Nathan has left a new comment on your post "Nathan has left a new comment on your post "A seco...": There is a lot that can be done within the limits of a home range but there are limits and many of us don't respect them. I eat fresh fruits and vegtables from South America all winter. If I stick to the food sources from my local area I will have to give up fresh fruits and vegtables out of season. That doesn't mean I can't eat well all winter. Fruits and vegtables can be perserved. When I say that we will have to give things up I don't mean we need to move into caves but I do believe there are limits to the what technology can do for us. Todays technological solution is often tomorows environmental problem as was the case with CFC's
My point isn't that we will not have to "give some things up", but that you can't expect people to accept a lower standard of living out of some guilty need to save the world. We will have to change how we live. We will have to learn to eat things in season and to preserve things for the off season. We will have to be more creative in how we produce our energy, how we process our waste, how we use our local resources so that we can live in a truly sustainable way. But we won't achieve that by going back two hundred years, or a thousand years. We won't achieve that by trying to get people to do without things.
All over the world now we are several generations removed from local economies. The local small producers of food and goods are gone for the most part. Some of these things will have to be recreated. We can draw on skills from the past, but doing what was done in the past is what got us here. We need to go forward and find new ways. If we keep our focus on using local resources in a way that continually renews them while producing the things we want and need then we will be taking some real steps in the right direction.
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Thank you for the additional explanation. It helps. I have been thinking about redoing the landscaping in my front yard so I won't have to use so much water and fertilizer. If I follow your line of thinking it would be better for me to redo my yard so that it celebrates the Pacific Northwest, where I live. The result will be the same but the focus not be on giving giving something up.
Redoing your yard is a great chance to look at the community of life in your area and invite it back into your space. Bringing diversity back into your yard will help you build a strong resource base. Have fun, add in edibles, etc. What do your kids think of the prospect?
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