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Here's a wild, crazy, dangerous idea for discussion: how about we start curtailing globalism, and encourage people to live less carbon intensive lives by buildi

Here's a wild, crazy, dangerous idea for discussion: how about we start curtailing globalism, and encourage people to live less carbon intensive lives by building economies based around what's available nearby?

Loughla 6y ago
I like that idea, and it is legitimately how I am trying to live my life, but - The problem with that is - it requires people to either migrate away from areas that are not great at producing food without massive resource investment (or bringing it in from somewhere else), or to splinter basic things like hygiene and nutrition based on region. For example - for the last 5 years my family has exclusively eaten locally. Either something we can produce from seed/start locally, animals harvested at our own farm (or hunted), or other items purchased from hyper-local areas (we defined this as within a comfortable bike ride from our home). We immediately noticed that we would need vitamin supplements to make up for the lack of certain nutrients. For example - vitamin C is in short supply in the food profile in our part of the world. We didn't want to drink pine-needle tea, because it's gross, so we had to purchase supplements. What about the people who have neither the time nor energy to devote to finding local food and/or identifying nutrition gaps in their diets? If it wasn't a hobby of mine (via low-grade prepping), we never would've known until the scurvy set in, or something else. Rickets maybe. Who knows.
- opwieurposiu 6y ago
  Wow that is really cool. How many acres/person do you need to farm for this?
  - Loughla 6y ago
    Family of 3, on 56 acres. The breakdown is as follows: 10 acres for pasture, 9 acres for vegetable/grain production, 30 acres of timber, 2 acres of pond, 5 acres of grass/brush/fallow ground at any one time. We could support 9-12 people on this amount of ground, if I had to guess, and if we had to. I like to have a lot of woods/timber for hunting and trapping as a hobby. The gardens produce WAY more than enough for our needs - but storage is an issue. Not everything lends itself to drying, canning, or pickling. So you learn to eat when the food is there and pack on pounds for when it's not. This time of year, I'm 5-10 pounds overweight; in March, right before spring, I'll be well under my regular weight. Not sure about the long-term effects of that. . . . We practice steady rotation of crops, and do square foot practices instead of traditional row crops. The time spent is minimal, once it's up and running. I can't even begin to imagine the thousands of hours we spent setting everything up, though. We've lived out there for almost 2 decades now, and are JUST getting to the point where it works.
- growlist 6y ago
  I strongly suspect there are few large settlements worldwide where it's not possible to grow produce either outdoors or in polytunnels to cater for this need. But if it were the case, we (humanity) could either move the settlements or allow an exception for the missing essentials. It would still drastically reduce freighting overall.
parasubvert 6y ago
Lots of reasons? A) We’ve globally lowered poverty to its lowest levels in history through trade. Pretty much every government And populace on earth would be against this policy except the absolute richest blocs (eg. The EU, elements of the USA). B) Globalism has already been pretty curtailed by populism the past 20 years. But this includes the good parts of globalism, like coordinated carbon reductions. C) Carbon reduction is necessarily a global coordinated solution - going local does not necessarily reduce carbon emissions, ie. oil rich nations can just locally use and trade their energy and the world isn’t any better off unless there are global treaties for trade and carbon. D) arguably curtailing globalism would condemn a whole lot of the world into poverty or mass migration due to lack of local resource, which is almost as bad a remedy as the mass migrations that will be required later this century due to carbon emissions.
- growlist 6y ago
  > mass migrations that will be required later this century due to carbon emissions. ...only if we choose not to do something about controlling fertility. But in the end I strongly suspect we'll all be travelling about a lot less. Which is fine with me. Globalism is all about destroying diversity and culture, which is an awful future.
  - parasubvert 6y ago
    I’m not so sure that’s what globalism is about? I mean, entertainment and media is a small part of the global economy dollar-wise even if it has lots of influence, local content laws as protectionism don’t harm a lot. the Japanese (Among others, say China or India) have done a pretty good job of adopting other cultures and various products without losing their uniqueness. Travel I think is a short term (2-3 year) pause.
- boo_boo 6y ago
  > oil rich nations can just locally use and trade their energy Sure, but the point is that local demand wouldn't be anywhere near the demand of the global market currently

