REAL Green Adaptation

I am a green prepper engaged in permaculture farming.  I am attempting to lower my planetary footprint by low carbon capture of efficient home, solar, wood heat, and conservation.  I have a multispecies rotational grazing operation of goats and cattle.  I may add sheep eventually but only use the two species at the moment.  I also have a small garden, orchard, and grapes.  These plant efforts are minimalist mainly because I do not have the time and money to specialize with them.  They are primarily for prepping needs.  If food goes into shortage, I have some vegies and fruit to draw on but not much.

 

I manage 500 acres with only 100 in permaculture farming.  The rest is managed for the family as a place for hunting fishing, and nature enjoyment.  This means I manage farming and nature in one package.  They really go well together if you can keep stocking rates low and seek to create a mosaic of habitat.  I find wild animals like land grazed by animals as long as it is not over grazed and it is allowed to be a polyculture.  I added goats to my grazing mix because we have a very big invasive species problem that most western farms have these days.  In most cases chemicals, tractors, and high stocking rates will take care of weed problems.  I chose a different route and that is to adapt to a polyculture instead.  Invasives are not a problem in the right application.  Goats took care of my weed and brush problem.  There is still plenty of high-quality grass and enough for low stocking rates of cattle despite the weeds and brush.

 

Now the down side of this and that is profitability.  I am living off investments and get some support for managing the rest of the farm for the benefit of human recreation.  If I had to make a living off the farm then I couldn’t.  I could not do this without outside income nor could I maintain a healthy natural ecosystem without mechanization with fossil fuels that requires money.  My grazing system covers its cost but does not pay my labor.  My vegies and fruit are expensive compared to a grocery store when my labor is considered.  I heat with wood but that is more expensive than grid heat considering labor and the equipment.  I want to also add that the ¾ of the land that is put into natural production still needs to be worked.  Fields become choked with brush and weeds if successional practices are not incorporated.  I still have to mow areas were weeds and sprouts get out of hand and I have to burn natural grasses every other year.  This takes mechanization and fossil fuels.  It also takes money.

 

So, as you can see, I am carbon trapped in path dependencies too.  I make an effort to be greener with a lower foot print but I can only go so far because of economics and the reality of lack of animal and human labor plus the requirements of living a status quo life of car, mortgage, and taxes.  This article makes a very important point that the efforts I do that are greener should have more value to society.  My goats and cattle that are grass fed should receive a higher return.  Because agriculture is benchmarked by industrial practices, I am just a niche when I should be the way of life in regards to resilience, sustainability and a healthier local.

 

“Ask a Reductionist Question and You will Get a Reductionist Answer”

https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020-04-13/ask-a-reductionist-question-and-you-will-get-a-reductionist-answer/

 

“Through the narrow product perspective of the life cycle assessments the multiple functions of agriculture are overlooked. The method also fail to capture the indirect and dynamic effects of changes in the agriculture and food system as well as the feedback loops and drivers of the system…The narrow perspective that results from this product focus means that the multifunctional role of agriculture is excluded and that vital resources are neglected. LCA focus on negative environmental impacts of production but doesn’t consider positive impacts such as those in the ecosystem function framework (the authors refer to them as “services” but I prefer the term function as services leads the mind towards a narrow utilitarian, market based, view).  LCA mostly neglects impacts on biodiversity or reduce it to one simplistic measurement. But biodiversity is part of the agriculture system and not only an impact category. The same goes for land, where “land-use” often is part of an LCA, but land is an integral part of the agriculture system and not an input that is used in the production. By not recognizing these relationships LCA can’t deal with soil health, land degradation or agricultural bio-diversity itself.”

I have been living a green prepper life for 15 years now.  It started out as a prepper life back when peak oil was the scare in 05.  I made some very big decisions back them that took me out of the rat race but this also meant less affluence.  This was an evolution of lifestyle and spirit.  I am now a permaculture farmer with cattle and goats. I do the garden, orchard, and grape thing too although minimalist.  It is minimalist because I don’t have time to do everything.  I have solar too but a small system of 3600 watts with batteries.  This is enough to keep lights on and the frig cool.  I heat with wood so I can survive without the grid but I still use the grid while it is here.  I mange 500 acres of wild life habitat of which 100 acres is my grazing system.

