We’ve Tipped But All Is Not Lost
True wealth is in soil, gardens, and seeds
I was having an argument with someone about the effects of Climate Change and how we need to do something now to stave off the biggest effects of it in the future. He laughed at me because he believes that Jesus will return and Rapture him and his family away, leaving unbelievers (me) behind.
Nice guy, right? I have nothing against religion, but I hate how it forces people to suspend reason and act in an “I’m saved and you’re not because we don’t belong to the same church” mentality.
The sad thing is that this mentality is prevalent across our society and culture, and that’s leading to the people in power ignoring or not doing enough to pivot away from fossil fuels.
I have news for you, the green energy economy is pure greenwashing. Electric cars need a lot of Lithium to be minded and fossil fuels to make them. Wind turbines and solar panels? Those too require a lot of mining and generate toxic waste. We’ll still be generating a lot of plastic waste and we’ll still be ordering from Amazon.
There is no conceivable way to pivot to a truly clean form of energy in time. Our entire global economy and way of life are built on fossil fuels. It sounds demoralizing but there is a way for you to protect yourself and loved ones that isn’t all that radical.
Plant Trees
Years ago I read the book “The Hidden Life of Trees” and loved it. I learned a lot about how trees communicate with each other and how they have the power to change the climate in your area.
For example, I live in a heavily wooded area but close to a 4-lane highway. There’s a 10-degree temperature difference from the highway to my house. It could be 96F along the highway but it’s a cooler 86F where I live.
Trees also keep moisture around, which is technically a greenhouse gas, but that comes in handy if you’re building a food forest (more on this later).
Sterilize Yourself
The best thing you can do, and with lots of thinking, is get a vasectomy or tie your tubes. I’m not a doctor and coming to this decision is a very personal one, but the simple fact is that we have too many people on the planet wanting too many resources.
The sooner we take down the population to a manageable level, the less emissions we’ll have. Am I being a hypocrite here because I have two kids? Not at all, I got myself snipped to prevent any more accidental kids, plus my kids see the trouble brewing with the world and aren’t going to give me grandkids. Good.
Ride Your Bicycle
We camped along the Delaware beach over the July 4th holiday and took our bicycles. We loved being able to ride to places, restaurants, and even stores to get supplies. Granted, our bicycles weren’t fitted to do a lot of shopping but that can easily be accommodated in the future.
The sooner you get your ass on a bicycle and down to the store to buy your bread a milk, the sooner you’ll get healthier and realize that maybe, just maybe you don’t need to buy a lot of junk food. After all, shipping food generates greenhouse gasses too, so consider growing your own food.
Reduce your reliance on fossil fuels
Above all, we need to evaluate how to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. I’m not a dummy because I know we need oil and gas to move products and get supplies. We need manufacturing and hospitals and all the modern conveniences that give us a good quality of life. All I’m saying is that we need to evaluate how hooked on the cheap fossil fuels we are.
I think we need to look at nuclear energy again. I know that many people will gasp at that last statement but it is efficient and generates zero greenhouse gases during energy production. Granted, you need to mine the ore and there are problems with that, but Uranium is abundant in our country as opposed to Lithium, a rare earth mineral.
Build a Permaculture Garden
One of the best things we all can do is learn to become gardeners. I believe that the people who will be rich in the next few decades will be the ones who have good soil, access to water, and seeds to grow their own food.
We need to start building gardens that can grow food to complement and increasingly supplant our food supply. Imagine being able to grow your own food to feed yourself and your family.
I find myself very lucky to have had a family that grew up in a farming village in Germany. Although my father never worked in the fields (he was too young), he imparted a lot of permaculture wisdom to my sister and me.
We need to embrace permaculture gardening and a growing mindset. We need to rebuild food forests where you live, right now, and learn to protect the soil. We need to collect water and store it so we don’t use up our groundwater and help it recharge again.
We need to have a few chickens and keep bees.
We need to collect seeds and share them with our friends. We need to build a community where we can help one another and share resources because it’s not going to be a “nice to have” but a “must have.”
We need to think about how to optimize and sustainably build our own food forests and gardens so that we can build an oasis of life and stave off as best as we can the coming extinction event.
Learn to Preserve
Another important thing we need to re-learn is to preserve our food for the winter. We need to step up our game in jarring and storing food for longer periods of time. Growing strawberries and other fruits? Turn them into jam!
Hell, we need to re-learn how to ferment foods again, old school. My grandmother used to make 55 gallons of saurkraut every year and that lasted a whole winter and early spring for a family of 12.
End Notes
We need to re-learn a lot of the old ways, the ways of life and living that didn’t require fossil fuels. We need to learn permaculture growing practices and stop birthing new consumers. We can’t continue on this mindless consumption path and not expect things to break. Hell, the North Atlantic Ocean temperature is 4.2 standard deviations above the mean. That’s one hell of an anomaly and it leads me to believe we’ve tipped this year.
Our quality of life is only going to go downhill and those that are unprepared will suffer the most. They might not make it. We can survive in a warming world but it won’t be pretty, so prepare now. You’ve been warned.
Follow Me Here
