Dale Allen Pfeiffer: A Closer Look at Escape From Suburbia

I was asked to review Escape from Suburbia, the latest effort by the team that made The End of Suburbia. Now, I could have offered up a bit of saccharine dripping prose and let it go at that. It would have pleased everyone connected with the film without making waves. But it would not be honest. It is too late in the game to simply go on pleasing people. It is time to be honest, even if it hurts.

Escape from Suburbia was supposed to show how people who are aware of energy depletion and the other problems that threaten to destroy our civilization are dealing with it. The film follows the efforts of three groups of people, a gay couple from New York, a single mother from Toronto, and a couple of well-educated hippies from Oregon. It also looks at the fate of a community garden in LA and the efforts of a small town in California. Along the way there are lots of blurbs by the talking heads of peak oil.


The most honest and informative segments of the documentary are the portions following the couple from New York and the scenes about the South Central Community Farm in LA. The couple in New York came across as very concerned, both for themselves and for others. They could find no easy answers, and their efforts at community organizing and learning essential skills only served to make them aware of how truly desperate the situation is. They do not want to be trapped in New York when things start breaking down, yet they do not know where to go or how to provide for themselves once they get there. In the end, their situation remains unresolved. They continue to take what steps they can, learning survival skills while looking for a way out of New York.

The portion of the film dealing with South Central Community Farm illustrates both the vulnerability of community gardens within our socioeconomic system and the plight of poorer people in dealing with what is to come. The story of the SCC Farm should stand as a warning beacon to all community farms. They only exist by the grace of corporations and government. Until community gardens are recognized as vital to community health and are protected by law, they will remain vulnerable whenever the government or some powerful investor wishes to appropriate the land. As long as we continue to live under the current socioeconomic system, then community gardens will require strong legal protections to keep them safe.

The fate of SCC Farm, taken in conjunction with the fate of New Orleans’ poorer residents, demonstrates that the poor will not be cared for. Instead they will be preyed upon and will suffer the brunt of the coming collapse. In truth, the working class, and in particular the lower working class, is the alternative energy source the elite intend to use to replace their consumption of fossil fuels. And this is the system they are quietly working to set in place.

Carolyn Baker