quantum change or death
This is a great time to be alive
The more I read about the interactions between environmental changes in this period of history, the more I am convinced we are at a pivotal stage. The climate changes that were at one time thought to be a thousand years away are happening now. Some say we have to change away from fossil fuels within 50 years. Some say we've got to transition within 10 years. Some think it's already too late. This is the most dramatic challenge that could be imagined. We have the opportunity to be great heroes struggling to rescue the ecosystem of which we are a part. We're all in the same boat and nobody's getting out.
We are being called to recognize each other as family. Those dinosaur bones at Carnegie Museum are parts of beings that no longer exist, and there's no rule that says that human beings will exist forever on Earth either.
We've got to quickly change the way we do a lot of things, not just in regard to fossil fuels. Since we're increasing the amount of carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere each year, and since we can't easily speed up the removal of the co2 already there, expect that the weather will continue to become even more extreme. We're going to have to adapt to that.
We should be open-minded to proposals to attempt to stabilize the Earth's ecosystem by new technologies. Every choice we make is risky, but the greatest risk is if we don't try. One interesting possibility of a partial technological fix is powdered iron as a nutrient to stimulate the growth of the algae at the bottom of the food chain in the ocean (being plants, the algae would absorb co2). There are other researchers with the idea of cooling the Earth by putting various materials into the atmosphere to lessen the amount of sunlight in. And there are those who think things can be helped significantly by burying carbon dioxide underground. None of these, of course, can be but a small part of the solutions to the whole system crisis we're in. Besides protecting the forest and plants, and dramatically increasing the efficiency with which we use energy, technologies such as solar and wind are rapidly progressing in sophistication and need to be embraced wholeheartedly.
We're in a race to achieve not only energy independence but independence from "the grid." If you find yourself, for instance, unable to afford home heat, or suffer a power outage (due, say, to one of the coming more frequent and severe storms), you'd be in better shape if you had your own way of making electricity. If you had a solar array or wind turbine on your roof, you might be the only one in the neighborhood with electricity. And (if we ever get a sane government) you would be able to sell any electricity you don't need to your neigbors or back to the electric company.
Why, in discussion about green solutions, is recycling human manure rarely mentioned? This change in waste management is vital to our survival.
If some smart entrepreneur had the good sense to start manufacturing composting toilets that were as affordable as regular toilets, we'd have better soil by helping nature do it's own recycling. That's the way it was before we invented the flush toilet, and that's the way it still is for most people in the world. And that's the way it should be. In this time of great difficulties, we need to drop the false modesty and talk about some things that have been taboo. Farm people know much better than city people that good soil is made from animal manures and the dead bodies of plants and animals. And humans are animals.
Our manures and our dead bodies should be returned to the Earth to be recycled.
There are so many threats to our topsoil. Pollution kills the living things in soil that make for fertility. Roads and buildings get built on top of soil. We've concentrated our livestock manure in huge factory farms where it's too concentrated to be anything but a pollutant. The people of our cities consume the food grown on the soil in the country. Then, rather than our manures be recycled back to the Earth, we flush to the sewage treatment plant where it gets mixed with chemical pollutants and treated, then a large part of it is incinerated rather than returned to the Earth.
With so many changes going on in the world, the only thing for sure is if we work together things will go better. Regardless of what each of us has reason to worry about, the solution lies in finding common ground with other people. This is the moment in history in which the human species is being called to grow up.
People have always been fed and nurtured by the Earth. Now, having developed technologies capable of either destroying our civilization or establishing a paradise for all, we have to decide. What we do now will affect many generations into the future - our descendents. Our individual problems are connected. Our place now is to nurture the Earth that has given birth to us, it's time to step up to the plate. It's now or never.
