Will increased fuel costs and Global Warming lead to smaller rural communities?

Question

As people find it harder to travel, and the food becomes more expensive to transport, will people start leaving the cities and go back to the land again?

Answer 1

The normal trend is to move away form the smaller rural areas to the bigger cities to find employment so you can pay for the increase in gas, food, and what not instead of having to drive 20 minuets to the closet city to buy/work the above. Another problem is that as towns get bigger they spread out using up land recourse's for housing, roads and other buildings limiting the amount of usable land left for farming - going back to the land - at such a low that they city/town can no longer support its population without outside food. Its the trend we have been in for sometime now. Not alot of people actually think about where our food comes from and the American farmer is struggling to survive, not only are they facing low profits with long hours they have to deal with the constantly changing environment that's making it even harder to bring in a full crop.
For example the drought conditions that some of the states have been facing most of the summer have had a huge impact on farmers, normally they would start feeding cattle only in the winter months but now due to the drought they have been feeding cattle baled hay to replace grass since around September or earlier because the grass just won't grow. Add to that the watering of those cattle, the increased fuel prices they have to pay as well and it makes for a bad situation all around. In turn the companies that buy livestock for food production as well as all other foods, are not paying more to the farmer but instead passing their increased cost of doing business on to the consumer so they can stay out of the red.
So we become more dependent on outside resources from other countries that sometimes are not up to the normal standards that we are used to. For example alot of harmful pesticides, no matter how effective, have been band from use in the US but are still being used in other countries, DDT is an example. In the end the planet only has so much land that we can occupy, it's not like they're going to make anymore, although they are trying, so we need to take a look at our recourse's before the population outgrows or needs even more and we end up completely dependent on outside resources.

Answer 2

No. Cities are more energy efficient. Even small cities are more energy efficient than rural communities.

Farming areas use a lot of hydrocarbon energy to both grow and process and transport food and for the people who live and work there. They have to drive everywhere to work or buy anything or do anything and things have to be shipped to them.

In fact messed up agricultural policy by 1st world countries and their "free trade agrgements" that screw the South has probably been more dangerous to the environment than anything people who live in 1st world cities are doing now.

Sprawling cities and suburbs are very wasteful of energy and resources and are environmentally bad but going back to rural villages is not going to happen in the 1st world and I don't think it can happen in the 3rd world either.

If things get Real bad than we are looking at plagues and starvation and Billions of people dying in this century.

Answer 3

No, b/c IF global warming goes down the way it's "supposed to", all the cities will just move off the coasts and swallow up rural space even more. HOWEVER, transportation costs would drop slightly because the goods won't have to go quite as far. (Probably counterbalanced by the cost of fuel though.)

Answer 4

the main considered necessary procedures that the folk can try against worldwide warming is getting rid of their older type vehicles (1979 Buick) because of the fact, older vehicles emmitt greater poisonous fumes into the air. Its obtrusive that the greater technological more advantageous a vehicle is, the less risky gases it emmitts. A vehicle that become geared up 3 or 4 years in the past would be greater financial device friendly than a vehicle that become assembled 35 years in the past. for top populated cities at the same time with ny, Bus and Taxi companys ought to replace contemporary automobiles with vehicles that are powered via hydrogen or electrical energy. only think of, if each and every important city used the Toyota Prius as taxi's, there may be a decreased point of pollutants, and additionally taxi fares ought to be significantly decrease besides.

Answer 5

No, because people live where the jobs are.