Loughla 6y ago

I like that idea, and it is legitimately how I am trying to live my life, but - The problem with that is - it requires people to either migrate away from areas that are not great at producing food without massive resource investment (or bringing it in from somewhere else), or to splinter basic things like hygiene and nutrition based on region. For example - for the last 5 years my family has exclusively eaten locally. Either something we can produce from seed/start locally, animals harvested at our own farm (or hunted), or other items purchased from hyper-local areas (we defined this as within a comfortable bike ride from our home). We immediately noticed that we would need vitamin supplements to make up for the lack of certain nutrients. For example - vitamin C is in short supply in the food profile in our part of the world. We didn't want to drink pine-needle tea, because it's gross, so we had to purchase supplements. What about the people who have neither the time nor energy to devote to finding local food and/or identifying nutrition gaps in their diets? If it wasn't a hobby of mine (via low-grade prepping), we never would've known until the scurvy set in, or something else. Rickets maybe. Who knows.

opwieurposiu 6y ago
Wow that is really cool. How many acres/person do you need to farm for this?
- Loughla 6y ago
  Family of 3, on 56 acres. The breakdown is as follows: 10 acres for pasture, 9 acres for vegetable/grain production, 30 acres of timber, 2 acres of pond, 5 acres of grass/brush/fallow ground at any one time. We could support 9-12 people on this amount of ground, if I had to guess, and if we had to. I like to have a lot of woods/timber for hunting and trapping as a hobby. The gardens produce WAY more than enough for our needs - but storage is an issue. Not everything lends itself to drying, canning, or pickling. So you learn to eat when the food is there and pack on pounds for when it's not. This time of year, I'm 5-10 pounds overweight; in March, right before spring, I'll be well under my regular weight. Not sure about the long-term effects of that. . . . We practice steady rotation of crops, and do square foot practices instead of traditional row crops. The time spent is minimal, once it's up and running. I can't even begin to imagine the thousands of hours we spent setting everything up, though. We've lived out there for almost 2 decades now, and are JUST getting to the point where it works.
growlist 6y ago
I strongly suspect there are few large settlements worldwide where it's not possible to grow produce either outdoors or in polytunnels to cater for this need. But if it were the case, we (humanity) could either move the settlements or allow an exception for the missing essentials. It would still drastically reduce freighting overall.

parasubvert 6y ago

Lots of reasons? A) We’ve globally lowered poverty to its lowest levels in history through trade. Pretty much every government And populace on earth would be against this policy except the absolute richest blocs (eg. The EU, elements of the USA). B) Globalism has already been pretty curtailed by populism the past 20 years. But this includes the good parts of globalism, like coordinated carbon reductions. C) Carbon reduction is necessarily a global coordinated solution - going local does not necessarily reduce carbon emissions, ie. oil rich nations can just locally use and trade their energy and the world isn’t any better off unless there are global treaties for trade and carbon. D) arguably curtailing globalism would condemn a whole lot of the world into poverty or mass migration due to lack of local resource, which is almost as bad a remedy as the mass migrations that will be required later this century due to carbon emissions.

growlist 6y ago
> mass migrations that will be required later this century due to carbon emissions. ...only if we choose not to do something about controlling fertility. But in the end I strongly suspect we'll all be travelling about a lot less. Which is fine with me. Globalism is all about destroying diversity and culture, which is an awful future.
- parasubvert 6y ago
  I’m not so sure that’s what globalism is about? I mean, entertainment and media is a small part of the global economy dollar-wise even if it has lots of influence, local content laws as protectionism don’t harm a lot. the Japanese (Among others, say China or India) have done a pretty good job of adopting other cultures and various products without losing their uniqueness. Travel I think is a short term (2-3 year) pause.
boo_boo 6y ago
> oil rich nations can just locally use and trade their energy Sure, but the point is that local demand wouldn't be anywhere near the demand of the global market currently