Here are some websites to increase energy independence, grow more of your own food, and establish a more decentralized power grid so that we're not totally dependent on the big utilities :
homepower.com
weblife.org
nativeenergy.com
jenkinspublishing.com/garden_gallery.html
======
Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility
non-nuclear alternatives for energy
ccnr.org/#alt
======
The more I read about the interactions between environmental changes in this period of history, the more I am convinced we are at a pivotal stage. The climate changes that were at one time thought to be a thousand years away are happening now. Some say we have to change away from fossil fuels within 50 years. Some say we've got to transition within 10 years. Some think it's already too late. This is the most dramatic challenge that could be imagined. We have the opportunity to be great heroes struggling to rescue the ecosystem of which we are a part. We're all in the same boat and nobody's getting out.
We are being called to recognize each other as family. Those dinosaur bones at Carnegie Museum are parts of beings that no longer exist, and there's no rule that says that human beings will exist forever on Earth either.
We've got to quickly change the way we do a lot of things, not just in regard to fossil fuels. Since we're increasing the amount of carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere each year, and since we can't easily speed up the removal of the co2 already there, expect that the weather will continue to become even more extreme. We're going to have to adapt to that.
We should be open-minded to proposals to attempt to stabilize the Earth's ecosystem by new technologies. Every choice we make is risky, but the greatest risk is if we don't try. One interesting possibility of a partial technological fix is powdered iron as a nutrient to stimulate the growth of the algae at the bottom of the food chain in the ocean (being plants, the algae would absorb co2). There are other researchers with the idea of cooling the Earth by putting various materials into the atmosphere to lessen the amount of sunlight in. And there are those who think things can be helped significantly by burying carbon dioxide underground. None of these, of course, can be but a small part of the solutions to the whole system crisis we're in. Besides protecting the forest and plants, and dramatically increasing the efficiency with which we use energy, technologies such as solar and wind are rapidly progressing in sophistication and need to be embraced wholeheartedly.
We're in a race to achieve not only energy independence but independence from "the grid." If you find yourself, for instance, unable to afford home heat, or suffer a power outage (due, say, to one of the coming more frequent and severe storms), you'd be in better shape if you had your own way of making electricity. If you had a solar array or wind turbine on your roof, you might be the only one in the neighborhood with electricity. And (if we ever get a sane government) you would be able to sell any electricity you don't need to your neigbors or back to the electric company.
Why, in discussion about green solutions, is recycling human manure rarely mentioned? This change in waste management is vital to our survival.
If some smart entrepreneur had the good sense to start manufacturing composting toilets that were as affordable as regular toilets, we'd have better soil by helping nature do it's own recycling. That's the way it was before we invented the flush toilet, and that's the way it still is for most people in the world. And that's the way it should be. In this time of great difficulties, we need to drop the false modesty and talk about some things that have been taboo. Farm people know much better than city people that good soil is made from animal manures and the dead bodies of plants and animals. And humans are animals.
Our manures and our dead bodies should be returned to the Earth to be recycled.
There are so many threats to our topsoil. Pollution kills the living things in soil that make for fertility. Roads and buildings get built on top of soil. We've concentrated our livestock manure in huge factory farms where it's too concentrated to be anything but a pollutant. The people of our cities consume the food grown on the soil in the country. Then, rather than our manures be recycled back to the Earth, we flush to the sewage treatment plant where it gets mixed with chemical pollutants and treated, then a large part of it is incinerated rather than returned to the Earth.
With so many changes going on in the world, the only thing for sure is if we work together things will go better. Regardless of what each of us has reason to worry about, the solution lies in finding common ground with other people. This is the moment in history in which the human species is being called to grow up.
People have always been fed and nurtured by the Earth. Now, having developed technologies capable of either destroying our civilization or establishing a paradise for all, we have to decide. What we do now will affect many generations into the future - our descendents. Our individual problems are connected. Our place now is to nurture the Earth that has given birth to us, it's time to step up to the plate. It's now or never.
Here are some websites to increase energy independence, grow more of your own food, and establish a more decentralized power grid so that we're not totally dependent on the big utilities :
homepower.com
weblife.org
nativeenergy.com
jenkinspublishing.com/garden_gallery.html
======
Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility
non-nuclear alternatives for energy
ccnr.org/#alt
======
posted by St. Jim the Composter at 9:11 AM
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