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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Illusions about self sufficiency
  • Date: Sat, 05 Jun 2010 13:00:51 -0600


Illusions about self sufficiency

We hear a lot about self sufficiency and green living but there's an element
of self deception or illusion in it. I've refered to only working *toward*
self sufficiency, esp community type. But we don't get there 100% without
reverting to some version of the Stone Age. What the Ed Begleys of the
country don't fully realize, no matter how fervently they recycle and buy
energy efficient appliances, is how dependent we still are on thousands of
remote materials of all kinds and machinery manufactured with fossil fuels
and transported - by fossil fuels - across the country or across the planet.
I'm all for doing what we can. But there's this elephant in the energy
efficient living room. And here's the kicker: this means no amount of solar
or recycling can maintain some standard of living without the fossil fuels
and other resources we've been using up.

I see one of the books on Mother Jones site, THE SELF SUFFICIENT-ISH BIBLE.
https://www.motherearthnews.com/order/order.aspx?promocode=MMEEMA61&utm_content=MEN+Merch+6.3.10-Books&utm_campaign=Merchandise&utm_source=iPost&utm_medium=email#Item4534
A few of the points they mention:

Energy-saving tips for every room in the house.
Good. But nobody asks how much embodied energy the finished house itself
contains. How much fossil fuel energy to make and fire the brick or tiles?
How much energy to make the steel in it? To transport the lumber and
manufacture the drywall, the electrical components, the glass, the flooring,
roof and paint - not to mention utilities? They show how much energy is saved
by all their tinkering around the edges, but no mention of the vast amount of
energy that built the house itself. Without the energy to build it, where's
the house to save energy in?

Cutting waste by recycling and re-using
Good. But let's remember that everything recycled had to be manufactured
using energy in the first place. Aluminum cans are energy hogs. Without that
energy what is there to recycle?

Wholesome recipes for in-season foods
I'm all for it. Yet stoves, microwaves, refrigerators and freezers all use
energy daily, and represent a huge amount of embodied energy in their
manufacture. Without that energy how do you cook or preserve what's in season
or out? There's campfires and food drying of course.

And another: TOWARD A ZERO ENERGY HOME

Nope. A cave is zero energy, no building at all.

Another nice book from them: WHEN TECHNOLOGY FAILS

Renewable energy system for home or business.
Sounds like a wise investment. That would be wind or solar. Can't put
windmills on every house, can we. But throw in enough solar for all our
electrical needs and embodied energy sky rockets. It takes so much energy to
manufacture the panels and batteries that it takes years for a solar system
just to pay back the energy used to make it. How energy efficient is that?
Some claim enough solar to keep up our usual power consumption adds one third
to the cost of a new house. Powering the whole country with solar would cost
trillions. At least wind farms, where you can locate them, are more low tech.
As a replacement for fossil fuel power plants however, there's a problem. Our
society, our economy, demands constant, reliable power, and wind doesn't
always blow enough for every wind farm. The trick is to rebuild the
nationwide grid with enough redundancy to send whatever wind power there is
everywhere it's needed all the time. And they estimate that kind of grid
would cost as much as our entire national GDP. Doubtful. The books list of
emergency survival tips are probably pretty good though. But not for The Long
Emergency, as Kunstler termed it.

So we can work *toward* self sufficiency, hopefully community style, but our
standard of living in the future will be severely limited by how much
renewable energy we can make. We'll need to plan for a lot less electricity
and a lot less manufactured goods (and tools), and a lot less food from
somewhere else. As for the food future, it's can't be just organic but grown
and moved without machinery or gas guzzlers. Plenty of evidence for all this
is online for those inclined to research. The conclusions however are mine.
YMMV.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net
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  • [Livingontheland] Illusions about self sufficiency, Tradingpost, 06/05/2010

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