Nuts and Bolts

Forward

First
It is important to understand I am REAL Green but there are those who are far more REAL Green than I am. I have been blessed with an awakening but this is also a burden to carry. Life is about trade-offs. There are no free lunches and you pay to play. REAL Green is not nirvana, if anything it is a tougher road to follow. It is a road to spiritual wealth that will offset the physical decline that a REAL Green life calls for. REAL Green calls for decline because this is the planetary way for humans now. When I tell you about my REAL Green it is uniquely personal as all locals are which goes as deep as your soul. If you want to compare and contrast in regards to who is a righteous green this is not REAL Green. This binary psychological process is inevitable and natural but keep in mind REAL Green is realistic and relative local action unique to you.

Second
Everyone can green prep and be transformed by honest science and reject the anthropogenic status quo narrative of growth and success. Few can become a REAL Green monestary and or permaculture homestead. The impediments are physical as well as mental. REAL Green takes resources but it also takes attitude. The attitude of humility that comes with failure is hard to stomach. The few that can are vitally important as seeds for the new human type dawning post status quo. Notice I did not say post collapse and extinction. This is information that is still wrapped up in time and unfolding. It is beyond our understanding. Yet, it is clear if you tap into the planet’s revelations, decline is on every level and the root cause is human forcing of the transhumans we have become.
REAL Green is tasked with exposing and adapting the arrogance of transhumanism to the planetary way. I define transhumanism as our technical appendages way of life. This is even more radical with techies seeking immortality in the singularity of AI. Scientism is the new religious fade of techies. REAL Green means taking humans out of the prime importance slot and inserting them back into nature in scale and balance. This can only be found locally.
I have a monestary and a permaculture homestead. This requires humility and obedience to the planet’s way. It means being a green shaman which is connecting to the planet’s way spiritually and expressing this to your local of people and place. REAL Green is about being a prophet. It is not about being the new human type. It is about preparing the way for this new human who will be post transhuman. This new type will be advanced spiritually from the power the planet bestows on the honest and humble. REAL Green is about spiritual rewards of meaning obtained through physically decline into simplicity relatively and realistically according to the trap that is your place in the world. The trap of your spirt in your soul that is your education and experience. There is no transcendence but instead transformation that leads to going forth on a journey that is an awakening.

Third
Normally I try to keep my post to one-page comment. I know how busy people are with our modernism. The fire hose of information we take in daily limits critical discovery. I also understand that often points are better made in a short and simple way distilling out the word salad of descriptions that often lead to distracted attention spans. I do this myself. I scan articles searching for words that hint at nuggets of truth. This curtness does affect understanding because certain ideas will have to be taken for granted. This means people new to REAL Green will not understand points that others who have researched the deeper meaning understand.
The following is a discussion of my low carbon capture of my REAL Green permaculture homestead. This includes my monestary of ideas and things for future use. The permaculture homestead is the application of the knowledge and things of the monestary to the gathering and harvesting of solar energy in all its forms present in one’s local. A monestary is traditionally a system of rules both with activity but also morality. I follow a routine and live by certain rules. I call this REAL Green but you can call yours what you want. This is my unique local and it adapts to my local of people and place.

Fourth
There is nothing more basic physically than food and water and a place to sleep. This is the guts of REAL Green because this is our inescapable connection to the planet tech cannot erase. The modern world obscures this and this is part of the reason the world is so delocalized these days. Competition is another reason for the obscuring. Often more performance is delocalizing but it outcompetes less performance even though more is often less.
Don’t copy my REAL Green but instead search out your own. Your local is unique. What is common is the acceptance and humility that comes with embracing failure of human civilization. This includes embracing the way of the planet which is now in a succession of abrupt change with a web of life in a process to lower complexity. This is the Holocene shifting to the Anthropocene. It is also the advent of a new human type that goes along with this great turning.
This is not a religion you can join. This is a way of enhancing your current higher power by including localism and the planetary way into your existing spirituality and religion. You unique local of people and place includes your local soul. If you are not true to the locals in your life you will not be successful with REAL Green. If you are searching for spirituality and religion do not use REAL Green to replace this. Once you found yourself and your local of people and place then REAL Green it as you would add an Ap to your phone.

