Policy & Solutions

[SteveMDFP]

A thread for the "Policy & Solutions" thread that was mistakenly created in the "Arctic Sea Ice" section of the forum, rather that the "Policy & Solutions" section.

[Eco-Author]

Ugh...
Sorry...
Didn't know this section of the forum even existed! 

[Eco-Author]

only backup roads and the roads needed to build it shown... Would be rail based...

[SteveMDFP]

only backup roads and the roads needed to build it shown... Would be rail based...

Looks great for left-to-right traffic.  Top to bottom, maybe not.  Wouldn't a couple of roundabouts accomplish the same result?
Is this part of a larger document?

And hey, we were all newbies once.

[GoSouthYoungins]

3 simple policies solve all our problems...

1) Carbon tax, increasing annually (redistributed evenly among public except $ set aside for policy #2)
2) Payments for carbon sequestration
3) Homestead Act 2.0

[SteveMDFP]

3 simple policies solve all our problems...

1) Carbon tax, increasing annually (redistributed evenly among public except $ set aside for policy #2)
2) Payments for carbon sequestration
3) Homestead Act 2.0

I'd certainly agree wholeheartedly with 1 and 2.  It's essential and potentially powerful.
As for #3, I actually think a given population can be fed and supported in a much more energy- and resource-efficient way in high density rather than low.

Human beings end up needing a lot of stuff and services.  Providing this in concentrated areas permits economies of scale in these efforts across much shorter distances.  Just think of medical care and a balanced diet needs, for example.  Innumerable single family farms just aren't going to be satisfactory for the residents.  Shipping foods and goods in huge amounts into cities might seem resource-intensive, but providing comparable services across vast landscapes would be more so.

[GoSouthYoungins]

3 simple policies solve all our problems...

1) Carbon tax, increasing annually (redistributed evenly among public except $ set aside for policy #2)
2) Payments for carbon sequestration
3) Homestead Act 2.0

I'd certainly agree wholeheartedly with 1 and 2.  It's essential and potentially powerful.
As for #3, I actually think a given population can be fed and supported in a much more energy- and resource-efficient way in high density rather than low.

Human beings end up needing a lot of stuff and services.  Providing this in concentrated areas permits economies of scale in these efforts across much shorter distances.  Just think of medical care and a balanced diet needs, for example.  Innumerable single family farms just aren't going to be satisfactory for the residents.  Shipping foods and goods in huge amounts into cities might seem resource-intensive, but providing comparable services across vast landscapes would be more so.

A homestead act wouldn't kidnap people from cities and drop them off in the middle of nowhere. It just makes it free for something to homestead a piece of land, and gives them ownership.  Cities would still be a thing. The free market would work all that out. Free markets are amazing, they just need the correct inputs. Right now our "free market" sucks cuz external pollution costs are ignored, and fiat money allows for ridiculous boondoggles like fracking or the financial sector being a huge portion of the economy.

[AbruptSLR]

3 simple policies solve all our problems...

1) Carbon tax, increasing annually (redistributed evenly among public except $ set aside for policy #2)
2) Payments for carbon sequestration
3) Homestead Act 2.0

I'd certainly agree wholeheartedly with 1 and 2.  It's essential and potentially powerful.
As for #3, I actually think a given population can be fed and supported in a much more energy- and resource-efficient way in high density rather than low.

Human beings end up needing a lot of stuff and services.  Providing this in concentrated areas permits economies of scale in these efforts across much shorter distances.  Just think of medical care and a balanced diet needs, for example.  Innumerable single family farms just aren't going to be satisfactory for the residents.  Shipping foods and goods in huge amounts into cities might seem resource-intensive, but providing comparable services across vast landscapes would be more so.

While it can be useful to identify possible policy solutions to climate change, I note that ideas that are not implemented are not 'solutions' but are merely ideas.

[GoSouthYoungins]

While it can be useful to identify possible policy solutions to climate change, I note that ideas that are not implemented are not 'solutions' but are merely ideas.

So this thread is for discussing already implemented solutions? That's stupid.

[AbruptSLR]

While it can be useful to identify possible policy solutions to climate change, I note that ideas that are not implemented are not 'solutions' but are merely ideas.

So this thread is for discussing already implemented solutions? That's stupid.

