End of Suburbia airing on Vision TV Wed Mar 9, at 10:00pm

[JohnyCanuck]

An edited for TV version of the "End of Suburbia" will be airing Canada wide on the cable channel Vision TV tomorrow night (i.e. Wednesday Mar 9th). I believe the original version is roughly 1hr 20min long. It will be edited down to 1hr for TV.

From the Toronto Star:

Already the cold winds of change have started to blow through the suburbs. Everywhere around us there are signs of looming catastrophe.

But as anyone who watches the upcoming television documentary The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream will see, that doesn't seem to have caused us even a moment's hesitation. If anything, we are rushing towards oblivion faster than ever.

The one-hour special, which airs Wednesday at 10 p.m. on Vision TV, should be a wake-up call to all those denizens of sprawl. If the talking heads who appear in this compelling and deeply disturbing Canadian-made program are right — and they most assuredly are — North America had better figure out new ways of living that don't depend on cheap, plentiful oil.

<snip>

Their argument is simple: suburbia couldn't exist without cars, and people couldn't afford to drive those cars without endless cheap gas. As they also make clear, the amount of oil pumped out of the ground is expected to peak sometime between now and 2010 at the latest. After that, every gallon of gas grows more and more expensive, rendering auto-based sprawl obsolete.

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1110150624552&call_pageid=970599119419

[u4ic]

1. I was just about to post this

Vision has some wonderful documentaries. This looks to be a good one.

[ConcernedCanuk]

2. When I worked for CP Rail in Toronto - It amazed me how many

.
.
.

traveled up to 100 kilometers ONE-WAY every day to live out of the city.

3 hours of their day was consumed in just commuting to and from work,

IN RUSH HOUR TO BOOT! (talk about stress!)

To me that was insane.

Others, including myself for a short spell, commuted on the week-ends, staying on-site for the week.

When I finally moved closer, it was within a 3 kilometer radius, - a 10 minute trip.

One seeing 16 lanes of highway side by side jammed with cars every morning and evening would make SOME people think that everyone is living at the WRONG end of town for THEIR jobs, no?

We WILL be seeing more and more seldom used freeways in the near future I'm afraid . .

Some seem to think we can just keep sucking the innards out of this ball we live on indefinitely

Not so

We've had conservative measures available as far back as the sixties (in my memory-hole anyhoo), but have blundered on irresponsibly.

Keep them minivans from rustin' out guys . .

Ya might have to live in them to keep them jobs in the city . . ain't enuf affordable housing for ya to move back in !!

Times will be a changing alright!

[Mother Jones]

3. Thanks so much for posting this!

I did watch, and it was a great doc!


Now, I only hope our friends south of the border have the same opportunity.

(btw- I thought James Howard Kunstler was brilliant and I'd like to read some of his books)

[redacted]

4. You can get it from Netflix

We canceled our Blockmonster Video membership and gave the business to Netflix because of the former's reputation for being a "red" company in contrast to Netflix, which is very "blue," and because Netflix has a much better selection of documentaries.

We watched this film, along with the two interesting bonus features supplied on the DVD, a couple of Friday's ago. It made for a very provocative discussion afterward. Highly recommended.

[Lisa]

5. they have a special now on their website

3 DVD or 3 VHS copies for $65 US plus shipping. I'm getting extras for our library in town (they don't have it yet).

http://www.endofsuburbia.com

[ninty]

6. I acquired this film

and i really quite enjoyed it. Perhaps enjoyed isn't the correct word...lets say it had a lot of good information in it.

[JohnyCanuck]

7. If you didn't have a chance to catch the documentary on the tube

Here are some excerpts for streaming Video (requires a cable or DSL connection).

Apple Quick Time
http://911busters.com/video/IQ1_20_END_OF_SUBURBIA_VIDEO_24.2_.mov

Windows Media Player (.wmv)
http://911busters.com/video/IQ1_20_END_OF_SUBURBIA_VIDEO_24.2_.wmv

Note that a fair chunk of the material shown in the excerpts linked above was not shown when the documentary aired on Vision TV. The version shown on TV was edited down to an hour from the full version of approx 1hr 20min. The stuff that was cut out for the Vision TV airing was mostly related to the role of Peak Oil as a motivating factor in the Iraq invasion and why it would be seen as necessary to control the Middle Eastern oil in light of the neo con agenda. Much of this material, edited out of the Vision TV program, is shown in the excerpts linked above.