Low Carbon Capture Contents:
Ideas behind low carbon capture
Green prepping
Low carbon capture
food
garden, orchard, foraging
water
shelter
wood
solar
insulation
grazing system
animals
hay
Conservation
Knowledge and education
Money and finance
Why
Time
Wisdom

What is low carbon capture? Basically, from a REAL Green point of view it is the harvesting and or gathering of solar energy as locally as possible. This involves efficiency, conservation and specifically localism. Localism is needed because how quickly a low energy high volume energy source degrades. I compare it to how large a wire must be to move low wattage electricity over a distance. At greater distances the movement is negative. To achieve proper low carbon capture involves behavior and lifestyle to be mentally orientated to this condition of diminishing returns. The green prepping triad is then solar energy gathering/harvesting, efficiency/conservation in the behavior of localism. This is a strategy of systems with underlying behavior. The behavior motivates to take the more difficult road to survival that is the proper road that is the instinct of life itself. This road is both more resilient and sustainable but with less comforts and affluence. The modern world of high performance with little effort is naturally the road chosen by many and why wouldn’t it be. The green prepping triad takes the form of the traditional old ways of low carbon capture adapted with modern knowledge and things guided by REAL Green behavior.

Green prepping is a lifestyle of adaptation of one’s ecological footprint towards a more planetary friendly balance. This is a spiritual act where a meaning or truth is present. This seeking of meaning is a spiritual asset you will need to compensate for lower physical and psychological affluence. You will seek to connect to the planet and the web of life by taking action to be less extractive and less harmful. REAL Green does this relative and realistically. You are a citizen of the human race and have a local of people and place that most often are not REAL Green. You will have to adapt your REAL Green accordingly and be realistic about how far you can take it. The relative part is your place in society and where you live. A rich man will adapt differently than a poor man. This is important because if you fail to be relative you will get lost in contradictions and guilt. This green component of green prepping is the moral compass that will motivate you because care for the planet is love of your mother here spiritual meaning is found.

The prepping component of green prepping is the action and activity side. The critical point here is green is more prepped. Localization is more prepped than delocalized. This is both in the short and long term. Short term is the first few weeks or months of a crisis that one is prepped for. If you are localized with robust low carbon capture assets then you can avoid venturing out for supplies and help. It is the leaving of your nest that is the dangerous part of a crisis. Longer term a green prepped homestead in a local of people and place that is more sustainable and resilient is better prepped. Ultimately REAL Green is community. Here is where the REAL power is located. This is also the rarest of REAL Green and what should be your main focus. REAL Green your community f you can. Longer term green and prep really rests with community. Those action and things that are greener are also more resilient and sustainable so more prepped. This means when you satisfy your quest for meaning you are also increasing your survivability. More importantly for a REAL Green you are increasing your ability to protect those you love and those things you invested in. You are fortifying your people and place.

Prep involves a basic portfolio of things and actions. This concerns assets like food, water, and shelter. It involves security, financial, and medical strategies. It involves physical things. The greening of these involves localization of food and water which means you will be more secure and need fewer financial assets to survive. Green and prep go together and this is why REAL Green is so powerful. That which you do for the planet and the people and place around you is more secure. This is the basics of proper human behavior and always has been. If you don’t care about these things then move on. The reason I mention this is civilization has been breeding into the population selfishness and laziness of individualism. The current civilization is a perfect place for psychopathic behavior to get ahead. It is a great place for people who do not care or would rather be taken care of. This is not REAL Green and there is little that is green or prepped with these kinds of people.