What is stupid is policymakers (such as those behind the Kyoto Protocols) who say that they are implementing solutions in order to keep the public pacified, and then kick the radiative forcing ball down the road.

[SteveMDFP]

While it can be useful to identify possible policy solutions to climate change, I note that ideas that are not implemented are not 'solutions' but are merely ideas.

Absolutely.  But just as the the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, the implemented solution begins with an idea.

If you mean that it's far past time to move from the idea of a carbon fee to implementation, I wholeheartedly agree.  Way past time.
;-)

[Bruce Steele]

As much as I'd like to believe we can have a back to the land movement there are some inefficiencies in the current farmers market model sales route that means it costs more carbon than the commodity crops grocery store alternative.  It takes a lot more gasoline to move hundreds of F-250 pick-ups with a few cases of produce on the farmer market routes than shipping with semi trucks and shipping hubs.
Back to the land is a nice romantic notion , and I'm a romantic and struggle every day with how to actually farm a small farm and pay for it at the same time. I for the life of me can't figure out how to do it without lots of fuel. The grocery store market does promote vast concentration of farm animals and some inhuman treatment due to those densities but it delivers cheap food. I am forced to somehow compete ,and with a conscience. Tuff nut that
 I wish there was a way to have a carbon footprint labeling law on all food, including restaurants. It is a pipe dream but I wish we had one and that it was part of the carbon tax in 1) carbon tax , increasing annually . As envisioned by GSY
 So in my vision you include some way to make food preferences accountable by carbon footprint labeling and requisite carbon taxes to reflect air shipment , luxury foods , restaurant footprints hopefully you will  come up with methods to maybe benefit the frugal. Both producers and consumers .
I can hear it now from regulators " we don't reward frugality " 

Ideally you could pay carbon taxes on the imbedded costs of electric water pumps, electric tractors trucks etc. and solar panels to power it all. After those initial costs you could make a living and sell your products with a low carbon footprint rating . This rating would mean the customer would have a reason to buy your produce, it would cost them less. Commodity farmers might outcompete small farmers at this game but if a reduction in carbon is the goal we should favor the best solutions.

The cost of meat would show it's carbon costs and the price with carbon taxes might discourage extravagance, and over indulgence. Some fish would be surprisingly inexpensive.

  Reward the frugal, that's the policy and it turns the current system on it's head which is what we need.
 

[SteveMDFP]

  Reward the frugal, that's the policy and it turns the current system on it's head which is what we need.

Thanks, Bruce.  You always provide such thoughtful commentary.  And as someone who is diligently trying to "walk the walk," you have real credibility.

Of course, a substantial carbon fee will convey a carbon-intensity signal for the consumer, embedded in the price.  When nothing else motivates, price will.

[Bruce Steele]

Thanks Steve, wish I could do a better job of walking the walk. Driving to meetings really drives me nuts. We do get more done on conference calls these days but they aren't a very good replacement when dealing with any intergroup conflicts. I would like to share an excerpt from a planning document as a response to Acidification in Calif waters and what we should do about it. It is in comment stage right now .
" Systematically integrate OA and coasts and oceans into Calif. GHA greenhouse emissions reduction plan.
 Reduce the carbon footprint of seafood consumption in the state. The first step is to evaluate the potential for the environmental , economic , and social costs and benefits of incentivizing consumption of locally sourced products ( wild capture, aquaculture ) and reducing imports of foreign sourced products.
 If warranted work with seafood certification and rating programs to integrate carbon footprint information into rating systems and public education products."

This is just a part of a much larger document but it may reflect part of my earlier inputs into the process of brainstorming this effort. It is policy development in it's infancy. It may end up on the cutting room floor but for now it's in there.  Carbon footprint information in rating systems so the public can make informed decisions.
 
Much of politics is dogged persistence , doesn't always turn to results but it is how policy is developed.

[AbruptSLR]

While it can be useful to identify possible policy solutions to climate change, I note that ideas that are not implemented are not 'solutions' but are merely ideas.

Absolutely.  But just as the the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, the implemented solution begins with an idea.

If you mean that it's far past time to move from the idea of a carbon fee to implementation, I wholeheartedly agree.  Way past time.
;-)

As I have made scores of posts for several years supporting the implementation of a progressive carbon fee with a tax dividend (as suggested by Hansen many years ago); I certainly do mean that it is way past time for the successful implementation of such measures.

