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Let's keep politics out of this, the young OP should read all the FACTS (even the ones served by big-oil sponsored research) before making up her own mind. Even if what you say is true - why would I burn oil to produce electricity when I can get it cleanly from the Sun for free?
Getting energy from the sun for "free" is fine - as long as you recognize that you have had to pay for those solar cells and the footprint their manufacture has had. That is why I went with the used Carrizo energy plant ones rather than buy new. BTDT. We just saw the debacle on solar cell manufacture within the U.S.. Since that is part politics, I won't go into it. I do know that about the only country that has a good track record is Germany, and that is with large arrays.
If you want to play the "eco" game, you have to also take into account your batteries. "Nasty" lead-acid, high-tech Lithium Ion, toxic Nickel Cadmium.
Sounds to me like you were born with a brown thumb - no shame in that, some of us have more skill in growing things than others. Lack of water in the summer in Alabama? Eh? We lived in South Florida (more bugs, hotter weather, more rain trying to rot out your veggie's roots) and were still able to grow tons of tomatoes (enough for our family PLUS neighbors), peppers, zucchini, carrots to boot etc. etc. We did this all with the local soil amended with tons of manure from our two horses. We started with a huge lawn full of weeds and it took many months to choke out the weeds by combining layers of cardboard and manure on top of each other and just letting the combo cut off sunlight to the weeds underneath - it also enriched the soil in the process. Bugs? There are bugs EVERYWHERE - according to you nobody would be able to grow anything without mass murder using pesticides and fungicides. Yet, we never sprayed anything other then neem oil (rarely at that) and had a full garden the whole time. We also grew lettuce to boot, chard, mustard and beans just fine.
We lived in south Florida as well (for about 20 years). We had beautiful and productive orange and grapefruit trees. Never bought either... until the state came and cut them all down, mulched the stumps and came back to check every few months to make sure they weren't growing back. I told you that civilization will not allow you to be meaningfully self-sufficient, that is just one way it can happen.
If you think I promote insecticide use, why not click over on the home forum and read the sticky I wrote on pest control? You'll find I promote minimal use of non-toxics or minimally toxics.
As for our other south Florida plants, we were successful with Everglades tomatoes (DW is allergic to tomatoes), pineapple, banana, mango and briefly papaya (the bugs on papaya quickly invade and take over, even with bagging.) Squashes were impossible to grow. On soil amendments, some of the sickist months of my life were after we had a couple loads of free tree cuttings from the utility company delivered. The mold and fungus from that literally almost killed me. Nature doesn't care about humans.
Self-sufficiency is NOT a sham, definitely. I agree that magazines like Mother Earth News make it look "pretty" (which it ain't) - in reality it is hard work but so is going to the cubicle EVERY DAY and sitting in traffic like a goat waiting for slaughter.
I don't even have to disagree, just let that facts speak for themselves. I'm curious though, how many goats have you seen waiting for slaughter? The ones around here are more interested in trampling fences and exploring.
By the way, all our neighbors used pesticides and other chemical crap for their lawn. Guess whose house was the only one with tons of toads (eating bugs) and other wildlife?
Agree with you 100%. I hate Atrazine in particular. It was great for us in south Florida, with anols, birds, and sometimes possums until the wildlife started turning into primarily Muscovy ducks (AKA poop machines) and Iguanas (AKA invasive expensive plant eaters) and big brown rats.
Blah. Do you know how the beans were grown in the can? You are talking about a run of the mill, conventionally grown can of beans. Last time I looked, a can of organic beans was on the order of $1.50-$2.00. Your time and money are your time and money. A lot of Americans put them elsewhere (staring at the 6 foot TV for 4 hrs a night, living in a 2,000 sqft house they are toiling to pay off when in fact they could have lived in a 1,000 sqft home, paying off some GC to build them a shoddy home built out of unsustainable wood transported from 3,000 miles away, covered in arsenic and leaching chemicals into their environment for the next 10 years etc. etc. Just because people are lazy, incompetent or afraid to try, does not justify their stupid actions fueled by ignorance.
"Blah. Do you know how the beans were grown in the can?" I give up, they placed the bean seed in and used a tiny sunlamp?
