I agree with the sentiment and agree gardens greatly increase resilience but, outside of a few incredibly fertile areas such as the Yangtze/Yellow River plain, 1/4 acre is far too small an area to support even one person in terms of caloric, protein and micronutrient needs (not to mention cooking fuel, clothing etc).
I base this on the fact that Farmers of 40 Centuries, first published in 1911, found that the ‘better class’ of Yangtze/Yellow River Plain farm household farmed 1.6 to 2.5 acres supporting 6-12 people (grandparents, 1-2 brothers and their wives and children) via incredibly intensive methods. Admittedly there was also a pretty heavy burden of government ‘overhead’ and quite a bit of land was reserved for grave lands. However, it was also noticeable in the descriptions of the farming methods that the farms were highly specialised. Most farms grew at least some rice and had a few animals but then specialised in particular crops or animals. Their farms were very productive but not in any way self-sufficient.
By contrast, farms in the German river valleys in the late medieval period were far more self-sufficient and required approx 10 acres/person which included garden, plowed or fallow field, meadow and forest. They also had a reasonably significant ‘government overhead’ to meet. Of course, the agricultural technology and capital improvements compared to the early industrial Chinese was pretty low…
Possibly judicious application of certain modern farming ideas/tools etc might decrease the minimum sustainable land area to achieve reasonable self-sufficiency. However, I do think it is important to be realistic about what is possible
A proper passive solar designed house should provide, at least some, of what its inhabitants need. Each building includes a cistern. The old Tampa Courthouse has a basement cistern still. Don’t think it’s used anymore. MM, I’m sure you’ve seen the film Garbage Warrior. Water collected from the roof is first used in sinks/showers, then filters through the green house in the front of the building, then filters to the toilet, then is flushed through to a garden pod outside.
Each building should generate at least some of it’s own energy needs, like a wind turbine or solar panels. Without an ac/heating unit, no electric dryer, no electric stove, and no electric hot water heater, our energy needs in the home are minimal.
How many jobs would be created if we converted/retrofitted all the residences and office buildings into passive solar buildings requiring no ac/heating units? It could become a national past time!
And we don’t have to produce another “thing.” Everything this world needs has already been built. It just needs to be salvaged - the industry of the future.
It’s not that difficult to rebuild your soil and no till farming is the way to go. There are some 3rd and 4th generation farmers who will never go back to tilling. Google no till farming and see how farmers, using tractors, DO NOT TILL THE LAND. Their soil is amazing.
Poor soil loves microbes. Aerated compost tea is a probiotic for the garden. Laying cardboard then mulching over it is a honey pot for earth worms. Certain plants are extremely beneficial to the soil, especially hemp.
Any shortages are due to mismanagement, not scarcity.
Having followed Guy for 10 years, I have never heard a good argument presented against his case, only name calling. I would love to hear what you folks have to say about the “predicament”. I don’t want to believe what he says, but still do.
At this site, most PP members are familiar with the exponential function as it applies to natural resources, population growth, etc. That insight was a powerful change agent in my life ten years ago as I began to transition to a more resilient lifestyle. Notice I did not say “sustainable” lifestyle. It is my belief that the inevitable future of mankind is total destruction - we just can’t escape the tyranny of self-interest and personal corruption.
If you spend a moment thinking about the exponential function you will see it. Even if per capita consumption decreases dramatically, the exponential function will make a mockery of those gains promptly. If you think about the world around you, your observations will tell you that we are on the road to destruction - no need for me to catalog the factors. The heart of man is dark - and darkening. You’re experience will confirm the truth of that statement.
Annihilation is the destiny of mankind in his current form on Earth.
If this sounds familiar, it may be because such a fate was predicted in the Judeo-Christian scriptures and has become widely known in the western world. God understands the exponential function better than mankind - perhaps it’s time to think about what comes after death.
Rector
Please understand, other…much more powerful…people have been fretting about these same topics for many years now. You do not elect them and they are not subject to public attitudes. Instead, they are involved in whom is elected and for shaping public attitudes. And, they have been busy.
Even though the Earth’s climate has been cooling for the last 6,000 years, you have been deliberately convinced it has been dangerously warming, instead.
You have been taught Man-Made CO2 (18PPM) is changing Earth’s Climate, when CO2 does not drive the climate, nor does it cause climatic warming, and is completely meaningless to climate change. Even removing ALL Man-Made CO2 would not alter Earth’s climate in the least. But the odds are you have already rejected this notion, out-of-hand, due to the profound effects of many years of propaganda you have been subjected too.
The population problem is not that much of a problem, if the goal is to reduce it. But what part of Earth’s population would one seek to reduce the most? What would work best to reduce a population, which might become upset it was being reduced? What method of population reduction would be the most effective, and politically safe, while being entirely removed from the volition of those being “reduced?”