 

I am practicing green prepping which I basically describe as prepping for decline by going back to low carbon capture with wood, grass, and animals.  I also have solar and a well-built efficient house so this is a hybrid of old and new.  I am doing a hybrid life of embracing the modern with strategies that boost the old ways of low carbon capture.  I still need my status quo income that is now investments and a small job care taking 500 acres only 100 is mine.  What I have found is you can decline in place and go local and still live a good life but don’t be under the allusion you can leave the status quo.  This lifestyle has especially paid off with this virus thing.  I am minimally disrupted because of the virus.  I was already prepped for this situation.  I am already social distanced because I am a farmer.

 

I am not going to tell everyone you have to live like I do.  What I will tell everyone is more people need to live like I do.  The modern life of plenty is over but we don’t know it yet.  This does not mean cities are going away.  They are the places that produce the goods people like me need.  They need to shrink though and the rural areas need to grow.  They need to grow in permaculture not industrial agriculture so they will be the seeds of a new world.  Yet, industrial agriculture is not going away because we are a globalized people.  I will live with the industrial and draw on it to fortify my local and its permaculture identity.  People need to localize in and out of the city.  The key to localism is don’t travel and or commute.  Do this in a relative way because the reality is our modern life only allows so much flexibility.  We are all tied to it in survival.  Very few are positioned to leave it in a major way but we can work together to leave it.  Yet, first we must agree localism is the right thing to do.

 

Globalism needs to be reduced by consensus and nature will do its part.  It was not natural and its effects were very destructive.  Sustainable development is not sustainable when small locals are wiped away in the name of progress.  There should be a happy medium.  Going forward I am telling those of you who can go out into the rural areas and live different.  Those of you who belong in a town then localize and practice crafts and skills that make something for the rural areas.  You will have to do this in the shadow of a declining globalism which means your paycheck and taxes.  Quit believing the techno optimist and their siren songs of increasing affluence.  Many try to tell us about great Green New Deals BS of clean power and comfort.  Bullshit, the future is going to be one of less comfort but more old-world activity.

Realgreenadaptation.blog

I am a green prepper.  I am close to nature as a permaculturist but also a naturalist.  I am repairing my local ecosystem of 500 acres in the MO Ozarks with native species but also managing invasives as the new natives.  I avoid chemicals and mechanized management technics but use them when the system gets too far from balance.  I also have a small multi-species grazing operation of goats and cattle who work together to manage pasture on 100 acres of 10 paddocks on these 500 acres.  I have small stocking rates so this covers cost but does not pay my labor.  Large stocking rates are needed to make a living in farming but then you naturally drift into industrial tendencies.  Yet, I have a food store.  I harvest solar energy through animals and plants.  I also have 3600 watt solar system with batteries.  I have a heating system for space heat and water that uses wood which my local has plenty of.  I sustainably manage my forests.  I also have a garden, orchard, and grapes.  Now all I need is more labor because I am at my limit.  This is a hybrid effort but one that attempts to go local in a delocalized world.

 

I am hopeful that this viral attack on globalism will also be an attack on delocalization so to speak.  I think it is important now to reflect on how brittle globalism is leaving locals massively exposed to healthcare issues and food issues.  That said a whole scale retreat from globalism is not advisable unless you want an extremism of death and destruction from cascading failures of important nodes of systematic support.  This is now the Anthropocene trap so complete deviation is not an option except if an extreme reset is desired.  Some want this but they have not thought it through.  They are emotional not rational.  It is better to adapt and mitigate just like what will need to be done with climate issues.

 

My point here of course is with two levels of honest science.  The first being honesty about the problem then honesty about the solutions.  Traps don’t get fixed they get adapted to.  Modern greens pride themselves on honest science with the problems but fail miserably with the solutions.  A solution with local farming will be a recognition that permaculture is a less affluent pathway not in regards to natural systems but in regards to market based economics.   A permaculture enthusiast will have to be poorer.  Those seeking subsidies need to recognize the world post pandemic is poorer.  That said governments can promote localism as they try to salvage their markets and safety-nets.