That said, I believe that the most significant problem is the uncertainty that both decisionmakers and scientists hide behind in order to deny the severity.

The linked article has many honorable scientists expressing some degree of surprise that James Hansen was largely correct in his 1988 testimony to Congress about climate change, but very little action was taken despite his very lucid explanations.  In my opinion, Hansen was so accurate because he honestly calibrated his somewhat simplified climate models to the paleo-record. 

Title: "Judgment on Hansen's '88 climate testimony: 'He was right'"

https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2018/06/judgment-on-hansens-88-climate-testimony-he-was-right/

Extract: "Hansen in that 1988 congressional testimony nailed it, adds Texas A&M scientist Andrew Dessler. “You could have reached an alternative conclusion” based on the science at that time, he says, pointing to the 1990 IPCC conclusion that the observed warming at that point was consistent with global warming evidence, but also with natural variability.

“He was kind of out on a limb on one end of how you could read the data,” Dessler continued. “But it turned out he was right.”"

Hansen has warned about the ice-climate feedback that is clear in the paleo-record but the IPCC continues to err on the side of least drama with regard to presenting this, and may other positive feedback mechanisms, to both the public and to decisionmakers.

How can society solve a problem that it collectively chooses not to face?

[AbruptSLR]

The Fourth Industrial Revolution with present different ways (both positive and negative) for addressing uncertainty: in climate change, in the economy and in society:

Title: "What is the Fourth Industrial Revolution"

https://www.weforum.org/centre-for-the-fourth-industrial-revolution/about

[oren]

3 simple policies solve all our problems...

1) Carbon tax, increasing annually (redistributed evenly among public except $ set aside for policy #2)
2) Payments for carbon sequestration
3) Homestead Act 2.0

1 and 2 yes. Add another - payments for building a massive renewables electricity grid.

[SteveMDFP]

A homestead act wouldn't kidnap people from cities and drop them off in the middle of nowhere. It just makes it free for something to homestead a piece of land, and gives them ownership.  Cities would still be a thing. The free market would work all that out. Free markets are amazing, they just need the correct inputs. Right now our "free market" sucks cuz external pollution costs are ignored, and fiat money allows for ridiculous boondoggles like fracking or the financial sector being a huge portion of the economy.

Well, I'm glad you're not advocating marching city-dwellers into the countryside at gunpoint.  If homesteading 2 acres is voluntary, I certainly have no objection.  However, I think we effectively *already* have that.  Buying a couple of acres in Minnesota, say, is way cheaper than owning a modest condo in a city.

I'd still suggest, though, that maintaining rural populations is far more resource-intensive per capita than maintaining urban populations.

[wili]

Here's an essay on de-industrializing ag that some may find interesting/useful, perhaps:

https://www.resilience.org/stories/2006-11-17/fifty-million-farmers/

Is it possible, then, that a solution lies in another direction altogether—perhaps in deliberately de-industrializing production, but doing so intelligently, using information we have gained from the science of ecology, as well as from traditional and indigenous farming methods, in order to reduce environmental impacts while maintaining total yields at a level high enough to avert widespread famine?

The main historical example pointed to is the Cuban 'Special Period':

...the Cuban government broke up large, state-owned farms and introduced private farms, farmer co-ops, and farmer markets. Cuban farmers began breeding oxen for animal traction. The Cuban people adopted a mainly vegetarian diet, mostly involuntarily (Meat eating went from twice a day to twice a week). They increased their intake of vegetable sources of protein and farmers decreased the growing of wheat and rice (Green Revolution crops that required too many inputs). Urban gardens (including rooftop gardens) were encouraged, and today they produce 50 to 80 percent of vegetables consumed in cities.

The result was survival. The average Cuban lost 20 pounds of body weight, but in the long run the overall health of the nation’s people actually improved as a consequence...

And also the planned economies of US and UK during WWII.

See also: https://www.amazon.com/Nation-Farmers-Defeating-Crisis-American/dp/0865716234

[GoSouthYoungins]

3 simple policies solve all our problems...

1) Carbon tax, increasing annually (redistributed evenly among public except $ set aside for policy #2)
2) Payments for carbon sequestration
3) Homestead Act 2.0

1 and 2 yes. Add another - payments for building a massive renewables electricity grid.

