The below referenced article is an important REAL Green topic. Permaculture is central to REAL Green. There are a thousand different types both urban and rural. I can tell you from experience that animals, gardens, orchards, grapes, wood, solar, and hay do not pencil out smaller scale. Yet, smaller scale is what is needed to reduce our planetary foot print with resulting resilience and sustainability. When I say resilience and sustainability this is even relative. Our world is so path dependent, carbon trapped, and delocalized that even those who have the resources and motivation should be aware you can only go so far. Beyond a point a TRUE Green lifestyle are an expense except for a few who can find a niche. It takes an investment and then it needs to be subsidized. FAKE Greens will go on and on about organic eco living. They will talk about EV’s and solar homes and act like this is all affordable and green. This is not the case in reality. The reality the world is dirty and trapped in dirtiness. It requires funds and things and those come from a dirty world that is concerned with growth.
REAL Green has a solution for those who can. REAL Green is not for everyone and not meant to be although the basic fundamentals are for everyone and should become part of the greater social narrative. These basics are about behavior and acceptance of path dependency and our collective carbon trap. Path dependency is about a global competitive cooperative system of socio/economics that is locked into an arrangement we see right now in the status quo. We want to do this or that but other forces push back. The reason for this is competitive cooperation. We have to accept the will of others to get our will. We compete to try to push our way over others. This is then trapped further in a highly productive but also destructive system of economic globalism. REAL Green acknowledges this and accepts that this is a recipe for a decline process that risks collapse at some point. Decline now and beat the rush. Behaviorally this means accept doom and begin a REAL Green prep.
REAL Green prep is about localism with the basics of the old-world ways of harvesting and gathering of carbon energy. It is about the lowering one’s footprint for one’s local but also the planet. Since the truth of the matter is the planet is telling us these things the essence of your effort is emulating the truth. Once you do the Kubler Roth of late stage capitalism and its faith in techno-modernity you then realize a gradient of change is ahead. This will be overwhelmingly destructive change yet you can be part of the constructive change that is like Green cover over a Brown land. This acceptance leads you to do two things one is triage and the other is gathering and harvesting. Triage out bad behavior and lifestyles. Triage out things you don’t need. Gather tools, hardware, and material with a future. Begin situations where you can harvest carbon in the form of food calories and biomass heat. None of this is revolutionary because it is all out there. It is proven and just requires a different frame of mind. The nuts and bolts of REAL Green are readily available. What turbo changes REAL Green is the behavior side.
REAL Green behavior uses the status quo to leave it in relativity. You will need to continue to live your status quo life playing the game that is required to survive. You will need to harness globalism with consumerism and even the delocalizing forces of the car culture. You do this to leave it though. This is the critical element that offer much needed meaning. You are harnessing a powerful force that has huge resource base. You are cherry picking the best of it and fortifying your local. You are doing this in a camouflaged way with stealth. Even with your significant others you may need to hide your true purpose. You can call it a hobby or just light prepping. Nobody minds small prepping or hobbies like gardening, animals, and vital skills. What make people nervous is a full-scale dooming and prepping IOW people can’t handle the Truth. People do not want their life system upended. This then means you have a tight rope to walk. On the one hand you live the status quo and on the other you are dedicating your life to leave it.
Where you are going is into a world with more meaning because you are accepting the fact that life as we know it has no future FAKE Green or Brown. You are building a lifeboat of skills and things that will help you in an existential crisis. You are creating a hospice that is a lifestyle of adaptation and mitigation of decline because decline is about pain and suffering. The decline of affluence means hard times and for some total disenfranchisement even with REAL Green warriors.
You are going to do things that economically do not add up. A REAL Green homestead will not pencil out. You will not be able to live off of it. You can make it work and it will mean increased resilience to collapse and sustainability once collapse has taken a stair step down. You will acquire skills and attitudes that will assist you on the way down. You will then have what it takes to guide others that will go into this process unprepared and rudderless. REAL Green is about leadership of this process but it is not exposed until it is time. In the mean time you act FAKE Green and even Brown to fit in. You harness your existing local to make it more REAL Green. You harness by using those who are not REAL Green and, in the process, you turn your local a little Greener. This is not about success but about the management of failure.
“How to Solve the Big Problems That Small Family Farms Are Facing”
https://tinyurl.com/y485oj9g ecowatch
“Under relentless and steadily increasing financial pressures, talented young farmers are giving farming their all for five to 10 years, then quitting. Experienced farmers, including organic farmers, are admitting defeat, selling what they can and finding “real” jobs. The prices farmers receive for crops do not cover all the costs of keeping farms viable, not to mention the extra costs of ecological or regenerative farming systems. The farm crisis is not over.”
REAL Green Adaptation 