 

The biggest help would be getting out of the way of passionate people who seek this life.  The way they would do this is stop unfair markets and taxation for people that are at the grass roots level supporting the greater good.  Stop allowing big business that is hyper efficient because of economies of scale and specialization from out competing small communities and farms.  Locals maybe now can be helped to be buffers for areas what are densely populated and require constant energy inputs at high levels.  Small farms and communities can go intermittent with energy and more self-sufficient with food if promoted.  This then becomes an abstract battery or storage strategy in relation to what renewables are seeking.

 

Instead of being so concerned with techno optimism like the rich modern green is the REAL Green needs to consider behavioral changes of decline in place with dignity that yields a spiritual counterbalance to decreased comforts.  A hybrid of the modern and the poorer past is then combined to leverage best “things”, practices, and lifestyles of the modern and the old.  To top the list is stay local.  Make it easier for locals to stay in place.  Reduce consumerism that naturally delocalizes by whatever means is best for that local.  This must be done relatively in regards to the realistic.  The Anthropocene has changed the human and natural ecosystem so much that a proper level will need some delocalization tendencies by necessity.  This virus was an event but now a process of change can begin if we as a modern people summons the will.

Realgreenadaptation.blog

Wide ranging changes are sure to be ahead but not completely like a social democrats thinks.  It will be a compromise of globalism and nationalism also populism and socialism.  One thing is certain about the future and that is the world will be much less affluent.  This is because no economic engine generates economic activity like full blown globalism.  Globalism will be adapted to shorter value chains and less activity.  There will be a reduction in growth both proactively in an attempt for more resilience and passively systematically by physics of a system doing less.  Resilience is expensive because sustainable activity means less hyper productivity and more activity that has backup and locally grounded.  Hyper efficiency that is focused on more with less will be adapted towards less means more of less activity but more stocks of things.  Behavior will be adapted by fear and reality.  No longer will the traditional social narratives stand after they have been means tested by the pandemic.  The best practices and knowledge will be easier to pinpoint because a new wisdom will have emerged to show just how fragile the system of the past was.

 

That said competing interest will have to negotiate their way through this.  The give and take of cooperation on multiple levels will occur settling on those that show the most strength with a basis in science but also political will.  This of course must be weighed in on by the turbulence of decline with economic abandonment, dysfunctional systems, and irrational policy.  That will actually be raw and exposed leading to crisis efforts that will naturally be good and bad.  The rich will take the biggest hit because globalism was about a huge amount of economic activity but much of that was malinvestment and bubbles.  With the advent of a poorer world bubbles have been popped and malinvestment will be less affordable.  Digital wealth will evaporate in both deflation of less things made but also inflation of fiat wealth that will be a stealth haircut.  The poor will get poorer but with the possibility of a different life more tuned into a localism of economic activity.  Localism will increase by default.

 

These changes will not be easy and the results will be less things and more hard work.  Yet, there can be more spiritual benefits of meaning that comes with better human scale.  This all could be shattered by war and conflict which often happen in these historically defining moments.  I don’t think war will happen because the whole world has been wounded.  I see a consensus within nations for retraction that will force the deep states in all nations to lose influence.  Military activity is hugely expensive and will not be sustainable but don’t expect that to change immediately.  There will be a time of a very dangerous vacuum.  Poorer equals less so this will be an accelerated decline process that could cascade out of control or better it might be a pathway to a more stable level of world governess and economic activity.  This could mean a smaller more sustainable world but still too much for the reality of planetary health.  Further declines will be ahead but maybe not for some years.

 

The 100% renewable world of eco-socialism will evaporate but not before an effort to utilize the best of it.  Small scale renewables are an excellent enhancer of localism.  Protection for locals will likely result from efforts to end the delocalization of globalism.  Yet, populism will be a strong force to limit the extremes of migration found in globalism.  Border will become harder.  Traditional values will return that were once practiced like old fashion male female relationships with home economics and community activity of local people with shared boundaries.  Less travel and movement by a poorer world means more respect for geographic uniqueness.  These are just some possibilities but one thing is for certain the world has been upended and some kind of change is ahead good and bad.  This is just the type of thing a green prepper will embrace.