Pretty much everything that runs on electricity takes a lot of fossil fuels to manufacture and doesn't last every long

[GoSouthYoungins]

I'd still suggest, though, that maintaining rural populations is far more resource-intensive per capita than maintaining urban populations.

Why? Every historical example of low energy and resource living is rural. Urban living requires continuous transport of resources long distances.

[GoSouthYoungins]

Here's an essay on de-industrializing ag that some may find interesting/useful, perhaps:

https://www.resilience.org/stories/2006-11-17/fifty-million-farmers/

Good article. I really like Richard Heinberg, always pragmatic.  He and Kevin Anderson are my climate change heroes.

[Bruce Steele]

 Electricity powers water pumps around here and yes solar panels require fossil fuels in manufacture but I think the energy required to produce well pumps and solar to run them is compensated by the food calories produced over the decades they will remain working. In a farm setting anyhow.
 Of course people can buy land and grow a garden in areas( Minnesota )  without the droughts that are a common part of West Coast living. You still would probably require a well at least for domestic but the drought issues we are dealing with might spread as things heat up so agricultural irrigation is a big part of avoiding those years that in the past would result in famine. If local is strictly local.
 So a back to the land movement that Heinberg was talking about back in 2006 isn't any closer to happening now than it was then. The major thing I have seen is thousands of more homeless in the intervening 12 years. Why aren't they planting victory gardens?  I am not trying to be negative I am just trying to describe it like I see it.
 Everything just seems  that when the decline starts it is going to be cliff like. Stopping that decline with intervening steps like back to the land , permaculture , or self suffiecency requires planning .
Wells, solar, home heating and food storage are costs that can't be avoided. Where the next step down from there to primitive comes might be when the pumps fail and you can't afford to fix them . I do think about that step too. Acorns, foraging , stone tools.  If things are going to completely collapse it might be easier to go there first and avoid the intervening chaos. That is always an option , but the wife ain't even close to willing.
 

[GoSouthYoungins]

 So a back to the land movement that Heinberg was talking about back in 2006 isn't any closer to happening now than it was then. The major thing I have seen is thousands of more homeless in the intervening 12 years. Why aren't they planting victory gardens?  I am not trying to be negative I am just trying to describe it like I see it.

If there was a carbon tax that was redistributed, it would give the homeless access to some capital.  If there was an annually increasing carbon tax, businesses would bring products to market that aid individuals in living low energy lives. If there was a new homestead act, the homeless could go claim something for themselves.  It does not require central planning. It just requires getting the initial conditions correct and then letting the free market work it out. Free markets are incredibly successful, but if the conditions are wrong they are successful at doing the wrong things.

[wili]

Nearly all urban centers with over one million people before the year 1800 were centers of empires, requiring vast areas of rural land to be dominated/raped to support what was obviously unsustainable/unsupportable within the city limits of those urban centers.

Today, the now countless cities of more than one million are time-empire...raping the future by depending on limited, planet-destroying fossil-death-fuels to artificially prop up these unhealthy concetrations/CAFOs of humanity...for a time.

(And I speak as a life-long urban dweller!  )

[SteveMDFP]

I'd still suggest, though, that maintaining rural populations is far more resource-intensive per capita than maintaining urban populations.

Why? Every historical example of low energy and resource living is rural. Urban living requires continuous transport of resources long distances.

Not on a per capita basis.  Rail and ocean shipping are very, very efficient on a per pound-per mile basis, for example.  Economies of scale certainly apply in agriculture too.  You can run a city of a million people without cars.  A million people scattered across 2 million acres are going to want a million cars.  You'll also need a million more miles of power lines, water and sewer, and roads.  You can generate *calories* on 2 acres, but not a balanced diet, and not year-round.  Then, of course, there's clothing, household goods, policing, medical care, education, and entertainment desires. 

Homesteading could be a necessity for food if there's a total societal breakdown.  But it would be a brutish, nasty, and short existence for most.  Given any residual societal  structure, those million people could far more easily be cared for in high-density living.  It's all about economies of scale.

[sidd]

Farming is very, very hard work. Even with machinery, farming is very hard work. Two acres is doable for survival, but you will be doing nothing else. Will need to run animals, easiest are small like chickens and rabbits. So that means you need a dog or two and a gun for large predators. You will need a barn for winter, that means barn cats. Say goodbye to you weekends, animals don't know it's sunday.