Arsenic covered wood went out a while back. Just for grins, follow the money in that organic can of beans sometime and ask yourself how much you want to support that infrastructure. We used to shop at Whole Fudes until we wised up. Our house - 2400 sf, is paid for. Sorry to burst your fantasy. We sold our CBS construction house in south Florida when we realized that IT was not "self-sustainable" even on a short term. Between taxes, hurricane and house insurance, and other expenses, I realized that I would have been spending all those dollars earned through my hard labor and smarts to pay a non-responsive government, an insurance company that would fight me every inch if I ever dared to make a claim, a water system that had the brains of an earthworm , emptying out reservoirs BEFORE the dry season and then claiming water shortage. The less you consume - EVEN SECONDHAND through governments and suppliers - the more real your impact becomes. Our water comes from our creek, goes back into our septic tank. No big pipes carrying water hundreds of miles, no massive infrastructure. Our county government does not have "self-rule" meaning that it takes care of roads, sheriff, required school stuff and little else. Our taxation reflects that.
Compared to those issues, you organic can doesn't amount to a hill of beans.
My grandpa is 91 and lived on a farm his whole life. His father lived on a farm all his life and died at the age of 105 when he fell off a carriage and broke his neck. In fact, most OLD people I know lived in unspoiled environments with clean lifestyles. Most OLD Americans I know that spent the majority of their lives in the city, commuting and sitting in cubicles and being slaves to the mortgage and debt, have all sorts of poor lifestyle, contaminated diet and stress induced heart problems, diabetes, Alzheimers etc. They also take 8 pills a day that need to be different colors so they don't get confused.
I don't deny environmental factors in health. One of my grandfathers was seriously affected by working in plumbing and heating with hot zinc and lead. I also know that genetics is the prime factor in lifespan. His wife, exposed to some of the same things lived to 107.
How much land do you need to sustain a family of 2, 3 or 4? You don't need to till a huge acreage - we did our gardens manually. I think you are thinking like a "big farmer". I also think you don't really know what you are talking about or have an agenda behind what you are saying.
I agree that to grow a garden you don't need huge acreage. IF- your garden is not decimated by deer like our neighbor's was on the day before harvest, and IF- the weather gods are generous and your corn isn't flattened by wind, and IF- it has weathered a drought without serious damage, and IF the bugs have not gotten to it. If you plan on heating with (self-sufficient) wood though, you need trees. Trees take more space and time to grow.
Say, just as a what-if, that you have invested all of your money and energy for your food budget in a garden. Now, being in Alabama, a tornado comes and in two seconds removes it. Your "self-sufficiency" is shot for that year, and if you don't have a back-up, or depend on others, you die.
My agenda? My agenda is to educate people, to show them how they are being strung along, to help them avoid traps that I have experienced and to have a more balanced outlook. There is a psychological need, as part of individuation, to have independence. That independence drive kicks into high gear about the time a teen starts wanting to get away from parents and out on their own. It is a prime time for them to be suckered into cults, fantasies, and other damaging or negative groups rather than keep focus on personal growth and productivity. My agenda is steering them away from traps no matter how colorful or green or seemingly "right". What is your agenda?
I knew at some point you will come to the "killing part". The OP can be a vegetarian and be perfectly healthy and content knowing no blood is on her/his hands. We have layer chickens and they will never end up in the freezer.
If they won't end up in the freezer at the end of their lives, you are simply being wasteful. I also knew you would bring up the "kill animals" subject. Vegetarian with no blood on her/his hands? That is another major fallacy deserving of its own thread. We live on a world. Things die on that world. We all have a part in the timing. I could just as easily say that without humanity being meat eaters, millions of animals would never have been born or experienced life. Glass - half-full/half-empty.
You may want to get yourself better educated. For starters, read Joel Salatin's books (this is also a recommendation to the OP).
I ALWAYS want to get better educated. My reading list now includes two years of "CENSORED" about events not covered by mainstream media, "My Stroke of Insight" by a stroke victim, and one I am reading now that you might find interesting as it relates to self-sufficiency "Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil" It details how the largely self-sufficient Amazon tribes have been decimated and turned away from their lifestyles that were in harmony with the rainforest.
BTW, I am impressed that you were able to make a computer by hand, somehow connect to the internet, and post here, all while being completely "self-sufficient" Making those transistors out of roots and berries must have been hard.