The best way to reduce the population is via disease…just like with AIDS, and with COVID19, and a host of other illnesses. Disease is much better than gassing, or shooting, or radioactive explosions…and escapes the problematic political issues around the term “genocide.”
Yes. The “cure” for Humanity is already in play. So, the game now is to see if your particular genetics makes it past “the cut.”
Evolution In Action.
Great comment!
Great refrain: IT’S A FREAKING VACUUM!
“Bodge” - what a beautiful, perfectly wonderful word. Thanks.
You said “because they have the numbers to overwhelm local desires in the locales over which they exert economic, cultural, and political power. That’s not democracy”
It is democracy, the majority rules. 50% + 1 and you win. That’s why we have limits on government power through the constitution. Unfortunately those have been whittled away through tortuous interpretations of what the constitution says.
Many people think democracy is the ideal form of government and complain when faced with undemocratic outcomes. Democracy can be described as two wolves and a sheep deciding what’s for dinner. When you are one of the wolves it’s a great system. When you are the sheep it’s not so great. The US was not intended to be a democracy. It was designed as a representative republic. We abandon that at our peril.
Good Sunday Mike from Jersey,
I remember learning that when a human is born, the newborn actually breathes in bacteria in the air which are necessary for good digestion.I did not know this. The studies I have seen suggested the bacteria issue was influenced by the berthing method. [1]
interconnections between humans and the ecosphere of this planet which are as yet unknown but nonetheless necessary for life.If this is the case, should we come to know it?
You can’t go into space without fossil energy. All of Earth’s fossil fuel reserves (that can be extracted at an energy profit, that is) will have been long burnt by the end of this century.
If more people knew this they might think twice about having children. Only once it becomes common knowledge that our energy descent with its accompanying die-off is inevitable, will we have any chance of voluntarily deducing population size in order to create some sort of soft landing.
Space colonization, even harnessing any harvestable space resources, is clearly not happening, not today and not tomorrow. So what? And just what is the downside of being curious or taking risks? Seems all typically human to me.
Some people will devote their lives to farming, some to exploration, some to ecology, some to living as self-reliantly as possible. Others will dream about space. Again, so what?
Dreams and efforts into space are not the cause of any of our problems today. Perhaps they are symptoms of underlying problems? The depletion of fossil fuels is not because someone wants to explore low earth orbit or even the moon and beyond.
You can't go into space without fossil energy.What does this mean @climber99 ? Rocket fuel is not fossil fuel, is it? Do we need fossil fuel to make rocket fuel? Rocket fuel is liquid hydrogen [1] and solid propellent fuels surely have some polymers but the main ingredients are not fossil fuels either [2]
The mass of most rockets are more than 95% fuel. Building bigger rockets with bigger payloads means more fuel is used for each launch. The current fuel for Falcon Heavy is RP-1 (a refined kerosene) and liquid oxygen, which creates a lot of carbon dioxide when burnt. The amount of kerosene in three Falcon 9 rockets is roughly 440 tonnes and RP-1 has a 34% carbon content. This amount of carbon is a drop in the ocean compared to global industrial emissions as a whole, but if the SpaceX’s plan for a rocket launch every two weeks comes to fruition, this amount of carbon (approximately 4,000 tonnes per year) will rapidly become a bigger problem.https://theconversation.com/falcon-heavy-spacex-stages-an-amazing-launch-but-what-about-the-environmental-impact-91423#:~:text=The%20current%20fuel%20for%20Falcon,has%20a%2034%25%20carbon%20content.
So what? And just what is the downside of being curious or taking risks? Seems all typically human to me.Space colonisation is the denial mechanism people use to avoid coming to terms with our overpopulation and inevitable collapse. If people really understood how impossible it is, along with our environmental predicament, they'd be lobbying hard for change here on Earth. The hope of space colonisation provides an "out". Another thing I didn't mention before. It would be one thing to send a few hundred or thousands, or even millions of people to Mars. But BILLIONS, meaning that it will somehow allow us to escape overpopulation here???? Not ever going to happen. Based on the number above, let's say each rocket can take 200 people. Let's also say we'll take 2 billion people. So that is 10 million flights. At 440 tonnes per flight, that is 5 billion tonnes. With 136 kg per barrels of oil, that is over 30 billion barrels of oil. The world consumes 35 billion barrels of oil a year. And I thought we were going to run out of oil.
Ision, always on alert for your posts; I get such a cacophony of feelings when you comment.
I jumped on then off the global warming band wagon when I learned the Sun and the Earth’s position in the Milky Way are the most important factors determining Earths’ temperature, and that CO2 has NOTHING to do with Global Warming.
I figured because the Earth is actually cooling and even mini ice ages can create wide spread famines, the “global warming” was actually man made with all the chem trailing and advanced geothermal engineering technology/patents.
When the “Global Warming” meme went mainstream (msm), there went my BS meter!
Should we expect a more virulent form of the/another virus down the pike?