Dawn to dusk, for the rest of your life. Few can handle that.

Me and some pals personally deal with a quarter section, about 160 acres, 80-120 tillable, depending on what you consider tillable, varies from year to year. Got plenty of help. It ain't easy.

Fuel is another can of worms. Average, I figure 1/3 of the land for oilseed production for biofuel, just to cover farm needs. Depends on the crop, canola is the best, but you can crush soy (lower oil yeild), camelina or others.

I think Mr. Steele will reinforce this.

sidd

[SteveMDFP]

Farming is very, very hard work.

Thanks, sidd.  God bless you for the path you're taking.  I simply couldn't.  Expecting others to live their lives off of 2 acres seems so unrealistic to me.  When the time comes that I assess I'm burdening the planet more than helping it, I'll exit on my own terms.  We all choose our paths.  I applaud yours.

[Eco-Author]

The Sam Carena types are beyond words and go against their own reasoning thinking carbon taxes are the solution when we all know this house of cards we call a world is lucky to survive another few years!  As a published disaster I've had this to say on the subject:

In a culture of having to fight for scraps at the bottom-of-the-barrel of the military industrial complex--coupled with a long history of repeated scientific cancelations and cutbacks--climate scientists seem skittish to call for anything much beyond countering the buildup of greenhouse gases.  They warn us of extreme danger and call for a CLIMATE EMERGENCY, yet put forth solutions only 1/500th the scale that’s actually needed if we are to survive another few decades--at most--without collapsing.  In a fundamentally-flawed civilization that can’t even much survive it’s own economics let alone climate change, mega-disasters or even the rebuild of its own girth repeatedly every 50 to 100 years, it should be obvious something much more is needed! 

For any realistic, long-term climate/terraforming/clean-up plan to have any real chance of succeeding, ALL the different possible roads-to-collapse along the way have to also be addressed in this late and final hour.  Anyone solely focused on climate change--in a society that’s merely a house-of-cards to begin with--might wish to:

Talk to Syria about the dangers of the Saudi-/UAE-led ISIS terrorist merc army widely anticipated to go nation-hoping for decades to come... Mercenaries who freely use WMD and whom--two years ago--were directed to start as many forest-fires as they could. 

The world now has at least five more nuclear-armed nations then it did at the end of the cold war and threats of nuclear conflict seem to occur at least twice a year of late. EMP, dirty-bomb, and WMD attacks are things nearly any nation is capable of.

Utterly insane/superfund-levels of global pollution are popping up all over the planet, such as radioactive barrels found washing up onto the shores of Sudan from just one illegal dumping campaign by Italy.  50,000 barrels of nuclear waste was found five miles (9km) off the coast of France from 1950/60’s U.K. Nuclear programs.  Nuclear waste storage facilities such as the Hanford refining site in Oregon along the Colorado river are also nearing legendary proportions of danger with leakages reported seemingly every other year and that threaten half a continent if not an entire ocean. 
----
I'll leave out the dozens of long overdue mega quakes and volcanic eruptions and landslide driven tsunamis that can set the entire planet on its knees over-night!  It's enraging to hear only Co2 being the key to our survivability when we can barely survive our own economics let alone what the planet can really throw at us!

[Eco-Author]

Thankfully, nearly all these different ultra-disasters and possible roads to collapse can ALL be addressed with very similar--if not identical--solutions like EXTREME SELF SUFFICIENCY.  Therefore, why try to solve only one specific problem at a time when All these scenarios have to be solved together or at least with each in mind?  The higher up the ladder you make your changes--or in this case, the more you change the very foundation of civilization--the more effective your solutions will be.

We have any number of overdue/looming mega-disasters, like the Japanese 2011 M9.0 earthquake/tsunami to consider, such as:

A San Andreas M8.2 earthquake is now geologically considered over a hundred years past due.
The U.S./Cascadia North West subduction-fault expected to generate a M9.4 and mega/ocean-wide tsunamis is considered likely “at any time.” 

The central U.S. New Madrid fault system capable of back-to-back M8.0’s is geologically approaching its window of activity with less than 100 years to go... 

A triple-junction fault exists under DOWNTOWN Tokyo where a M7.3-M8.0 is expected at any time and is a fault now known to be 10km shallower than the city was designed for.

