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Let's build greenhouses
Unlike many waiting helplessly for the powers-that-be to save them, some of us are in gear and working to make things better, regardless of whether we're being paid. At a time of instability, the thing to do is not to become paralyzed with fear. It's to do what you can - the best you can - whatever you're good at (that's what you enjoy the most). If we panic and stop trying to provide useful goods and services to each other, with the reasoning that it's no use, then we become part of the problem.
I want greenhouses in Hazelwood, and we could be making greenhouses for others. Both of these are moneymakers as long as we have a functioning economy. If the economy fails and we have a depression, we'd still have the greenhouses.
A greenhouse can be used to grow food when you can't afford to buy it. It's a season-extender. Growing plants use carbon dioxide, something we've got way too much of. Greenhouses can lessen our addiction to the corporate bottom lines that has such insane effects as people growing garlic in China to ship all the way here when we could be growing our own.
We can build greenhouses, with or without money.
Don't say "You can't do that" when somebody tells you, for example, that we can do without coal and it's pollution.
Farmer Darrell Frey
http://bioshelter.com
http://sustainabledesign.net
turned chemically ill farmland into paradisical productive ecosystem like it was before we modern humans started messing with it. He pioneered the use of composting indoors to warm his greenhouse, and high co2 levels from composting can help plants grow better.
A greenhouse can be a way to lessen pollution, whether from carbon dioxide or from other pollutants made growing food far away and shipping it here. To the extent we grow our own, we're saving life on Earth from the abrupt climate change that looks to me like it's going to become unbelievably bad.
But how can we do things without money? When inflation went through the roof in pre-WW2 Spain, the cooperative spirit that arose actually had things running MORE efficiently for awhile. Everybody, realizing the common emergency, worked together. People helped each other without the intermediary of a functioning money system. They called it anarchism.
Don't like bad news? Either grow up or move to another planet. We have plenty of bad news here on Earth, and your fear-caused ignorance is part of the cause of it. Here's some bad news for you, and you need to handle it:
The interactions between environmental changes such as global warming is making all systems unstable. An example is the relationship between the greenhouse effect and ozone layer thinning - two trends which are normally considered apart. Ozone layer thinning happens in the upper atmosphere because it's cold up there. Well, the greenhouse effect, because it keeps heat near the surface of the Earth - in the lower atmosphere - is actually making it even colder in the upper atmosphere. So the chemical reactions that thin the ozone layer are speeded up by the colder temperatures there. What a nightmare! We've got to stop almost all burning - coal, gas, oil, biofuel, whatever. And even that won't stop the increased levels of greenhouse gases from for instance carbon dioxide and methane being emitted by formerly frozen areas. Some feedback effects are good, such as increased photosynthesis in some areas of land and sea due to increased co2 availability and warmer temperatures; but the overall loss of stability bodes massive stress for all species. So we must go back to basics and back to the drawing board with doing what we can, high-tech or low, to deal with changes.
So my strategy is to do what I can to grow food. If I see some clear material available I want it for "greenhousing." A polyethylene tarp over my teeny garden (about thirty by thirty foot) would protect from some of the wild weather we all have in store. I could maybe grow some food nearly year round. A farmer's work is never done. You can compost year-round. Anyone involved with REAL farming knows that if you intend to get the most out of your land, you never put it "to bed for the winter." Let nature do that. When it's too cold to grow, you have to stop growing. I always get a kick out of people who shut down their gardens and even pull up their tomato plant as early as September, regardless of the weather and regardless of whether the plants are still producing. Duh, did you notice reality wasn't working the way your mind expected it to? Sorry to be rude, but I've had it up to here with people spreading can'ts around. Oh, you can't compost meat products for the garden, you can't use manure in the city, you can't grow enough food to make it worthwhile, you can't fight city hall, you can't make a car that doesn't run on gasoline, solar power isn't feasible this far north, there's not enough wind around here for cheap wind power, geothermal isn't viable in this area, and on and on and et cetera. Oh, and they say it takes months for waste biomass to compost. Au contraire! It depends on the situation. They say some pollutants persist in a soil for years - another false assumption. Given the proper circumstances, such as a bioreactor with the right circumstances - the right amount of water, the right temp, the right amount of oxygen, mixing, the right species of microbe - biomass and the pollutants in it can degrade in days rather than years.
The fact is we could have Heaven on Earth instead of what we have, because we're too busy competing to remember the most easy, natural thing - love.
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