Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

Just for the record, there are sources who estimate the potential dieoff in 
worse case scenarios. Myself, it's hard to get my head around that, but they 
make the argument. Like if endless growth and consumption goes on a few more 
years it'll take five earths to supply us. There's even a dieoff list, 
the_dieoff_QA@yahoogroups.com . I don't esp recommend it for most people tho. 
What most Americans don't realize is dieoff is already accelerating in 
pockets of extreme poverty and crowding and adverse climate. Google 
Bangladesh. It's reasonable to expect that will grow worse as competition for 
land and water and fossil fuels heats up (pun intended). Most populations 
live on the seacoasts of the world, vulnerable if sea levels wipe out coastal 
slums and farmland. A two-meter rise would create a couple billion 
environmental refugees - and who'll allow those fleeing populations to 
overrun them? Not US (think Mexico with Pemex oil running low already and 
drug wars). Farmland in equatorial Africa is increasingly desertified and 
armed conflicts over resources is decimating whole regions.

Growing what we can where we are and living modestly on the land is the exact 
opposite of the cancer eating the planet. Personally I don't want to save the 
whole world, just some of those who make the herculean effort to think and 
act responsibly.

These are hard issues to cover on any list, and I appreciate the restraint 
and civility shown by those with differing views. No small thing!

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

Many types of jobs will cease to exist: public relations executive,
marketing directors, et cetera. I think work will be very hands-on,
and a lot of it will revolve around food production.
    -- James Howard Kunstler, The Long Emergency, 2003
*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 1/18/2010 at 3:23 PM dan conine wrote:

>>
>> From: Smittyctz6 <cityhomesteader@gmail.com>
>> Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Cities (Astyk's blog)
>> To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing
>>      <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
>> Message-ID:
>>      <11be319b1001180757y7e18378as39e6ea7dc5113de5@mail.gmail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>>
>> This is ridiculous and probably from someone that lives on a nice piece
>of
>> land bigger than they need..
>>
>Yes, it is, and I do. I am working to build it into a community so that
>others will have work and food when civilization fails.
>> This is what we have to do?  Kill 100,000 people so that a few elite can
>> survive. I think we need to kill people that feel that way and save the
>> world from them. out of those 100,000 people 75% will be women and
>children.
>> 10% will be elderly and the sick..   There is not enough land to support
>> abandoning the cities.
>There is not enough land to support keeping them, either.
> This is the internet. Take it with a grain of salt and see the
>pointlessness of large cities. You were so upset that you misinterpreted
>the numbers. I didn't say "kill 100,000", I said "kill everything OVER
>100,000. In other words, BILLIONS need to go.
>Once you start killing, it's hard to stop. Just ask Dick Cheney and
>Donald Rumsfeld and all of the other Civilized, God Fearing "Freedom"
>boys that worked so hard to acquire resources and prop up the price of
>oil for their Texas friends by murdering and poisoning thousands of
>people (Oh, wait, that was ok because it was 'someplace else' and they
>'hated our freedoms').
>
>Solar panels on big buildings: Yeah....THAT'll work. That will provide
>about 100Kw on a sunny day to a building that uses about 100 times that
>much energy for air conditioning and pumping and heating water for their
>hot showers so they can go to work at jobs to sell bigger TVs and more
>cars.
>Most of the people in large cities are there because there are large
>cities. They have little contribution to the universe other than
>consumption and shiny, noisy crap. Until they do, you can stuff the high
>and mighty morality.
>What are people FOR? Ask yourself THAT before defending their
>overconsumptive existence and trying to 'solve' their energy and food
>issues.
>Women and children? OMGawd!! I didn't think of that. Keeping every
>fuzzy, big-eyed Disney baby calf alive in the barn makes destroying the
>planet all better now, does it?
>> The problem
>> all boils down to greed and avarice in one form or another.
>No. The problem boils down to humans consuming more than humans put back
>into the system as future usefulness. It boils down to religion and
>government and egos convincing everyone that they are 'special' beings
>with more worth than the worms in the soil. It boils down to the salt of
>the earth and the competitive swarms that shove more and more resources
>into more and more mouths without a conscious awareness of where food
>comes from, what scale of waste goes on to get it to their precious
>'civilized' hives, and what happens to the waste packaging that was
>produced to 'protect' them from their own overpopulous,
>chlorine-scrubbed behinds.
>
>You can talk about the 'sustainable growth' and 'sustainable buildings'
>all you want, but from Nature's point of view, the numbers just don't
>work. Someone is going to have to die off when TSHTF. I will probably be
>one of the first; because of all the horrible things you can be in this
>country, I'm an atheist and I don't buy the morality crap unless it
>contributes something useful to the future of the planet. The
>brainwashed masses don't cotton to that kind of thinking. They want
>absolute Truth from Absolute Power to be holding THEIR chains.
>
>I have faith in that.
>
>Dan
>