Getting energy from the sun for "free" is fine - as long as you recognize that you have had to pay for those solar cells and the footprint their manufacture has had. That is why I went with the used Carrizo energy plant ones rather than buy new. BTDT. We just saw the debacle on solar cell manufacture within the U.S.. Since that is part politics, I won't go into it. I do know that about the only country that has a good track record is Germany, and that is with large arrays.
OK - let's ask the question in a different way. It took a certain amount of energy or fossil fuel to make the PV system. But it took some energy (and still does) to make the coal mine/factory, machinery to extract it and keep it operating. Once we get past that - who has a smaller environmental footprint - you with the PV system or me with the coal powered utility stripping mountains down to keep my home going?
Quote:
Originally Posted by harry chickpea
We lived in south Florida as well (for about 20 years). We had beautiful and productive orange and grapefruit trees. Never bought either... until the state came and cut them all down, mulched the stumps and came back to check every few months to make sure they weren't growing back. I told you that civilization will not allow you to be meaningfully self-sufficient, that is just one way it can happen.
Never happened to me.
Quote:
Originally Posted by harry chickpea
I don't even have to disagree, just let that facts speak for themselves. I'm curious though, how many goats have you seen waiting for slaughter? The ones around here are more interested in trampling fences and exploring.
I actually have seen some slaughtered
Quote:
Originally Posted by harry chickpea
"Blah. Do you know how the beans were grown in the can?" I give up, they placed the bean seed in and used a tiny sunlamp?
I meant, grown the conventional way - what was used to keep them bug free, healthy and ready to be cooked for the can?
Quote:
Originally Posted by harry chickpea
Arsenic covered wood went out a while back. Just for grins, follow the money in that organic can of beans sometime and ask yourself how much you want to support that infrastructure. We used to shop at Whole Fudes until we wised up. Our house - 2400 sf, is paid for. Sorry to burst your fantasy. We sold our CBS construction house in south Florida when we realized that IT was not "self-sustainable" even on a short term. Between taxes, hurricane and house insurance, and other expenses, I realized that I would have been spending all those dollars earned through my hard labor and smarts to pay a non-responsive government, an insurance company that would fight me every inch if I ever dared to make a claim, a water system that had the brains of an earthworm , emptying out reservoirs BEFORE the dry season and then claiming water shortage. The less you consume - EVEN SECONDHAND through governments and suppliers - the more real your impact becomes. Our water comes from our creek, goes back into our septic tank. No big pipes carrying water hundreds of miles, no massive infrastructure. Our county government does not have "self-rule" meaning that it takes care of roads, sheriff, required school stuff and little else. Our taxation reflects that.
I do not want to be a money maker for the Whole foods owner. But, there are many other alternatives today - Community Supported Agriculture comes to mind.
Quote:
Originally Posted by harry chickpea
Compared to those issues, you organic can doesn't amount to a hill of beans.
I think you misunderstood my point of organic $2 can vs. $.50 can of non-organic beans. You said why bother growing them when you can buy a can for $.50. I said, it's up to you if you want to eat beans drowned in who-knows-what
I think you and I can both agree that modern construction methods are toxic and depend on plenty of toxic chemicals. You cannot compare a straw bale or masonry home (built from local materials) to a wasteful, chemically laden modern stick frame.
[quote=harry chickpea;27605736]
I agree that to grow a garden you don't need huge acreage. IF- your garden is not decimated by deer like our neighbor's was on the day before harvest, and IF- the weather gods are generous and your corn isn't flattened by wind, and IF- it has weathered a drought without serious damage, and IF the bugs have not gotten to it. If you plan on heating with (self-sufficient) wood though, you need trees. Trees take more space and time to grow.{/QUOTE]
We got deer here in Texas. Before we started a garden, we fenced it off
Nobody says you WILL or should be FULLY (or COULD be fully) self-sufficient. But, WE ALL HAVE TO TRY OUR BEST.
Quote:
Originally Posted by harry chickpea
My agenda? My agenda is to educate people, to show them how they are being strung along, to help them avoid traps that I have experienced and to have a more balanced outlook. There is a psychological need, as part of individuation, to have independence. That independence drive kicks into high gear about the time a teen starts wanting to get away from parents and out on their own. It is a prime time for them to be suckered into cults, fantasies, and other damaging or negative groups rather than keep focus on personal growth and productivity. My agenda is steering them away from traps no matter how colorful or green or seemingly "right". What is your agenda?
