturing is a technology used to extract oil and gas from “unconventional” reserves of shale and other rocks. State authority dominates regulation of natural gas drilling, but is currently being contested by both federal and local government interests. Federal authority does apply to some aspects of HVHF and many other energy issues. However, the federal Energy Act of 2005 exempted key elements of oil and gas operations from national in favor of state regulation. This outcome is now being challenged.

The authority of states to regulate hydraulic fracturing is also being contested by local governments. In several Northeastern shale gas-rich states, state law appears to “supersede all local laws or ordinances relating to the regulation of the oil, gas and solution mining industries” (NYS Environmental Conservation Law §23-0303(2)).

Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio's state laws feature similar language on the issue. For example, Section 602 of the Pennsylvania Oil and Gas Act provides that municipal ordinances may not ‘“impose conditions, requirements or limitations on the same features of oil and gas operations regulated’ by the Act” (Keneally and Mathes, 2010). 

However, in New York State alone, at least two dozen communities have adopted seemingly contrary bans or moratoria. Within each state, the stage of litigation, appeal, and legal clarity on this issue differs.

2. Electricity Transmission
Power plant siting and electricity transmission rules have evolved with less media attention than hydraulic fracturing issues. But even as the Energy Act of 2005 exempted HVHF from federal review, it stipulated that a federal agency (FERC) would hold siting authority for certain electric transmission lines.

The Act was intended to reduce state and local obstacles, including procedural friction and political resistance, to transmission investment. Indeed, major upgrades in transmission infrastructure are projected as necessary to deliver new sources of electricity; most will be generated in rural areas remote from the point of use.

Supporters of grid modernization have advocated strengthening FERC’s authority further. Others remain concerned that good decisions require state and local oversight.

3. Power Plant Siting
Similar issues surround the distribution of authority over the siting of electricity generating facilities. For example, New York State recently passed legislation that shifts permitting jurisdiction for smaller commercial facilities (25-80 megawatts) to the state (i.e., away from local government).

A wind farm nearArmenia Mountain, PA.

Though not differentiated as to fuel source, the implications for wind energy have been given particular attention. Advocates and opponents alike see the legislation as an effort to facilitate the siting of new wind farms, in part by reducing the influence of localized opposition that holds greater sway under local government “home rule.”

Energy Federalism
These examples of contested regulation show some of the pressures being exerted on the status quo of federalism. What criteria, other than short-term political advantage on a particular issue, are or should be used to evaluate whether authority should be assigned to local, state, or federal government, or some combination?

In the Stanford Environmental Law Journal, Benjamin K. Sovocool (2008) offers a list of organizing principles derived from theories of “environmental federalism”. These include such competing goals as: 

• ensuring all affected by the decision are fairly represented, 
• promoting consistency of rules across political boundaries, 
• avoiding unfair imbalances in political power,
• enhancing accountability, and 
• promoting flexibility and innovation.

Versions of these and other arguments are not hard to find in the Federalist Papers.
 
Americans are “spilling blood” in a jurisdictional war over whether local, state, or federal government should control the fate of hydraulic fracturing. Blood pressures have also risen over who should permit moderately sized electric generating facilities and control the siting of natural gas and electricity transmission corridors. 
 
Not infrequently, advocates who argue for or against federal or state or “home rule” in one context reflexively take the opposite position in another. This may make strategic sense in the heat of battle over specific policy decisions about particular energy technologies or fuels or sites. However, a danger exists for partisans and policy makers who fail to lift their line of sight above the battlefield. 
 
Unless principled arguments about the benefits and costs of rebalancing federalism are considered, the distribution of power and passion that lead to precedent and victory in one arena may well simply set the stage for defeat in another. 
 

David Kay, a Senior Extension Associate with Community & Regional Development Institute (CaRDI), was trained as an economist, works in the Department of Development Sociology, Cornell University, and focuses on land use planning and community/economic development issues. He grew up in California’s burgeoning Silicon Valley but settled in Ithaca, New York, after graduate school, not least because of his growing appreciation of the small city’s uniquely combined scale of community and pace of life.

Visit the Rural Futures Lab website here.

Alternative Energy in the Land of Oil: Who Benefits?

By Adam Blair, Research Assistant, Cornell University’s Community and Regional Development Institute (CaRDI)

As my car crawled west along Interstate 20 in West Texas, the arid October landscape seemed to stretch outward in a quiet perpetuity, punctuated only by the occasional intersection. It was my first time in the Lone Star State, and the magnitude of the Texas plain weighed down on the vehicle in a way that made me feel like a speck on a map. The vacant horizon left nothing but my odometer as a point of reference.