If you noticed I took a whole page to talk about what is behind the nuts and bolts of low carbon capture. The reason so much had to be discussed is you will find investing in low carbon capture is expensive with low return. This is both physically and mentally. You really have to be motivated to engage in the collection of energy locally in its many dispersed forms. The reason this is the case is the anthropogenic status quo offers you big box stores and amazon to fulfill your needs without much effort. Modern life gives you the option of travel to pleasant destinations. Of course, you have to work a job and this is hard in many cases but the actual act of supporting yourself is made easy once you have done a hard day’s work. You just drive to the store or get on the computer and order up your needs. If you are going to do low carbon capture locally it will involve more work fewer physical rewards. It will involve time and dedication. Low carbon capture means a daily routine of small task often uncomfortable that will only add up over time to something. Keep in mind the results are still negligible in relation to what you can do with money from a successful job or investment in relation to cultural values of success. If you do not have the basics of behavior and the morale of purpose you will quickly lose interest. If you are selfish and lazy forget about green prepping.

Low carbon capture means providing food, water, and shelter in a resilient and sustainable way relative to your local and realistically based upon your abilities. These are not revolutionary things they are simple basic activities most should know about although in this day and age much of the population has been so dumbed down. Basics of human survival sadly must be relearned. Socirty is teaching the wrong things and holding in esteem false gods. Many people do not even know where food really comes from or the basics of water and shelter. This is the real tragedy of the anthropogenic status quo because it has taken humans so far into overshoot that a real crisis someday will unleash a whirlwind of pain and suffering from a basic lack of understanding of what matters in life. So much is taken for granted and so much lost to satisfy our quest for affluence and comforts. The last issue to cover is time. If you are starting your REAL Green journey you need to realize the time element.

I mention food and water as low carbon capture because of the amount of energy needed to provide them locally. People do not realize the footprint they have on the planet and on their survivability related to food and water. Food is a basic that everyone should be involved in. Even those who are just skill based or service based can be REAL Green. I mention skill based and service based because a carpenter and or a doctor can be REAL green. REAL Green means specialization in something but is also means being good at many things. A truly REAL Green carpenter will have skills to help and assist those engaged in permaculture and or the carpenter may be a permaculturist too. A permaculturist will need support with construction. There is a need for doctors to treat ailments and teach health strategies. So, as you can see a REAL Green local of community with specialist is the epitome of REAL Green. This is a robust community that supports the basic efforts of green prepping with one of the most important being food.

Food is basic to REAL Green. This involves growing, preparing, storing, and travel. Growing means a garden and or animals. It also means foraging and hunting. I do not hunt but can hunt. I know what to forage off my land. This also means doing this sustainably and without sport in the case of hunting. If survivability becomes an issue I will hunt. Everyone should have a garden, fruit trees, and or a rewild place where natural foraging is possible. If you live in an urban area there are plenty of urban gardens. There are plenty of areas that can be rewilded for forage of hunting on the periphery. Often in an urban setting it requires groups to afford these things. In rural places individuals can manage because of the lower cost of living.

Preparing food involves harvesting and preserving food. This involves canning and drying. In today’s world it also means freezing and properly managing frozen food. Another important aspect is seasonality and native sources. If you are going to be greener than you will attempt to eat and grow food that is seasonally correct. You will avoid introducing exotics to your local and instead learn about where the best natives work that nature through evolution adapted for your local. Cook environmentally if you can. A wood fired, solar cooker, and solar dryer are good green prep items.

There is also the issue of food once prepared. Here makes an effort to avoid food waste. Learn to eat food left overs instead of throwing it away. This sounds elementary but the why do we have a huge food waste issue! It is because of a paradox of what is simple is hard. In my case all left overs are given either to chickens or our dogs. Some people without animals are good with composting. Keep in mind how expensive food is then double that cost by only eating half of what is produced. Increase the cost further when you consider driving to the store to get it and the waste disposal truck picking up your trash. As you can see these cost escalate rapidly with bad conservation behavior. Consider the other element of this behavior that is your planetary footprint. Think of all that carbon and ecological disruption that went into that food then wasted because we can. If we were hungry I guarantee there would be little waste.