A newly discovered LOCKED subduction fault right along the coast of the North Island of New Zealand is expected to generate an M8.2-8.4 quake and tsunami when it finally ruptures. 

Istanbul, Turkey--a city of 20 million--is over the last remaining section of a fault-line yet to rupture and is expected to generate up to an 8.0 quake at any time. 

On the Canary Islands, the La Palma’s shield volcano, which could create (and historically does) a mega/ocean-wide tsunamis next time it erupts, is now in its average window of activity. 

A similar volcanically-induced Tsunamis is also possible in the Western Pacific where Iwo Jima--whose summit has grown 20m since 1945 due to a building magma chamber--could potentially cause a tsunami wiping out Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo... some of the most populated cities on Earth. 
The entire southern flank of the big island of Hawaii is slumping and threatening a 100-foot ocean-wide tsunami along every pacific shoreline.  Seventy such past landslide events have happened in the Hawaiian chain in the last 20 million years.

The western-Atlantic coastal-shelf off the eastern-seaboard of the U.S. has a long history of landslide events and there are cracks along the edge which also threatening an ocean-wide tsunami. 

The Yellowstone Super Volcano is within it’s own 600K time-frame window of eruptions and presently stirring with quake swarms. 

Italy’s Campi Flegrei smaller Super Volcano--said to have likely wiped out the Neanderthal--on the boarder of Naples and as densely populated as Hong Kong--is not only stirring but modeled to be on the doorstep of a degassing eruption event at any time.  Mt. Vesuvius--directly South of Naples is also decades past due for an eruption.

The Apoyeque volcano in Nicaragua typically produces some of the largest explosions on Earth every 2,000 years and has just entered its average window of possible activity.

Literally dozens of other possible smaller volcanic eruptions are possibly and easily capable of periodic year-long global winters and blackout conditions greatly reducing the effectiveness of solar.  Iceland is now said to be entering its own 150-year cycle of increased activity with potentially devastating effects on Europe.

Looming in the background of possible events as we all know are killer asteroids impacts to consider with a near repeat of the 1907 Tunguska event happening again almost exactly 100 years later also in Siberia, Russia.  Even asteroids just 30m in diameter can super-heat and explode in the atmosphere with the strength to wipe out the largest cities, not to mention the tsunamis they’d generate if one were to hit an ocean.

[Tor Bejnar]

So, with no place safe from utter catastrophe (if I read you right), what good is (quote) EXTREME SELF SUFFICIENCY? [You can shout louder if you used Buddy's tools  ]  I'd rather be a fairly good neighbor to family and stranger, alike.  There are lots of survivalists in Montana, I hear; I wish them well.  (I know one in Georgia, too.)

[sidd]

Don't get me wrong, i definitely am not on the farm full time, like i said, we got help. I probably spend more time on the road than most, and probably more than i spend on the farm.  A buncha other people grow for us, we send the fresh oil into restaurants and food service, collect the used oil back before we turn it into biodiesel. Bigger operation than me and a couple guys who got a farm. But that's how it started.

When all is done and dusted, i figure we're doin about a three quarters of a million US gallons of biodiesel outta used cooking oil a year. Drop in the bucket, but what the hell, better than nuttn.

Say 15% of that volume in soaps made outta glycerine that comes out the process (food service workers love it, the glycerine helps their hands from the constant washing)  and a couple thousand tons of food waste that we filter out from the used oil. That gets composted and returned to the land (quite acidic, so you need to neutralize with lime or sumpn ...)

Land got to be rested, cant keep sucking outta it forever without putting it in pasture now and then. (Unless you are happy with turning the soil into a lifeless sterile medium that you inject with fertilizer and poisons. Which i see in the heartlands all too heartbreakingly often)

So you need to rotate grazers in and out, do the fencing right, send the chickens in after to keep the ticks down (another reason for chickens, they wander around all day eating ticks )

As you may imagine, i deal with farmers a lot. All over fifty, kids run away to the cities as fast as they can. (except the Amish, those guys are a different story. Suprprising how many kids come back after rumspringa. They're the only young ones i know, i think. But Amish movin out too, Mexico is a big destination.)

It's a hard life on the farm. Anyone expecting an idyll is grossly misled.

sidd

[TerryM]

sidd
The paths that you and Bruce Steele have chosen are inspirational.