I have been researching and living this way of life for 15 years now.  It started out a bit extreme but in the last several years my green prepping has matured into a way of life that is beyond the need to prep for just such an event as our current pandemic.  It is about attempting to reduce globalism impact on my life and take steps to localize into a lower carbon life at the same time I maintain my status quo life of family and money making.  Bills don’t go away and family is only so understanding of localism.

 

Now that we are in an accelerated decline process I have come to some conclusions.  One is the real danger of this pandemic is an economic reset.  We will not be able to return to the world we knew a few months ago.  The connections, wealth, and sentiment will have been altered by this.  Whole industries will have been decimated.  The economic system was set to reset by something.  It was a bubble with little sense of reality with debt and asset values.  There is a silver lining to all this if we make it though without too much damage and that is a reset that can force a degrowth on a population that otherwise would have been unwilling to contemplate.  Now the leadership across the spectrum can have an excuse and people the understanding of the need.

 

We are all going to suffer together.  There is no hiding and few will get out of this without a haircut.  The very rich will get the biggest hair cut because most of their wealth was digital and unsustainable anyway.  This means that our society is now prepped for something different.  Attitudes will now be altered by force of nature.  This coming period of degrowth will likely mean an economic depression.  This also means we will have the common crisis to reset to a new level of living and by default this will be on smaller scales.  Gone will be globalism vast and dominating value chains that no government could resist or fight.  A wounded globalism will result.  Now the people will blame globalism for their pain as they forget the riches it has brought in the form of products.  Many do not realize how powerful an economic engine globalism is but at an expense to resilience and sustainability.

 

This will be a double edge sword for the green movement because the renewable revolution of solar, wind, and EV’s will be greatly damaged but so will fossil fuels.  Big corporations will be held more accountable.  Gone will be the top activity of enriching themselves with stock buy backs and huge pay packages.  Normal people who experience food and shortages of things will reevaluate growing their own food but also investment in things that offer common sense resilience and sustainability.  We will see the vast unfunded liability of safety nets and pensions evaporate into this depression.  This means gone will be the sunbelt retirements.  People will work the rest of their lives.  Home economics will return in importance.  A lot less leisure and travel are in our future and this is a good thing.

 

In other words, the discretionary binge of the last 20 years will be gone.  Consumerism, Travel, and energy intensive fun stuff will be gone as we know it.  This is good stuff if we can find the strength to make it through what is ahead.  If we are not careful and cooperative, what is ahead is very dangerous.  It means food and things in shortage.  It also means globalism will not give us the SafetyNet for localized famine or disaster response.  There is also the ever-present danger of WWIII.  As you spend your time self-isolated reflect on these conditions.  If you can react positively to what was inevitable anyway.   Do it in anticipation of a different world that will be more realistic.  We can get through this and be a better people with less planetary damage.

Seeing that healthcare system bulge that represents the reason we are doing social distancing and economic and social quarantine makes me reflect on the ecological principal of degree and duration.  A population’s survival to shocks is related to its abilities to manage the degree of the shock and the duration.  These can very and both can be deadly.  What people do not realize as much is this condition, we are trying to avoid with the healthcare system becoming dysfunctional is also present at the greater level of the economy.  There will be no getting out of jail free card this time.  We are here in a free fall and now it should be reflected on where we will land.  Life is not going to get back to normal even though people still walk around in a feeling of normality.  How far down those steps lead until a floor is reached is unknown?  This is unknown because we have built in so much complexity combined with population growth, we do not know how many and how active we as a people will be at this new level.  This will be a time of destructive change with economic abandonment, dysfunctional networks, and irrational behavior.  That is the other bulge not discussed when our brightest minds and leadership talk about what we face.  I doubt we are going to see growth for a while.  We are going to see salvage and triage at many levels.  At some point the ways we lived will be pointless and we will by necessity move on.  The dangerous period is the turbulence of the phase change of it and the immediate aftermath of being stripped of layers of support.