My agenda is minimizing the environmental footprint on the planet
Quote:
Originally Posted by harry chickpea
If they won't end up in the freezer at the end of their lives, you are simply being wasteful. I also knew you would bring up the "kill animals" subject. Vegetarian with no blood on her/his hands? That is another major fallacy deserving of its own thread. We live on a world. Things die on that world. We all have a part in the timing. I could just as easily say that without humanity being meat eaters, millions of animals would never have been born or experienced life. Glass - half-full/half-empty.
Just because a duck lives in this world does not mean it is mine to kill him/her. Would have never experienced life if it wasn't for us? That's an interesting excuse . But, I am not going to claim it is not your right to eat animals. Do so wisely.
"Nobody says you WILL or should be FULLY (or COULD be fully) self-sufficient. But, WE ALL HAVE TO TRY OUR BEST."
Bingo. (Also agree with the CSA concept, and in review pretty much agree with everything in that last post.) We can step lighter. We can avoid repeating mistakes. We can support LOCAL prudent agricultural methods.
It IS important to know how to grow your own food. If you eat meat, it IS important to at least go through the process of killing and gutting a few chickens. Those are part of knowing just what is required to survive on earth and acting responsibly. If you can't stomach that, how about going to the reference section of a library, pulling a July 1917 National Geographic and reading about the "Fearful Famines of the Past" that occurred prior to the green revolution. Cannibalism was a common part of being "self-sufficient" after crop failures and during drouth. It happened on every continent and in just about every civilization.
I mean Harry, you're right. I think the OP should forget the whole thing--youthful dreams are stupid anyway and where do they get you? I think she just needs to embrace the consumer culture b/c the gubmint ain't gonna let you have a garden anyway. (Yes this part if partially true--several folks, including a family here in St. Louis, have had their gardens ripped out by the feds or local officials for some imagined . . . well I don't know.) So I think we should all just give up and give in to this because that's what the corporations want us to do--we buy their stuff and they can continue to live the high life--everybody's happy.
Life is so much easier if you don't bother to ask what's in your food, or wonder if GMO's are going to kill you or just make you miserable in your old age. Don't learn to knit and sew b/c you can get that stuff made from slave labor in some 3rd world country for a lot cheaper, but at least you're helping to keep them busy. And you know, if the first time that Mother Earth News makes something and it doesn't work, they should probably just give up too. (I don't really like them anymore since they went suburban.)
I'm sure you can find a nice little accounting job somewhere OP and Pepperidge Farms can make way better bread than you could ever dream of making, right? I mean, what's the use, we're all gonna implode anyway. No point in trying to find a more sustainable way to live off this earth--that's for pagans.
And Harry, it's not that I don't agree with much of what you say, but do you really get this much joy out of dreambusting? That's kind of sick really. It's one thing to point out the pitfalls and another to say, "Aww, fahgetaboutit, can't work anyway b/c it didn't work for me." Well not everything I tried worked either but I'm still going.
And BTW, g-ma was 92 when she got a major ice storm and I got down there as soon as I could and she was sitting up there all fat and happy b/c A. She had oil lamps and oil B. She had a woodstove for heating and a big supply of firewood and a big pile of quilts that she'd made. C. She had grown up for part of her life w/o plumbing or electricity and knew how to deal with it D. She knew how to cook over a fire E. She knew how to deal with toilet issues. Electricity was out for a month b/c all the electric lines were snapped off 3 ft from the ground. Was she completely self-sufficient? Of course not--she knew who to talk to, who to trade with, and how to get things done.
If your point is that we're all part of a community then I wholeheartedly agree with you and I also agree that no one would wish for the tedium of making every last thing they use. But, my canned beans are way better than those .33 ones you were talking about or those gawdawful tasting and expensive ones that call themselves organic and I can reuse the jars over again and not have to "repurpose" some ugly can. You can only repurpose so many of those before your kids start to whisper behind doors and many of the cans are lined with plastic. The corporations do not care about you and they don't care about the earth--they only care about one thing and we all know what that is. And besides, if I can a few beans, the economy is not going to fail and I can still go buy some if my crop fails because bygolly you're right--I sure don't want to eat any people but it sure is a stretch to say that OP does b/c she wants to learn a few homesteading skills.
What I do is not "dream busting." It is "fantasy busting."
"That's kind of sick really."