There is the issue of storage. A well prepped green prepper will have long shelf life food, a deep pantry, and a freezer. These will be managed because stored food goes bad unless managed. Long shelf life food is a must to a well prepped green prepper. These foods can sit on your shelf for 3 decades and still be ready to protect you in a crisis. Keep in mind they can be bartered. A deep pantry means having shorter shelf life foods that you will use in your daily routine of creating meals. You will have the food group basics and ways of producing things in what used to be called cooking from scratch.

Water strategies are a critical pep asset. You should have multiple backups in several forms. Have some stored water in bottles. Have equipment to filter water and gather water. There are lots of filtration devices out there but keep in mind some are small capacity. For a family you will need the larger ones. I have a device I can drop into a well to pull up water. If you can have a cistern or water tank that collects rainwater. Build a pond to store water near your home. I have a solar system with just enough power to run my well pump so this allows me water in a grid down situation. I have other strategies because a solar system is complicated electronic system that can fail. Always have a deep backup strategy for something as vital as water.

Shelter requires heating and cooling. I am doing wood heat. I have a sustainable wood lot I can take dead and dying trees and harvest them for heat. I also do selective cutting of live trees that are not growing well due to their location. This makes for a healthier understory where lots of food grows for animals. I consider this carbon neutral because dead trees emit carbon. A healthy forest grows better. My wood heat is lower carbon than fossil fuels when I keep it local. If you buy off the farm wood your carbon content goes up dramatically. I want to caution people wood heat is not really cheaper (status quo) when you consider the equipment and labor. I feel this is manageable if you like dealing with wood. You will find many things you do REAL Green require enjoyment to make up for the lower time/comfort of personal profit. Someone who works full time will not have the time to do wood heat and other permaculture activities. I have the time and I am still physically capable in fact this work keeps me fit which is a side benefit. The sad truth is electric is the cheapest option for everything in a status quo setting with all things considered but it is also high carbon with lots of risk. This could change if the grid goes unstable and energy cost soar as they could unexpectantly. Total grid reliance is also a risky thing to rely on and its failure can ruin you if you are completely grid dominated.

I do solar electric and solar thermal. My solar electric system is 12 pannels generating 3200 watts. I have an inverter and a wonderful lithium phosphate battery. This was not cheap and it is labor intensive to manage my usage and maximize production. You need to maximize production because of the costs of the system. People think solar is free energy just like wood but it is actually more expensive. Solar is more expensive in my case because of the inverter and battery. This allows me security in a grid down situation. One option that is cheaper is grid tied solar. This is not going to help you in a grid down situation so this is why I recommend a system about the size of mine with a battery. I recommend you have a way to switch from grid to solar for all your circuits that solar can power. I also recommend a generator with fuel storage. I am green prepper that is realistic and relative. This means I am only partially off grid and I still use fossil fuels and equipment as needed. My fantasy is totally off grid with few machines. My reality is what I have which is quite modern. My motivation is towards greener and less modern or as green as I can realistically manage. Solar is a great asset in your REAL Green portfolio but not for everyone because of the cost and the active control of the system that is needed.

I have solar thermal that consist of evacuated glass tubes that heat water. I did a nice hybridization where I utilized my wood boiler system that already has pumps, water reservoir, and heat exchangers. This allows me to be able to end wood use in May and through the summer use the sun to warm water. The wood boiler system runs hot water through a heat exchanger that preheats water into an electric hot water heater. So again, I am a hybrid of on and off grid. This works well to lower my electric usage. I still can have hot water with a grid down situation because I have water valves that allow me to only use hot water off the heat exchanger. This is not as effective and reliable as pre heating into an electric water heater which maintains a constant hot water temp my wife prefers. Keep in mind the relative and realistic of REAL Green. This means not forcing my REAL Green on my wife. Hot water is vital to cooking, cleaning, and health so a key element of REAL Green.