As I approached Abilene that first afternoon, I encountered towering masses of steel sprouting from the ground, their unnatural appearance invoking a sense of disbelief.

This rural landscape that has supported cotton and cattle since the early 19th Century and petroleum since the 20th continues its legacy as a natural resource-dependent economy with the rapid development of commercial wind energy. Now home to thousands of wind turbines generating enough electricity to power over 2.7 million homes, Texas leads the nation in the expansion of this energy source.

But while the industry is creating jobs, boosting local tax revenues, and providing supplemental income to struggling farmers, I found that this burgeoning enterprise has been largely immune from broader questions concerning long-term community and economic impacts. As a student of city and regional planning, I wondered how, and to what extent, local communities were capturing the wealth generated by the wind energy industry. It was also unclear to me how the benefits derived from wind development—monetary or otherwise—were redistributed amongst local populations.

To begin to answer these and other questions for a Rural Futures Lab case study, I first took the time to understand the important rural-urban linkages that support the energy sector of the U.S. Embodied by the string of electrical transmission lines stretching from the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex to the communities west of the Brazos River—the very route I had just driven—the concept is one familiar to many rural policymakers.

Linkages between rural industries and urban consumers have existed for centuries in the United States, encouraged and even directed to a large degree by the construction of the transcontinental railroads of the mid-19th century and the Interstate Highway System of the mid-20th. And as the nation continues its trend of urbanization, the reliance on rural America’s bounty will become even more prevalent. In a foundation paper authored for the Rural Futures Lab in June 2011, my colleagues and I explored this trend in more detail. We predict that an increasing remoteness of energy generation, driven in part by a transition to more land-intensive, renewable forms of energy, will have profound impacts on rural communities.

My interviews with West Texans confirmed many of the concerns we raised in our report, but also highlighted many of the opportunities discussed in Susan Lurie and Michael Hibbard’s recent blog post on the new natural resource economy (NNRE). For instance, while wind development has been embraced by many landowners, the following comment from a West Texas resident demonstrates just one of many difficulties in achieving the balance between natural resource production and protection described under NNRE: “…you’ll find a lot of places in Central Texas that have chosen not to take wind turbines. Some of them call it eye pollution. They get down there and like the rocky areas and like the clear skies and don’t want to see ’em.”

Equally insightful was my conversation with a small business owner in West Texas. He recognized the importance of using tax revenues generated by the wind energy industry to “improve the quality of life” and consequently mitigate some of the negative boom-bust effects discussed in our foundation paper. However, he noted the difficulty in convincing public officials to do anything but provide tax abatements to lure new, outside firms instead of supporting existing small business in the region.

Of course, only history will tell whether Texas’ newest experiment in rural economic development will result in a windfall or washout for local residents and communities. To ensure equitable benefits, it is imperative that new wealth is captured and reinvested in a way that will improve the quality of life for everyone, for this, one rancher reminds us, “is [the] best thing that can happen to a rural community.”

Are Rural Communities Ready for Energy Transitions?

By David Kay, Senior Extension Associate, Community & Regional Development Institute (CaRDI) in the Department of Development Sociology, Cornell University

I have become increasingly concerned about the changes facing rural communities as our country comes to terms with its dependence on cheap oil. My experiences in community and land use planning in my hometown and my research/extension roles at Cornell University have combined to focus my attention on how a volatile energy economy is likely to magnify instability, for both better and worse, in rural places.

Allow me to develop an imperfect but personally significant metaphor. For me this detour is most relevant because it underscores the roles of information and knowledge, collective planning, and action.

When I was a teenager I had the good fortune to spend two years at a splendidly isolated rural high school near a village in Wales called Llantwit Major. This part of Wales abuts the Bristol Channel, which can experience a thirty foot vertical difference between high and low water – the second largest change of tide in the world. Within a matter of hours, vast expanses of beach can be deeply submerged under fast moving currents.

Bristol Channel

Of course, most adults understand the tides and have learned how to work with them. Ships often harness the current to their advantage. Nevertheless, extraordinary factors ranging from storm surges to unusual tidal confluences and tsunamis can doom the unlucky. In 1607, thousands of unfortunates drowned in a singular tidal flood: villages vanished, farmland was engulfed, and livestock devastated.

