Please Take Time to read

I would say that education people to understand a situation and its implications fully, is the most necessary and therefore most important factor in brining about a positive change in the world. And thus should be at the forefront of what the TI do. Along side this, equal weight should be given to describing the practical, real physical ways we can implement changes in our lives. Creating low-impact even zero-carbon homes, and becoming energy, water and food self-sufficient. These are the main actions we can start to take. They are very simple and surprisingly cheap to setup. I personally became self-sufficient in food, water and energy for less than £5000 on less space than quarter of a football pitch/quarter of an acre – what an investment!!!

 Starting the move toward food self-sufficiency is one of the best things we as individuals can undertake if we are to seriously reduce our negative impact on Earth, and to instead create a positive and beneficial relationship with our land and wider environment/community.

The best incentive for doing these things now, today, is the ability for these actions to dramatically reduce utility bills for water, electricity/gas and food. The big one is food. Consider these few facts:

Food supply chain is the largest energy user in the UK

Food production and distribution contributes up to 22% of the UK’s total greenhouse emissions

Food travels further than any other product - 129 km compared to the average product travel of 94 km

Nearly 30% of household waste is food waste

All our current food sources, unless it is certifiably organic, will be chocked full of chemicals which a deleterious to the human body, often even impairing the taste at the same time.

By not being sufficiently educated to the point where we feel compelled beyond complacency to take real, physical actions; will inevitably result in ineffective/inadequate action or no action at all. This is largly what we see at the moment if we are really honest with ourselves and take the time to really look with an unclouded mind.

People’s minds tend to find very tricky and seemingly logically convenient ways to skirt around the real issues of becoming self-sufficient in food, water and energy. “Oh we can put it off for another year” or “that doesn’t need to be done because of [insert you random and silly reason for not doing something which is simple, easy and very necessary considering the reasons]” are common when we start to try to make real physical change. If we observe the severity of our current situation and the easy, simple and relatively inexpensive things we can do to combat them, then I think that to not just get on and do them really highlights the insanity with which we live. We have become so habituated to having been able to just pop out to buy a 'kings-feast' of food and generally living very high-impact lives, that we are very much addicted, unconsciously, to a system that is destroying us and the whole Earth! There has never been such a high level of collective and mostly excepted form of sanity! ‘High-impact’ is a nice way of saying you are literally destroying the planet as much as an individual can – which is what we ARE categorically doing! No matter how socially acceptable these abdominal and short-sighted means for sustaining ourselves may have become.

However, a lot of synthesis is being done with the current system also. Trying to create more eco-friendly businesses is becoming more of an economic viable idea for the owners; with public opinion growing about the ‘green issues’ and the ethicality of how they are run. With ever more people wising up about how food is created and distributed, it is becoming more lucrative to provide options that can be assured as having ‘low-food miles’, ‘organic’ or ‘green’ and ‘ethically sourced’. However, the majority of our food that comes to our table still requires literally Earth shattering amounts of hydro-carbon energy to get to the table.

I think that Mahatma Ghandi was right when he said that “we need to be the change we wish to see in the world”. And he does not refer to theories and ideas and all the excessive and thus unnecessary talk that goes with these. He means real, practical and simple changes that are the result of the changes individuals make within their own lives. Things that change the very way in which we live and thus function on Earth. We can only work so far with the current system that is eating itself to death. Then we have to disengage from it to get on and do the real work of changing the way we acquire our core needs of food, water and energy so that we do not destroy Earth in the process (that includes ourselves!). Peak oil, and peak resources in general, along with a whole host of other factors will necessitate the need for a transition to self-sufficiency and localisation. And this will also put great constraints on our ability to transition to a globalised greener world – which many think will not fully happen. It’s more likely that networking on state/county and community levels for food and other supply needs will become the norm in the near future. We may find that the failing fiscal, debt-based currencies and resource depletion will not allow for us to make the transition to national and inter-national energy grids and a greener globalised future. Also, all that this does and could allow will also have to be sourced elsewhere – such as food and gerneral global distribution supply chains breaking down and so on.

The idea of creating strong, resilient communities is the best and most simple solution to the challenges we face today. But what is the purpose in this? What was the reason we had such close community ties a generation or so ago? It was because if someone had insufficient supplies of something weather physical or emotional the larger comuinity could step in and support them. So the obvious observation and the following logical question here would be: if we – you or me - are not largely self-sufficient in meeting out own food, water and energy needs and the love and respect found within the home, how in the hell are we going to have a surplus to spare for others in our community? – which will thus allow them to flourish in a positive and constructive manner.  The plain and simple answer is that we will not be able to. And this is at the heart why and what we need to transition toward today.

If we do not make these basic, fundamental changes to our lives then the sad fact is that we are doing more harm than good, we are more of a burden to Mother Earth than a help, we more part of the problem than its drastically needed solution. We need at least to swing the balance within our own individual lives – which is where we have the most immediate control – so that we are less of a burden to Mother Earth.

Peace, Peter.