what's life going to be like 25 or 30 years from now?
what's happening with the climate? food? oil?
take food - current agri business food production must surely be completely crazy:
after years of intensive farming, the quality of the soil much of our food is grown on is now very poor - many of the minerals, nutrients we need simply aren't there - after the impoverished, chemically induced food is taken out of the ground it then starts travelling, being processed, packaged, stored on super market shelves, taken home, stored again, over-cooked - no wonder there is so much ill health in the UK
hundreds of calories of fossil fuel energy may be used up for each calorie of food produced - is that sustainable?
the more you look into eco stuff the gloomier it seems to get.
check out: http://www.rainbowbody.net/Finalempire/index.html
the writer explains that throughout history empires have collapsed when they exhausted the land around them - he says that this is what is happening today but on a global scale - we are in a slow collapse but because it is slow we just don't see it
also, on a similar theme, check out: http://peakoil.blogspot.com/2006/10/peak-oil-clock-is-ticking.html
and see Al Gore's film, "An Inconvenient Truth" with its clearly explained message on climate change - see: http://www.climatecrisis.net/
so what do we do? pretend it's not happening? give up? do what we can to reduce our carbon output?
at the moment my own response is based around food:
whether our whole modern way of life collapses and the few survivors of global disasters are left in a Mad Max post nuclear warfare kind of world or whether technology magically rescues us and we still have the cars and supermarkets in 30 years time we are still going to want to eat...
the more we can grow ourselves the more we reduce our food's energy requirement
waste - if we are growing food we can put a lot of our waste back into the ground via compost
with a little practice we can get really high quality nutritious food - compare home grown potatoes, garlic or almonds straight from the tree with the supermarket versions
i have started growing vegetables and herbs with fruit following soon - there are ways of growing food that don't need much digging or chemical input and which are easy on the Earth - check out:
http://www.risc.org.uk/garden/roberthart.html
http://www.agroforestry.co.uk/forgndg.html
http://www.brightonpermaculture.co.uk/
there are ways of growing quite a lot of food in a smallish space - even with my basic knowledge i have already been able to help other people to start their own edible gardens and i aim to do more of that
also - we went to an inspirational talk given by Mike Reynolds about the "earthships" he has been building - these homes can be off the grid ie do not need to be connected to mains water, electricity or sewerage - they can provide comfortable shelter in very hot areas with as little as 8 inches of rain: see: http://earthshipbiotecture.com/
and in all the doom and gloom let's have some fun and let's not forget to boogie!
i've been happiest when i've been living a very simple life away from phones, tv and cars anyway .......
