Action
We need to stop feeling helpless. Everything we do has an effect. Everything is connected by cause and effect. You never know what may be gained by positive action. This common attitude of fatalistic passivity that blames others or "the system" or the government or the Democrats or the Republicans or one's lack or money or health or low position on the totem pole - this assumption of one's powerlessness - is a limiting belief.
We can slow, even reverse, the catastrophic course we're on. Stop mowing lawns. Stop cutting down trees, except where absolutely necessary. Stop believing we're going to be able to keep on burning things for energy; we don't need to.
The transition is going to be radical no matter what we do. Stop traveling except when necessary. And when you travel car pool, use public transit, choose trains over air travel, eat locally grown, naturally grown food. Stop wasting your waste; organic waste can be composted, made into biochar, returned to the Earth, or otherwise made use of.
It's much more efficient in the long run and big picture to share rather than to amass wealth or property or possessions.
Stop eating junk food and cut way back on the amount of meat (especially industrial meat) you eat. Industrial large-scale production can be good, but not making garbage such as junk mail which is almost always thrown away unread. Thousands of acres of forest are destroyed to make this junk mail. Fermentation processes can use CO2 to grow algae for either food or non-combustion energy such as hydrogen via fuel cells. A fuel cell factory was being considered for Hazelwood before this new technology was put down by the second Bush administration. We can have clean manufacturing.
Many of those on the left are emphasizing problems while neglecting solutions. An example is in the field of bioremediation. As early as the 1970's, scientists were gathering finding microbes and microbe mixes capable of hastening the biodegradation of hydrocarbons and synthetic organic toxics, and (via chelation) making metals less toxic or bioavailable (and sometimes changing them to mineral nutrients for the plants and animals in and on the soil). There is now a whole industry based on bioprospection microbes that have survived and mutated to be able to use pollutants as nutrients. The area most polluted from the J&L mill on the land now called Hazelwood Green underwent what is called, "natural attenuation" - that is, the local microbes learned to consume pollutants so well that they were actually slowly composting, making the area 8 degrees Fahrenheit warmer in the process. 30 test wells on the whole former mill site yielded the conclusion that the pollutant levels flowing into the Mon River were within government guidelines.
Good news re Everybody's Garden: Grounded Strategies https://groundedpgh.org/ will be having young people of various ages help while learning. We hope to either build or buy or get donated picnic table(s), benches, a grape arbor, and signage to point out which plants are growing, how to tend them, and how to use them. A community garden in the Hill District had this kind of very attractive signs around that garden.
Rather than look at each of our limitations as bad, we can rather see that each has a unique gift. As I age, I'm learning to see my physical limitations as a bit of a graduation from farmworker to gardening and farming teacher.
I am calling for positive action to be funded. Money properly spent can do wonders. We're seeing Earth-wide the effects of an ungoverned money system.
Jim McCue
composter and biotech researcher
412-880-7237
http://bioeverything.blogspot.com
We can slow, even reverse, the catastrophic course we're on. Stop mowing lawns. Stop cutting down trees, except where absolutely necessary. Stop believing we're going to be able to keep on burning things for energy; we don't need to.
The transition is going to be radical no matter what we do. Stop traveling except when necessary. And when you travel car pool, use public transit, choose trains over air travel, eat locally grown, naturally grown food. Stop wasting your waste; organic waste can be composted, made into biochar, returned to the Earth, or otherwise made use of.
It's much more efficient in the long run and big picture to share rather than to amass wealth or property or possessions.
Stop eating junk food and cut way back on the amount of meat (especially industrial meat) you eat. Industrial large-scale production can be good, but not making garbage such as junk mail which is almost always thrown away unread. Thousands of acres of forest are destroyed to make this junk mail. Fermentation processes can use CO2 to grow algae for either food or non-combustion energy such as hydrogen via fuel cells. A fuel cell factory was being considered for Hazelwood before this new technology was put down by the second Bush administration. We can have clean manufacturing.
Many of those on the left are emphasizing problems while neglecting solutions. An example is in the field of bioremediation. As early as the 1970's, scientists were gathering finding microbes and microbe mixes capable of hastening the biodegradation of hydrocarbons and synthetic organic toxics, and (via chelation) making metals less toxic or bioavailable (and sometimes changing them to mineral nutrients for the plants and animals in and on the soil). There is now a whole industry based on bioprospection microbes that have survived and mutated to be able to use pollutants as nutrients. The area most polluted from the J&L mill on the land now called Hazelwood Green underwent what is called, "natural attenuation" - that is, the local microbes learned to consume pollutants so well that they were actually slowly composting, making the area 8 degrees Fahrenheit warmer in the process. 30 test wells on the whole former mill site yielded the conclusion that the pollutant levels flowing into the Mon River were within government guidelines.
Good news re Everybody's Garden: Grounded Strategies https://groundedpgh.org/ will be having young people of various ages help while learning. We hope to either build or buy or get donated picnic table(s), benches, a grape arbor, and signage to point out which plants are growing, how to tend them, and how to use them. A community garden in the Hill District had this kind of very attractive signs around that garden.
Rather than look at each of our limitations as bad, we can rather see that each has a unique gift. As I age, I'm learning to see my physical limitations as a bit of a graduation from farmworker to gardening and farming teacher.
I am calling for positive action to be funded. Money properly spent can do wonders. We're seeing Earth-wide the effects of an ungoverned money system.
Jim McCue
composter and biotech researcher
412-880-7237
http://bioeverything.blogspot.com
posted by St. Jim the Composter at 1:51 PM
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