Why Bother? This is why...

I recently read an article in the NY Times forwarded to me by a friend,

it talked about going green, and if it more for feeling better about ourselves

since everything is being cancelled out by carbon guzzling newcomers

like China and India. If the troubles are even worth going through.

Here is the link, I would highly recommend reading it to accompany this post.

The main point was...WHY BOTHER?

This is why I am creating my eco-project...

At first it was just to have a sanctuary where I could
rid myself of bills and live the easy life with loved ones.

Then I started reading about carbon footprints and peak oil.
Everything I wanted to do, was totally beneficial in these areas.
I would be growing my own food and producing my own energy.

Then I started learning about the life-force in plants,
and how homegrown plants are FAR superior to store bought organics.

So by reducing my carbon footprint, I am allowing myself
to have the best and cleanest possible produce, I am ridding myself of nearly
all of the common expenses that afflict most people in the western world,
and I dont have to slave away at a job I dont like because my
lifestyle revolves around more simpler activities which dont cost anything.

Dont get me wrong...this project is going to cost alot.
But nowhere near as much as if I wanted to buy some standard box house
and drive a fancy car around and go grocery shopping every couple of days.

There are more up-front costs, but after that it should be smooth sailing.
By doing this project I hope to show that by reducing our carbon footprint,
its better for our bodies, minds, souls, and wallets.

We are the Earth. What is good for the mother, is good for the kids.

Here is an excerpt from that article:

A great many things happen when you plant a vegetable garden, some of them directly related to climate change, others indirect but related nevertheless. Growing food, we forget, comprises the original solar technology: calories produced by means of photosynthesis. Years ago the cheap-energy mind discovered that more food could be produced with less effort by replacing sunlight with fossil-fuel fertilizers and pesticides, with a result that the typical calorie of food energy in your diet now requires about 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce. It’s estimated that the way we feed ourselves (or rather, allow ourselves to be fed) accounts for about a fifth of the greenhouse gas for which each of us is responsible.

Yet the sun still shines down on your yard, and photosynthesis still works so abundantly that in a thoughtfully organized vegetable garden (one planted from seed, nourished by compost from the kitchen and involving not too many drives to the garden center), you can grow the proverbial free lunch — CO2-free and dollar-free. This is the most-local food you can possibly eat (not to mention the freshest, tastiest and most nutritious), with a carbon footprint so faint that even the New Zealand lamb council dares not challenge it. And while we’re counting carbon, consider too your compost pile, which shrinks the heap of garbage your household needs trucked away even as it feeds your vegetables and sequesters carbon in your soil. What else? Well, you will probably notice that you’re getting a pretty good workout there in your garden, burning calories without having to get into the car to drive to the gym. (It is one of the absurdities of the modern division of labor that, having replaced physical labor with fossil fuel, we now have to burn even more fossil fuel to keep our unemployed bodies in shape.) Also, by engaging both body and mind, time spent in the garden is time (and energy) subtracted from electronic forms of entertainment.

Even if my actions have NO effect on reducing the climate crisis,
it is still totally beneficial and self-serving to do it anyways.
Lets face it people...we are facing a major sh*t-storm soon because
of the way our society has been (dis)functioning for the past 200 years.

Food costs rising, fuel costs skyrocketing, civilization shutting down
because of limited fossil fuels, good old global warming,
deforestation, economic crisis, and all the health issues going on.

This model for living protects the people involved from most, if not all of it.
Of course if the Earth becomes barren then we are all screwed, but I doubt
civilization will still be around long enough to make that happen.

Even if you are totally selfish...this is the best way to structure your life.
Its funny how the true "self" is actually the whole.

Changing your light bulbs will do nothing...do more for yourself and the Earth.
Things are getting bad...start preparing yourself now.
FRUIT TREES and PERMACULTURE and SIMPLE LIVING.

Umm....Happy Earth Day?

Anthony