You are looking at the micro. This post is particularly about the macro. Yes individuals can collect water in a cistern, it has been done for millenia.
Unfortunately that does not water hundreds of thousands of sq.miles of farms. The aquifer that supplies the farms in the Punjab is being pumped at 145% of recharge rate.
https://india.mongabay.com/2019/07/hope-runs-dry-as-groundwater-sources-in-punjab-drop-to-alarming-levels/
The Punjab is India’s bread basket. it is the equivalent of our Midwest. Wells are having to be driven deeper, where water is scarcer. The situation is identical in the US with the Ogallala aquifer.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-ogallala-aquifer/#:~:text=Today%20the%20Ogallala%20Aquifer%20is,keep%20up%20with%20human%20demands.
The Green Revolution fueled by fossil fuels enabled farmers to mine the soil. The Green Revolution relies on vast amounts of chemical inputs… As chemical fertilization increases water demands increase as well. As fertilizer use increases salt builds up in the soil. I lived in an area in India that averaged 14 inches of rain a year. That is sufficient for individual use but not for agriculture. Farmers in India are committing suicide in record numbers.
Ms. Vandana Shiva ; If one were to read anything or watch anything on this topic this is the absolute best, first place to start. It is short less than 10 minutes but profound.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nze2K2hgTqY
“Many of the world’s great rivers – such as the Indus, the Colorado, and the Yellow rivers – no longer reach the ocean, turning once-productive deltas into biological deserts.”
https://www.internationalrivers.org/rivers-in-crisis#:~:text=Many%20of%20the%20world’s%20great,productive%20deltas%20into%20biological%20deserts.
There has been a somewhat unfortunate issue with PP. It is supposedly based on the three e’s but as quite a few others have pointed out there is little discussion of the environment. The discussions are mostly centered on markets and oil. The rare discussions on the environment are usually about climate change. Unfortunately the entire environmental movement has been hijacked by climate change.
Water is seriously undervalued. It has been on the radar of the multinational pirates for quite awhile. Most people have been unaware of that fact. But the fact remains we don’t exist w/o a good clean source of water and it is becoming more and more difficult to find.
Mark_BC, just wondering if all those billions of people will survive going through the Van Allen Belt to get to some unknown destination in space. Don’t you think it’s a curious thing that the ONLY country that EVER made it to the Moon was the US?
Are we THAT exceptional?
Sorry, but if folks believe space is gonna save us, I’ve got tickets for sale to LaLaLand. Musk is not really working on space travel for rich people. He’s working on space weapon(s) - the digital net over everybody and everything.
I say money spent on so called Space colonization is a waste of money and precious resources. It ain’t gonna happen. In the mid sixties when I was in grade school, I was taught we were gonna colonize the Moon.
How’s that Moon colonization coming along after 50+ years?
MohammedMast, how are ya doing today? Things are a little rough in my corner of the world. We have a trouble maker in our village, I have a squatter in my Airbnb that will not leave and bc of Covid, I can’t evict her! The Hubby is completely disturbed today.
I think it’s the effect the solar eclipse - bad mojo.
But I’m digresssing. Back to the water and micro v macro discussion.
If a large percentage of the population has a clean source of water collected in a cistern type container on the micro level then the macro issue is less of an emergency because lots and lots of mircos add up to macro, and the result of most folks having access to drinking water will be increased security, calmer people, and we buy time to work a another plan.
Remember the Crash Course? It’s better to be 8% prepared rather than zero% prepared.
I’m just thinking about the US, I know other countries have their issues, but I live here so this is where my concerns are focused. The more each of us has built in resilience - like water collection - the better chances of surviving and thriving and helping others.
Will we all have to revert to some level of subsistence farming? I think so.
David, that study says that microbial transmissions can (and do) come from the mother but also comes from other different sources as well. The study actually speaks of trying - in the future - to trace the various ways in which bacterial colonies are acquired by individuals as they age. Other studies clearly indicate the existence of environmental factors in the acquisition of microbial colonies. For instance, this study notes:
These latter observations emphasize the importance of a history of numerous common environmental exposures in shaping gut microbial ecology. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3376388/That is exactly the point that I am making. We are not separated from the ecosphere but rather are a part of it. In regards to your question:
If this is the case, should we come to know it?I am not sure what you mean. Could you clarify that? Studies of the interconnections in the ecosphere are going on all the time.
Well Rector, the good news is that you cannot destroy consciousness. Every single material body is destined for annihilation - even the mountains, even universes. In every square inch of soil the hard struggle for material existence is taking place - life and death battles. Humans are not exempt.
For humans, our consciousness will determine our next destination at the time of death, however it’s only the body that is annihilated. Matter does not move spirit, quite the opposite and spirit/consciousness cannot be destroyed.
Being prepared for the Clusterf- coming our way due to piss poor managers is one thing, but the real thing to be prepared for is the time of death.