Wanna know what is sick? Thousands of parents playing practical jokes on their offspring by telling them that there is a Santa Claus who will go down to the local Neiman Marcus and magically buy them whatever their little hearts want at least once a year. Is it any wonder there is a consumer culture and and "I want it now" culture, and a culture that denies reality in so many ways that it is positively self-destructive? THAT is sick. Protect a kid by withholding gruesome details of life, yes. Outright lie to them? No way.
All though my posts I have been a cheerleader for the importance of learning to grow and harvest your own food. I feel that is a requirement of being a true individual that can, if pressed, "just say no" to whatever outrage is currently foisted on us. Is a youngster going to be crushed because she found out the state of Florida ripped out my citrus trees? I doubt it, and if so he/she has greater issues than covered here.
If you want to grow and can your own food, more power to you. It can be enjoyable, entertaining, and good exercise. Just don't try to foist it off as complete self-sufficiency.
It is prudent to prepare for emergencies. We went over two weeks in FL without power after a storm, and our refrigerator was on the whole time because of my preps. Other people were out the first day in search of free bottled water. That doesn't mean that when I had to have my appendix removed I sterilized a kitchen knife.
If you want to grow and can your own food, more power to you. It can be enjoyable, entertaining, and good exercise. Just don't try to foist it off as complete self-sufficiency.
It is prudent to prepare for emergencies. We went over two weeks in FL without power after a storm, and our refrigerator was on the whole time because of my preps. Other people were out the first day in search of free bottled water. That doesn't mean that when I had to have my appendix removed I sterilized a kitchen knife.
Not once did I read in the OP that she wants to go out and live all by herself in some crazy fantasy world and do her own surgery. Never once did I read anything that made me think she wants to foist some crazy idea off on someone. Problem is that you take your own skills for granted but you're making fun of a young person for wanting to acquire those very same skills. I think you and I agree on more than one thing here but what we don't agree on is how to treat young people--people are people no matter what their age and it never was a crime to want to learn something new. Read the OP again and I think you will find it very mature and well thought out and I for one would like to encourage more young people to think like that b/c they're going to inherit this crazy messed up world that we all contributed to and some days I don't think we're doing them any favors. If you want to be angry at the state of FL, you go right ahead and you deserve to be--I get angry just hearing about it--but please don't take it out on a kid who just wants what you have. BTW, I'm 53, so I'm older than dirt too. At school I always tell the teachers to be good to the kids b/c they may be wiping your butt someday. Try to keep that in mind.
Quote:
Originally Posted by annadodd
Is there anything I can do today to start learning skills that will one day help me become self sufficient? A club, a class, somewhere I can volunteer, any and all ideas are welcome and greatly appreciated. I just want something that will be that stepping stone from thought and theory to having the skills to take action and make a difference.
What I do is not "dream busting." It is "fantasy busting."
"That's kind of sick really."
Wanna know what is sick? Thousands of parents playing practical jokes on their offspring by telling them that there is a Santa Claus who will go down to the local Neiman Marcus and magically buy them whatever their little hearts want at least once a year. Is it any wonder there is a consumer culture and and "I want it now" culture, and a culture that denies reality in so many ways that it is positively self-destructive? THAT is sick. Protect a kid by withholding gruesome details of life, yes. Outright lie to them? No way.
All though my posts I have been a cheerleader for the importance of learning to grow and harvest your own food. I feel that is a requirement of being a true individual that can, if pressed, "just say no" to whatever outrage is currently foisted on us. Is a youngster going to be crushed because she found out the state of Florida ripped out my citrus trees? I doubt it, and if so he/she has greater issues than covered here.
If you want to grow and can your own food, more power to you. It can be enjoyable, entertaining, and good exercise. Just don't try to foist it off as complete self-sufficiency.
It is prudent to prepare for emergencies. We went over two weeks in FL without power after a storm, and our refrigerator was on the whole time because of my preps. Other people were out the first day in search of free bottled water. That doesn't mean that when I had to have my appendix removed I sterilized a kitchen knife.
As always the truth is in the middle. I think the country as a whole has gotten polarized to a point where it is either/or.
