A discursive bit of ranting

But the greatest change we need to make is from consumption to production, even if on a small scale, in our own gardens. If only 10% of us do this, there is enough for everyone. Hence the futility of revolutionaries who have no gardens, who depend upon the very system they attack, and who produce words and bullets, not food and shelter.
--Bill Mollison, Introduction to Permaculture

It seems a bit uppity to begin singing the praises of growing your own food when I have yet to actually grow anything, but our general detachment from the source of our food has bothered me for years. So many of us living in the developed world quite literally cannot feed ourselves. If all the Stop 'n Shops, Whole Foodses, and sketchy bodegas of the world suddenly disappeared, I might be able to survive, but more likely I'd just starve. This is something I am determined to change. It seems completely ridiculous to me that in regards to satisfying the most basic necessities of life I am essentially helpless.

Of course, I am a product of my world. There's no need to get upset about the fact that I would be hard pressed to survive without the public water system, because it's simply never come up. I'm not saying I want to get all "Man vs. Wild" on you, just that it's time to move in the direction of more sufficiency.

I recently saw an Exxon advert that featured Exxon engineers extolling the virtues of their new gas-extraction techniques. In the ad, one fellow states that "One way to put downward pressure on energy prices is to make more energy available." As in drill baby drill. This company and its employees were paying good money to put an ad on TV telling me that their solution to the energy crisis is to pour gasoline on a burning house. Beyond the obvious preposterousness of this concept (So you're addicted to crack, hmm, how about if we make crack cheaper? Yeah, that'll get you straightened right out), what most struck me about this ad was the focus on new technologies as a key to a brighter future. This fetishization of technology is something that I thought a lot about during my brief stint in the alternative-energy industry.

The fact is, we already have the technology to be constructing significantly more efficient buildings. Some of this technology isn't even "technology" at all: the orientation of a building, the thickness of its walls--these make huge differences in the indoor climate. Why are we building huge uninsulated boxes with no windows to simply then pump them with huge amounts of fossil fuels? The means already exist to reduce our energy consumption by an order of magnitude. Eat a little bit less meat, grow a little bit more food: you're making an impact.

So, well, none of us are likely to be building an Earthship anytime soon (though it sure would be sweet), but we can put a pot of tomatoes out on the scraggly side yard at our apartment. And maybe we can start composting and building up that scraggly side yard with yummy compost. And maybe in a year or two we can move somewhere a bit more rural and get some chickens. And a Skystream. And maybe a few dairy cows and some cheese making equipment. And an outdoor wood oven for the wholesale bread operation. And a hoop house for the microgreens...

Anybody want to come along?