 

My REAL Green has preached green prepping for years now.  This is about resilience and sustainability in what can be pictured as lifeboats.  The other is a picture of a hospice.  Yes, people are going to die but this hospice is also about the death of a way of life.  It could be about rebirth too but not before we pay for the consequences of getting here.  I might add this was self-emergent so finger pointing is pointless.  Nature does not care about excuses so it will be forced upon the innocent and guilty alike.  REAL Green then seeks acceptance of a decline into a collapse in a process and or event.  It is getting to the level of acceptance that allows a REAL Green to go forth in action.  This then becomes a journey that is actually a retreat into activities that are a decline in place.  Localism is the result but one must remember this world has been delocalized by globalism.  This then is a journey to get closer to a rebirth of localism within the destructive change of globalism.  There are many very good products and excellent practices learned in our wild ride up.  These need to be retained but also combine with a millennium of human activity that represented low carbon capture and a more harmonious adaptation to planetary cycles.

 

We humans are not going to get there right away and can’t if we want to survive.  Globalism is the human ecosystem now so we have to have one foot in and one foot out of globalism if that is even possible.  My REAL Green has done this for years but also with funds to do it.  I have always realized this and reflected on it.  I used a relativity to deal with it.  A REAL Green adapts as best as can be achieved according to the nature of his global ecosystem but also the potential of his local.  For some no action is possible because they are completely trapped or not awakened.  Currently, my REAL Green is faced with the possible end of the income stream that allowed a hybrid life.  I have prep assets to fall back on.  I have skills.  What is lacking is community that is needed for localism to survive and prosper.  What is so insidious about this virus is its attack on localism of community.  We are being told to quarantine and maintain social distancing.  This is not conducive to people joining together and getting on with survival locally.  Now we are thrust into localism and are naked and cold.  This will of course have to end eventually.  People will have to make and grow things or the REAL dying will begin.

 

The journey now is about navigating mentally and materially through a gauntlet of forced change.  This is not the constructive change that was also disruptive that was driven by ever more complexity and efficiency of our techno optimistic world.  We destroyed resilience doing this and now our world is unsustainable.  How unsustainable now is a matter of how far we allow what we have to degrade.  REAL Green is under no allusions that localism will save us.  What will save us is embracing the journey.  To make the journey there must be acceptance of a death of a way of life.  This does not mean transcendence but instead transformation.  I recommend in this time of turmoil to yield to higher powers and decline in place with as much dignity as you can find.  A degree of dignity can be found in the meaning of this process that reflects reality.  This is individual so don’t expect a movment.

 

The truth is ultimately what mature and honest humans seek.  The problem is maturity has been bred out of our populations in the pursuit of affluence by whatever means.  Real maturity comes from wisdom which is about making choices.  These choices now in a world of decline are about choosing what knowledge and things to keep and what to dispose of.  That is the triage of it.  The hybridization is the return to low carbon capture but with best thing and practices our modern life developed.  This means growing things, craft skills, and home economics.  Yet, on the journey it is still about making a living in a global world that is the ecosystem we live in.  So, this then is a surreal journey back to the past with modern things and knowledge.  It is a very difficult journey because it is about navigating the traps of life and path dependencies that took us from the old ways that were more resilient and sustainable to a modern one of great affluence albeit unsustainable.  All civilizations seem to succumb to this journey so we must acknowledge human ecosystems enter succession like earth ecosystem and the reality is they are one as our disrupted nature world is expressing.  The acceptance is ultimately that there might not be a destination but only a journey.  Yet, this is what life is about and that is our journey to death.  Life just got very REAL.

“THE TRANSFORMATION OF RISK”

https://tinyurl.com/v3dal5b     korowicz human systems

 

“We have entered an age where the risks societies face are becoming more extreme in their impacts, more probable in their likelihood, and potentially irreversible in their duration.