I hope you'll have more conversations with your "Deplorable" neighbors to report on as the election approaches. I fear that they're still not waiting on the latest revelations from Mueller and Co. before they decide which lever to pull.
Terry

[sidd]

My deplorable neighbours are busy getting on with their lives, trying to survive. They pretty much tune out media drama. But i dunno if they will bother to vote this year.

On the other hand, i didn't think they'd all come out in 2016 ...

sidd

[etienne]

Gardening is also much more difficult than expected. As hobby organic gardener, it took me 4 years to get some results. If I had choosen to make my life on 2 acres, I would have starved. Right now, I'm happy when I can share my oversupply with the neighbours.

[etienne]

My wife said we should look for somebody who could develop a garden oversupply sharing app. You could offer the products and other people could reserve them and come around.

[TerryM]

My wife said we should look for somebody who could develop a garden oversupply sharing app. You could offer the products and other people could reserve them and come around.

Some of the locals have a large picnic table at the road loaded with fresh veggies and a cigar box for donations.
It does require some degree of trust.
Terry

[sidd]

Re: "If I had choosen to make my life on 2 acres, I would have starved"

Amen. You know it. There are very few i know that could survive farming for themselves, especially in places with semi serious winter. Including me, and i been doin it forawhile.

sidd

[Tor Bejnar]

And some poor soul had to smoke the cigars! 

I've bought honey that way, and the sweet stuff ain't cheep, although the box was iron and not particularly moveable; the folks in my day-trip car pool bought about a gallon.  (I had my checkbook with me, by chance - obviously, they weren't accepting credit cards.)

[Bruce Steele]

Honestly it's not as physically difficult as it is mentally so.
In the rhythm of it, chores twice a day , my charges waiting . It is not bad , they are happy and they can raise my mood. The life death thing is really tough however , I mean they trust me ,hell they like me.
But,
If the pigs and I can prove we can run a farm without fossil fuels to run equipment well for me that
makes the years efforts worthwhile .
It is squash season and acorns are coming soon.
I am lucky today ,
A family of Oaxacans are going to start farming/gardening with me.
I have been kinda lazy lately and having help, and children around is going to help.

Re. Vegetable Excess  I have tried honor system without much trouble. Money in a bowl, make your own change.
One thing about selling roadside is the people who bother to stop and bother to come back are  generally the neighbors you'd want to meet anyhow.

Land is very expensive, wells, tractors, trucks, solar.  Margins are very tight. You could live pretty well on the hundreds of thousands of dollars it costs to get started.
My wife and I are challenging ourselves to six months without a grocery store this year. Three months last year were not a problem. The annual challenge starts January first. Volunteers ?

You gotta think years in advance to think of famine reserves. I have enough dried field corn , acorns , pigs and laying hens to get through six months and that is before this years harvest comes in.
Again it isn't that difficult but some company while gardening will be nice.

We don't have hard winters Sidd but it only rained eight inches last year. Eight years into a drought.

[oren]

Thank you sidd and Bruce for sharing your experiences.

[Eco-Author]

So, with no place safe from utter catastrophe (if I read you right), what good is (quote) EXTREME SELF SUFFICIENCY? [You can shout louder if you used Buddy's tools  ]  I'd rather be a fairly good neighbor to family and stranger, alike.  There are lots of survivalists in Montana, I hear; I wish them well.  (I know one in Georgia, too.)

I have to divide that statement into two parts... No place is 'survivable' if all you do is hope to set up a homestead and farm where everything is exposed to the elements... Yet, if you Combine hundreds of what would be individual homes into very low surface area Service & Living centers... ones with sub-industrial scale CNC/3D-Printing abilities able to build a helicopter from scratch then... Yes, you start to be able to survive the extremes at the same time having the necessary industrial base capable of cleaning up the planet before everything dies off... The facility shown below would have 98% less surface area exposed to the cold of winter or the extreme heat of summer and need next to no power to keep it livable!  Economy-of-scale are fundamental principals of design!  You get more for less... The building also have 95% less land use so fewer roads and utility connections are needed as well.... Add five, dozens or hundreds of such units around a central rail line like above and yeah... you could survive anywhere!!!  110% of fresh vegitable needs can be grown in hail proof rooftop greenhouses 24/7/365

Key locations like central Canada are well away from ALL earthquakes, well away from volcanos... ocean driven super storms... and has places high enough in elevation to avoid low land flooding and sea inundation. 