My wife gets mad sometimes at us recycling stuff or spending money and time to learn how to install a PV system to save energy and be green. She is mad because you can walk around a city and see all the businesses burning energy like there is no tomorrow, lights are on, computers are on, A/C is on even when it is 60 or 70 degrees outside. Heck, you drive and see idiots in their cars with windows up at 70 degrees blowing the A/C like it is running out of style. She says to me sometimes - what's the point? Do you know how many data centers around the country spin computers idly waiting for you to visit a website? Most of these servers are actually doing something useful about 3-10% of their lifetime, the rest is wasted electricity.
We are a wasteful culture. There are many intermingled interests that all boil down to the same thing - MONEY. These interests are willing to finance armies of scientists, journalists, think tanks, publications, campaigns etc. aimed at injecting insecurity into what we know deep down in our gut to be secure. We know for sure X is bad but with enough doubt we can now have a debate and in the status quo, someone is making money. We know spraying 1000s of gallons of pesticides on 100s of acres of monocultures can't be good. But, we need an excuse to help us close our eyes to that atrocity so that we can make the profit and move on.
We have stripped mountains, polluted rivers, altered the flows of rivers. Colorado can barely reach its delta and Rio Grande is but a trickle in some places. Mississippi is no longer mighty. We have polluted the underground and the ground and the air. All the while someone who stands to make profit from it keeps telling you that there is no problem, it's all safe.
We sacrifice species and whole ecosystems because people do not have enough INDIVIDUAL POWER to make themselves a living. A small town North Dakota is chock full of people without education whose only possibility is ranching or manual labor. Ranching is unstable so the next best thing is a fracking job or an oil rig job. Instead of spending money on giving these people an opportunity to make a choice in life and get a new profession, we are happy to fill the corporate coffers of Peabody Corp. or whoever else all the while destroying the very environment these people live in. In the name of "job creation" we do all that and the corporations look like they are doing a good deed - employing people. I ask you - which people? The ones that had no future otherwise?
In 1950s you could buy U.S. made jeans. There were a lot of cotton workers, textile workers etc. Then the textile industry moved to cheaper places where slave labor pays off more. Nike can spend $8 on a shoe and sell it to you for $50. But, nobody misses the textile workers U.S. once had. They all had to move on and find a new profession.
You have a tragedy like the BP oil spill in the Gulf. All the media houses and all the politicians mourn the loss of jobs for the local fishermen. Why? Because these local fishermen have no other alternative. They have not the education nor the choice to move on and be something else. Yet, the dolphins, the sharks, the sea turtles, all the wildlife that will die and suffer for generations, nobody cares for it. If I was the government, BP would not be allowed to do business anymore in my country. Neither would Haliburton nor Transocean. However, the fact that all of these corporations employ people is a major hurdle - we have become dependent on them for employment.
The job of the government, in my opinion, is to encourage self-sufficiency and provide more choice for people. Make education free, instead of saddling up generations of people with college debt and effectively punishing them for going to school and wanting to have a choice in life. If we took all the money we give in tax breaks and other subsidies to already filthy rich corporations like BP or Shell or Haliburton and gave it to the people to install solar PV systems on homes and businesses, we would be way further on the energy independence route than by way of drilling in Alaska and destroying virgin habitat. Education is free in Western Europe - this is why their population is better off AND cannot be easily manipulated. They have achieved a stage where the population is HONEST and EDUCATED and politicians are really PUBLIC SERVANTS.
A corporation is NOT a person, it never will be. If it was, the CEOs of all the banks and oil companies etc. would be in jail a long time ago. If you stole a $100 on the street today, you would end up in prison. When HSBC launders billions of illegal cartel money, they get slapped with a fine. When BP poisons the waters for the next 100 years, they get slapped with a fine. The fine that amounts to about a mosquito bite to their profit margin, something that you as a consumer will pay for anyways as they will just pass it on to you.
The United States Constitution is a sacred document. Its creators were infinitely wise when they realized that there needed to be controls on the power of government. What they could never predict and what the Constitution was never designed to do was to protect you from the power of corporations. The Founders never saw the circular link between money->lobbying->politician->law. They just assumed an HONEST population that had its best interests and the best interests of its country in mind.
Well, corporations are NOT persons and they are NOT honest and they are NOT patriotic. Look at all the jobs that left. Apple corp - world's largest corporation makes everything in China in prison style factories where all the worker protections, something Americans fought hard for here in America, are out of the window. Apple pays taxes everywhere else but here. Cities like Austin bend over backwards to attract Apple to open something in the city and provide jobs for Austinites (how generous of Apple). It is a perverted system.