I have a home and shop that I insulated to the maximum I could manage. This is very important to reduce your heating and cooling footprint. This is a no brainer but I want to advise of the trade-offs. I mentioned how wood and solar are in reality expensive with all things considered. Where they have higher value is with all those other intangibles like security and being greener. For me being greener and prepped has a very high spiritual value so I do them despite being harder and more expensive. I have the time and money to do them but many don’t. Insulation strategies are another subject of cost benefit. I just built a shop and did R30 which is a dramatic amount of insulation. I not only did the material aspect I also utilized thermal and convective strategies. I have an insulated floor of 6-inch concrete with in-floor heat from my wood boiler. I also have convective venting of hot air in the roof space. I have lien-to on each side facing east, west, and south that shade the walls in the hot summer. My house was more difficult because this was a renovation. I did foam insulation as best I could. My house is a split level with part in the ground so this gives me some thermal strategies. I invested heavily in good windows.

My final aspect of low carbon capture is my grazing system. I have a multispecies grazing system of goats and cattle on a polyculture grassland. I rotate these two species of ruminants that cover a broad spectrum of grazing abilities. Cows and goats go well together. You might wonder how I consider a grazing system low carbon capture and the reason is these animals take solar energy in from the eating of grass. The sun makes grass. My goats are registered breeding stock Kiko goats. I sell mostly to hobby farms. Only a few of the males end up at the sale barn for meat goats and even here I try to sell them as registered so some will buy them for breeding stock. These are meat goats so they are meant to be eaten. My cows are grass feed and I raise cow calf pairs but here again the steers will likely go to a feed lot for meat. This is just the nature of the industrial agriculture market I live in. I hope one day through localization and a better green attitude people will choose grass fed beef over feed lot beef but that is the situation these days.

My animals need hay and the pasture needs maintenance were there are not animals so I am using tractors. I also must transport animals which requires trucks. When I harvest wood, I am using equipment run on fossil fuels. I do have equipment to harvest wood and grass in the old ways. I keep axes, saws, and scythes stored in my monestary of knowledge and things. My point with REAL Green is realistic and relative yielding greener and more prepped. You can only do so much when a culture is not REAL Green. I harvest hay with low horse power equipment and a mini baler that does square bales. I do have custom cutting done for large round bales. Again, I am a hybrid of low carbon and higher carbon as needed in a relative and realistic way. I try to do this haying in a way that creates another mosaic of habitat for the wild animals. If you only do a little haying and put the hay fields in a certain place it actually helps other wildlife by creating another piece in the mosaic of habitat. Animals like a Disney World too. All hay leaves a monoculture but just a little build on the diversity mosaic that animals need.

Conservation is vital to green prep so be a dedicated conservationist. I am on the extreme side of conservation. I do this not because I am a righteous green bent on saving the planet but because this is my enjoyment and passion. My trap also means I have money and opportunities so conservation is so vital to limiting my damage due to my position in life. In my opinion the planet is already tipped into a new regime of abrupt change and civilization in that final round of yeast in a petri dish consuming resources as fast as it can. I do conservation because I am a green prepper and conservation is a vital element of all activities you do from showering and cloths to driving to town for supplies. Driving is case in point because for most people the single greenest action is not driving or driving less. I make sure and drive less and combine trips. I reduce discretionary trips as much as I can. I am forced into driving mainly because of family and status quo survival. I could not have animals and expect to have the herd I have without modern transport. I sometimes have to fly but not because I want to. Transport is delocalizing so avoid it when possible. I try very hard not to waste food. I try not to use less energy and resources in everything I do. I turn off lights when not in use. I try to reduce my participation in the consumer culture but I want to explain something about this also. I consume quite a lot from amazon and the big box home improvement stores. The reason for this I am buying when I can exceptional products for my monestary of knowledge and things to leave a future generation. Many products will be gifted to these people and will offer them strategies and abilities to low carbon capture. The infrastructure of consumerism is there so utilize and store those things that will be seed stock for the future. Consumerism’s days are numbered because society is failing.