 

The conditions that underpin the casual expectations of our normal lives  — that there is food in the supermarket, that businesses can operate, that electricity, water and healthcare are available, that we can communicate, money works, and government functions — depends upon the coherent operation of an increasing complex, interdependent, high-speed and integrated global system. Mostly we don’t notice it because it works so effectively.

 

However, this complexity that underpins our welfare has become a source of growing vulnerability. Distant stresses and  shocks can be transmitted across the world through financial system and supply-chain contagion, through transport  and communications networks, supply/ demand drops, and human movements.

 

Further, it means that if the ‘right’ part of a socio-economic system is sufficiently compromised (by a financial collapse, major pandemic, natural or environmental disaster, cyber/ hybrid- attack on critical infrastructure, state failure, or synchronous events), critical interdependent societal systems can fail collectively. In a time of always-on economies, of rapid financial flows and Just-In-Time logistics, the process may be rapid. Under certain conditions, this could be global and irreversible.

 

At the same time we can expect growing stresses —including from food,oil and water constraints; from the impacts of climate change; credit over-expansion; demographics, declining global trust/ legitimacy-that can propagate through these global networks. It is the interactions of increasing societal vulnerability, and the rising scale and impact of stressors that is being referred to as The Transformation of Risk.

 

This transformation is likely to be experienced as growing societal stress- social, political, economic, environmental and infrastructural; and an increase in the frequency and intensity of shocks. There will be more surprises, the future will look more and more uncertain, while society’s expectations and expert models (for the economy or greenhouse gas emissions, for example) diverge further from reality. Instability will become de-stabilising. In this context, the resilience and adaptive capacity of societies are likely to be further undermined. This increases the likelihood of large-scale systemic failure – from localised and reversible, to global and irreversible become more likely.

 

This is the context in which Korowicz Human Systems operates. Firstly, it aims to develop and express a perspective on Globally Integrated Systemic Risk that is scientifically credible. Secondly, it aims to translate this into an actionable Risk Posture that can guide societal responses. Finally, it is endeavouring to support and encourage societal preparedness and contingency planning through work with governments, institutions, and civil society.

 

We do not know what the future will bring, but as a society we are overwhelming invested in a future that assumes continued socio-economic integration. But the growing likelihood of societal stress and the potential for irreversible systemic failure, coupled with the potentially catastrophic impacts means there is a strong risk management argument for putting more effort into engaging with the consequences of severe down-side risks.”

 

A further great read that is directly relevant to the virus:

“Catastrophic Shocks Through Complex Socio-Economic Systems — A pandemic perspective”

https://tinyurl.com/vy3cvsk  david korowicz

One has to reflect on the nature of ecosystems specifically the current planetary one with the central element of human intervention.  Clearly todays planetary ecosystem and summation of local ecosystems are/is in decline or localized failure.  This points to succession as the now primary force in both human and natural realms.  The reality is you can’t decouple these but for the sake of understanding they are often separated.  “Advocate isolating half the planet to protect it from humans” definitely has merit but not complete realism.  The realism is in regards to the nature of planetary succession preventing good conservation at these levels.  The planet is affected by humans in overshoot but also humans are in a state of overshoot making this a quagmire for humans and nature alike.  In this regard then the human/nature nexus has negative feedbacks that overwhelm human intervention plus degrade nature more.  In fact, it is human intervention that is the problem so more intervention is a problem.  I say this in respect to macro efforts at geoengineering and conservation which point to scaling issues policy which by definition have scaling issues.

 

Having scaling issues is not bad but it should be recognized.  Alternatively, the starting point of action gets back to a scaling issue and action secondary.  At a certain level when we engage in macro efforts, we are losing scale and balance.  Yet, the reality is humans are out of scale so good action out of scale is required.  Renewables fit this description.  They are greener than fossil fuels but also very disruptive and damaging.  There is an inevitability of human and planetary succession now.  This is a self-organizing force which has already involved tipping points on multiple levels.  This means there is a current of forces leading to a chain of events that point to a determined string of events ahead.  This is critical to understand because we must get to the very core of the problem to be able to properly orientate behavior.  The core of the problem is humans don’t scale in good or bad.  The good and bad of human activity will continue regardless.