[etienne]

My wife and I are challenging ourselves to six months without a grocery store this year. Three months last year were not a problem. The annual challenge starts January first. Volunteers ?

Well, I'm happy if I just go once a week and don't buy fresh vegetables,only milk products, some meat, pasta, toilet paper...
The ISS (international space station) are better than I, they only get a cargo every 3 months.

[GoSouthYoungins]

Even people who farmed quite extensively would probably get most of their calories from elsewhere. The key in getting the stuff that needs to be fresh (the foods rich in micro nutrients) locally. Large scale farming of potatoes, grains, legumes makes sense and probably always will. Currently society goes overkill with the scale and simplicity of even the macro nutrient crops.

Right now, 98% of people in "developed" countries either don't get enough exercise to be happy and healthy, or they get their exercise while doing unproductive tasks. If the majority of people got their exercise doing more traditional tasks it would be a win, win, win. It can happen, but only if policy makes it more financially incentivized.  If goods were much more expensive, but individuals got paid for carbon negative farming, there would be a major cultural shift.

[Eco-Author]

our HIGH BAR as a race will be to clean up 450 raging unattended nuclear disasters in an era you're yet to be able to properly handle one.... I'm not for REBUILDING an obviously horrific infrastructure but combining the best-of-the-best to help us clean up the world and make it all right! This terrible RUN Away mentality as if to fear ourselves does nobody any good.. no place on earth can survive the coming radiation... no farm no homestead! Instead I've put forth a direct call to survive this in facilities that will outlast the Pyramids and that could handle even a nuclear blast 2000m away - easily possible and indeed proven. I'm sorry that the world doesn't even know its own history, ...what it itself is capable of when it really wants to try... I nor any of us would have been here if it was already past all hope. you have to see things through the eyes of what a really advanced race where, even with current technology, 580X the performance, safety, and security is possible... It's NOT just called HOPE but knowing the unfathomable depths of analytical design!

[Tor Bejnar]

...
.. Yes, you start to be able to survive the extremes at the same time having the necessary industrial base capable of cleaning up the planet before everything dies off... The facility shown below would have 98% less surface area exposed to the cold of winter or the extreme heat of summer and need next to no power to keep it livable! 
...
Key locations like central Canada are well away from ALL earthquakes, well away from volcanos... ocean driven super storms... and has places high enough in elevation to avoid low land flooding and sea inundation.

I value your 'good news' more than the 'bad news'!  I note you don't mention tornados (may be rare today, but tomorrow?) and wildfires (such as recent wheat field fires in Oregon).

[wili]

GSY, actually, potatoes and legumes can be grown quite nicely on a small scale. I have no experience with grains, but I don't see why they couldn't be grown on smaller scales in some places, too. Certainly, many people grow corn in their gardens.

[wili]

Tor, my understanding is that there is not predicted to be an increase in the numbers of tornadoes, but they will occur at times and places where they have not before (we are already seeing that). If you have other info on predictions wrt tornadoes, I would be most interested in any links you could provide on that! Thanks ahead of time.

[Eco-Author]

Hail and hurricane proof farming all internal away from the contamination/radiation of the outside world requiring 80% less water 95% less land and zero pesticides... We could live on the moon if we wanted to... no reason we couldn't recolonize earth even as bad as it can and will get.. So long as a blade of grass is growing on the planet, it will be far more hospitable than any place else we know.

[Eco-Author]

...
.. Yes, you start to be able to survive the extremes at the same time having the necessary industrial base capable of cleaning up the planet before everything dies off... The facility shown below would have 98% less surface area exposed to the cold of winter or the extreme heat of summer and need next to no power to keep it livable! 
...
Key locations like central Canada are well away from ALL earthquakes, well away from volcanos... ocean driven super storms... and has places high enough in elevation to avoid low land flooding and sea inundation.

I value your 'good news' more than the 'bad news'!  I note you don't mention tornados (may be rare today, but tomorrow?) and wildfires (such as recent wheat field fires in Oregon).

With armored meter thick industrial concrete walls, such a facility could survive a modern nuclear blast easily within 2000 meters (soviet missile trains were easily capable of this let along a solid/meant to last building)!  Even a debris-filled F5 tornado wouldn't touch such a facility... fires will be wide spread and building anything that burns will be the last thing you ever do.