Knowledge and education are very important. You need to be a jack of all trades and specialize in something. Hopefully you will be located near a local of other people that do the same. In most cases you will connect with people digitally and with transport. This is the nature of our trap of delocalization. Learn as much as you can and save as much knowledge as you can for a seed bank of REAL Green strategies for the future. It is things and knowledge that will offer tools of meaning for the future. It will also allow preparations for the difficult times ahead. REAL Green is about decline of affluence and comforts so understand your participation in consumerism likely has a shelf life and you are prepping for this. Your enjoyment of Amazon will likely end because society is falling apart. Amazon will be one of the first luxuries of modern life to diminish. These high energy aspect to civilization are failing if not in your lifetime your kids. Build a storehouse of knowledge and things. This is your monestary.

Money and finances are vital too. You need resources and you must be a good manager of these resources which means you can manage money and invest. The status quo will ruin you if you do not REAL Green responsibly. There are so many things you could buy and build but what you may do is build up debt you cannot service. You will have to have financial discipline to make REAL Green work. I recommend reducing your money and finance needs through simplicity but for many depending on how large your permaculture homestead and monestary is will dictate how simple you can get. Always look towards simplicity and lower tech when you can in a realistic and relative way based upon your local of people and place. Understand debt and also understand delocalization of transport. Understand the dangers of the digital. The digital is amazing with how it leverages your abilities to leave the anthropogenic status quo of delocalization into localism. I receive so many things via mail and UPS. This allows me to stay home but this is also a danger and it is a dirty footprint. You will need to walk a tightrope to fund your permaculture homestead and monestary.

The time element is critical because time runs out quickly and actually speeds up as you get older. We only have so much time on this earth and keep in mind this process of decline is accelerating. Time is speeding up as you age but also as civilization ages. This is an abstract of entropy. Things take a long time to grow but dissipate quickly in the chaos of decline. So, you will be finding your REAL Green niche of growth within an overall regime of decline that is speeding up. It has taken me years to research, develop, and maintain my REAL Green permaculture homestead and monestary of seeds for the future. You need to start as soon as you are transformed and awakened and find a sustainable and resilient mental path because your biggest difficulty is the dualistic life you will be living. You will live and use the anthropogenic status quo to leave it and this will mean obstacles everywhere. You must also realize yourself and understand the trap you are in. We are all trapped in this situation of decline so a key element of this is understanding your limitations both physical and mental. Time is one of the big limitations. It will take years to do both short term and long term REAL Green efforts. This is why I call this a journey not a destination. The destination for all is death. This is with your life, your homestead, and your monestary. Along the way there will be plenty of life but keep in mind this is an Epoch of death. This is a time of death you can find joy in if you follow the right path. The path is the path of the planet and the web of life you embrace and live as your life system. This is what REAL Green is all about!

There is something very important about what I told you above and the reason why I say so few people can be REAL Green. The reality is the cost of using the status quo to leave it is expensive. I have the money and time to do this. I work harder now than in my old job in a family business doing finance work but I am now living off investments and semi-retired. These investments that support me are drenched in fossil fuels. They are drenched in the status quo system that allows abstracts like living off investments. My permaculture life does not support me. I have a mortgage and I have bills to pay to stay modern with health care and all those nice things we like to buy. Much of the world is too poor to do what I do. They struggle to survive. Many who are rich do not have the time or opportunity. Many will think what I am doing is a hobby or a funny diversion. The key point of REAL Green is realistic and relative of a person’s local. You are better off not asking why or searching for justification. Guilt is not going to do you any good. The absurdity of modern life makes all these worries null and void. Humans in my opinion should still be semi-nomadic hunter gathers with advanced spirituality. This may be where humans are heading in a destroyed world of human forcing but not before a bottle neck that will be a caldron of overshoot. Do this if you can and do not look back.

You may say there is nothing special or great about what I told you. This is the paradox of life. Those things which are the most complicated and considered the holly grail of meaning are the most deceptive. It is the simple that is “IT”. The secret to life the Egyptian proverb of Isis imparted was “Nature enjoys Nature and only Nature can overcome Nature”. Take this to heart when you go REAL Green. It is about the deepness of simplicity in the emulation of the planetary way.