So what’s the intended metaphor? I want to draw attention to the pace and scale of rural change in relation to coming energy transitions. Some of this change will be regular (even if large), like the daily tides. However, from the perspective of individual communities especially, some changes will involve extraordinary surges and retreats, like the floods. Communities that are paying attention and can come together to plan ahead will be able to better adapt to an amplified pace and scale of change. Unprepared communities will be at the mercy of the economic tides.

A paper we wrote recently for the RUPRI Rural Futures Lab explores the likely implications for rural America of a transition away from cheap oil. We suggest that rural places will experience unique pressures because:

·         Wind, biomass, most solar & other renewable resources are especially abundant in rural places.

·         Different kinds of energy resources (renewable and fossil fuels) are distributed widely but unevenly across the rural countryside.           

·         Renewable energy tends to require a great deal of land per unit of energy produced, and several sources require a good deal of water, too.

·         To reach urban markets, massive new infrastructure projects will likely cut through rural corridors to connect urban populations with the energy sourced in rural places.

·         The well-being of rural places depends greatly on the cost of moving goods, services, and people around.

In that paper, we argue that the pace and scale of the shift to a new energy economy will be of critical importance. Many factors constrain rapid change. These include political will, consumer habits, and the complex nature of energy and climate systems themselves. Yet rural residents who have seen factories and mines close, farms consolidate, or oil and gas fields expand know that technology, trade agreements, market forces, environmental concerns, and more can trigger rapid and large scale community change.

Figure 1: Historical changes in fuel dominance

Recent work evaluating the impact of drilling for natural gas in vast shale reservoirs calls attention to the ways pace and scale matter at the community level. Will the impacts of 400 wells projected for eventual development in a single county be the same if they happen over 10, 25, or 50 years? What if it is actually 4,000 wells rather than 400? What about a similar calculus for wind turbines: 140 in five years? 500 in 10?

We already know from history that pace and scale make a difference. Natural resource driven boom and bust economies have left a deep imprint on much of rural America. On the boom side, demand for labor and housing can rise quickly. Rents and wages can skyrocket. Jobs are created, some well paid. Farmers and other landowners can earn large rents. Fortunes are made. Given time, markets adjust, governments adjust, and residents have a reasonable chance of adjusting constructively to new conditions. A certain kind of American dream can be realized.

But there are also downsides to the boom. When changes are too fast and too large, systems break down.  Local workforces may be inadequate to meet demand. Newcomers can outnumber longtime residents, and local people and businesses can be displaced or gentrified. Schools may be overwhelmed, and crime and congestion can increase. Government can’t keep up with permit and inspection requirements, and the environment is often scarred.  Later, overbuilt communities grasp for resources as jobs disappear, buildings stand empty, the community is hollowed out, and the remaining citizens pay more for less. There are few winners in this phase.

We know a lot about the pros and cons of boom and bust in rural economies. But we still lack a practical, policy relevant understanding of the rates and types of change that can be integrated well by existing communities, and when enough becomes too much.

Like many educational institutions in rural areas, my school in Wales provided services to the surrounding community, including emergency rescue services for 20 miles of coastline. We trained diligently, working with surrounding communities to integrate the information and collective planning we would need to take effective action. When the claxon sounded, we were on call to save the lives of the ill informed, the inattentive, and the poorly prepared.

The emergency rescue team

Communities facing rapid change will have no rescue services waiting for the siren’s wail when the waters of energy driven change rise and fall. Ideally, they will figure out how to move out of the metaphorical (and sometimes literal) tidal surge zones and flood plains ahead of time. To do so, they will have to look ahead and try to understand their roles in a higher cost energy economy. Those who do best will adopt appropriate land use, housing, planning, schooling, regulatory, and capital management strategies that anticipate and can adapt to change.

The magnitude of the challenge is large, and capacity to anticipate and respond is increasingly limited. Institutions and government at all levels, not least land grant universities like my own, must help “lift all boats” by working with communities to develop the information, expertise, and community capacity building that provide the foundation for effective action.

What are the likely opportunities and concerns a changing energy landscape might bring to your community? Have community leaders planned for or even thought about this issue at all? What pace and scale of change would be manageable? What might overwhelm and transform your community altogether?

David Kay, a Senior Extension Associate with Community & Regional Development Institute (CaRDI), was trained as an economist, works in the Department of Development Sociology, Cornell University, and focuses on land use planning and community/economic development issues.  He grew up in California’s burgeoning Silicon Valley  but settled in Ithaca, New York, after graduate school, not least because of his growing  appreciation of  the small city’s uniquely combined scale of community and pace of life.

Visit the RUPRI Rural Futures Lab here.

Images provided by the author.