So, the above is why I want to be as self-sufficient as possible. It is not the idea or fantasy that I will save the world with my PV system and my composting toilet. It is not the "feel good" feeling that I am doing better than my neighbor.
It is the fact that I chose to fight to try to leave the matrix. Blue pill or the red pill, Neo?
Ever heard of cycles? They are part of Nature too. So is the concept of equilibrium. Man is the only "thing" out there that ruins both.
Ever heard of aging soils? Without death and destruction caused by volcanoes, meteorites or glaciers, final succession of plants sooner or later would exhaust soil minerals to the point of collapse and extinction. This is especially true of northern latitudes.
I'm not talking philosophically. Nature is not sustainable in the sense of not being able to maintain stable environment & specie variety for eons. We live because first primitive organisms drowned themselves in their waste - oxygen that we breath. We burn coal and oil because natural processes responsible for deposits of coal and oil changed Earth climate dramatically (killing countless species in the process) to make our existence possible, and so on. An average specie is going extinct in 1-2 million years since its speciation (that's before humans). The point is - Nature is not "sustainable" in the long run, it's ever changing and indifferent to zillions acts of suffering and death.
Human civilizations are not sustainable even in the short run, there is enough of research to claim that even primitive civilization irreversibly impact their environment. That eco friendly garden or chicken coop of yours kills directly (or starves) countless critters, you use tools, energy and knowledge (knowledge is energy intensive and unsustainable in the "green" definition of the word) to practice your sustainable ways and so on. Agriculture (any agriculture) is NOT sustainable or eco friendly by default. There is no solid proof that solar (or wind) power are net energy producers, it takes enormous amount of energy and pollution to generate green energy.
What shall we do? Live, maybe it's our worldly mission to burn all the coal, oil, pollute and kill ourselves in the process in order to make another chapter of Earth natural history possible.
Ever heard of aging soils? Without death and destruction caused by volcanoes, meteorites or glaciers, final succession of plants sooner or later would exhaust soil minerals to the point of collapse and extinction. This is especially true of northern latitudes.
I'm not talking philosophically. Nature is not sustainable in the sense of not being able to maintain stable environment & specie variety for eons. We live because first primitive organisms drowned themselves in their waste - oxygen that we breath. We burn coal and oil because natural processes responsible for deposits of coal and oil changed Earth climate dramatically (killing countless species in the process) to make our existence possible, and so on. An average specie is going extinct in 1-2 million years since its speciation (that's before humans). The point is - Nature is not "sustainable" in the long run, it's ever changing and indifferent to zillions acts of suffering and death.
Human civilizations are not sustainable even in the short run, there is enough of research to claim that even primitive civilization irreversibly impact their environment. That eco friendly garden or chicken coop of yours kills directly (or starves) countless critters, you use tools, energy and knowledge (knowledge is energy intensive and unsustainable in the "green" definition of the word) to practice your sustainable ways and so on. Agriculture (any agriculture) is NOT sustainable or eco friendly by default. There is no solid proof that solar (or wind) power are net energy producers, it takes enormous amount of energy and pollution to generate green energy.
What shall we do? Live, maybe it's our worldly mission to burn all the coal, oil, pollute and kill ourselves in the process in order to make another chapter of Earth natural history possible.
Ah, I see what you mean.
Again, it boils down to doing the right thing (or trying to do it). In your world we are all doomed so sc*ew it, let's just act whichever way we like. I am not sure that's right, is all
OD
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- no shame in that, some of us have more skill in growing things than others. Lack of water in the summer in Alabama? Eh? We lived in South Florida (more bugs, hotter weather, more rain trying to rot out your veggie's roots) and were still able to grow tons of tomatoes (enough for our family PLUS neighbors), peppers, zucchini, carrots to boot etc. etc. We did this all with the local soil amended with tons of manure from our two horses. We started with a huge lawn full of weeds and it took many months to choke out the weeds by combining layers of cardboard and manure on top of each other and just letting the combo cut off sunlight to the weeds underneath - it also enriched the soil in the process. Bugs? There are bugs EVERYWHERE - according to you nobody would be able to grow anything without mass murder using pesticides and fungicides. Yet, we never sprayed anything other then neem oil (rarely at that) and had a full garden the whole time. We also grew lettuce to boot, chard, mustard and beans just fine.
Try to keep that in mind. 