 

While you may say to this well you said nothing but then you are missing a key point.  That point is there is a planetary gradient above and beyond human intervention or understanding.  The point here is the idea of isolating nature from humans means trying to isolate nature from nature.  Humans are part of this natural force which is above and beyond human control.  Until human’s respect this it does not matter if human actions are good or bad there is still the problem of proper wisdom being missed.  Does this matter then or is this point meaningless in regards to good human actions?  My gut tells me humans real challenge is not saving nature but saving ourselves.  If we can save ourselves nature will be saved albeit within the context of a gradient of decline of a planet in succession.

 

To save ourselves requires honesty so if these macro actions of good with geoengineering and conservation are not grounded in honesty to the true human existential situation they are ultimately doomed.  Just like the greater good of green efforts has been taken hostage by fake green techno optimistic capitalism.  Any human action is natural because it’s a unity issue.  If we are going to reflect on what is happening then a requirement is honesty.  This honesty of self-reflection ultimately must be individual.  In a sense we need to isolate ourselves, our local, our significant others and our basis of meaning to be protected by human forces.  This is not possible really as the virus is showing us all too well.  In times of better human scale these forces could not be isolated.  It is a function of the planet and its ecosystem first and humanity second.  Living with this then should tell humans it is folly to play human games at the macro but it is also natural and inevitable.  So basically, we get back to where we started which is the nature of the tensions of determinism and free will.  Free will can be found locally but determinism rules the planet.

I am in a similar situation being already prepped and more important mentally prepared.  I am a green prepper so all the things in this article I have already worked on.  Our situation is slightly different but the motivation is much the same.  The important point for me to express to other readers here is green prepping is not about creating this unsinkable ship that will save you.  It is about lifeboats of strategies of things and lifestyle that assist the process of mitigating and adapting to decline.  These things and attitudes become part of a life style that naturally seeks wise simplicity and this then obviously centers around localism.  Scaling with balance results.  What this means is a proper human scale is not the modern one but balance means we are trapped in a scale that is modern but not proper.  Most all of us must live and work in a scale that is not proper for sustainability and resilience.  You can adapt this dysfunctional arrangement

 

I will make the point that survival has never has been assured even when humans were scaled better.  This is the nature of planetary acquiescence.   What green prepping is then is more of a dealing with the false attitudes the current social narrative habituates us too.  In a way we are more vulnerable than the older times because we have been deceived into believing there is this magic safety net from the techno modern.  What green prepping is about is acceptance of the wisdom of insecurity and the going forth in this truth to make ones local more resilient and sustainable.

 

There is then the hospice part of this activity which seeks honesty in the face of decline and death.  This view of death is not necessarily the mortal end of our lives but the death of a way of life so many of us have been born into.  Globalism has been all any of us have really known.  Now we are faced with the end of this powerful system both systematically but also planetary.  This means that all those delocalization strategies that have been embraced by individuals and communities will have to be critically examined.  The only obvious response is simplicity and localism.

 

There is only so much that can be done but doing something should be obvious.  Paralysis is understandable but only in the beginning of this realization.  Simple things like growing food should be a natural response.  Simpler yet is learning to grow food.  Home economic skills are another area.  Crafts and professional expertise that are applicable to this new way of living should be honed.  If somebody is good with animal husbandry or carpentry these should be applied to decline.  A community is made up of multiple skill.  Individuals should become a jack of all trades in general and specialize with your individual talents.  Most people are good at something.

 

None of this is assured because the damage from delocalization and the destruction of local community has gone so far.  Yet, these powerful human links of community will return from necessity as the absurd world of depending on survival from value chains that stretch the earth are exposed.  Not everyone can do advanced green prepping.  BTW the green part of this prepping means fortifying the planet and the people in the local.  So, many are already green oriented it is just these attitudes have not gone through the metamorphosis that a crisis like this virus is presenting.

 

It is likely this virus will only hurt globalism with maybe no more death than the flu.  Yet, humans really don’t have any alternative to globalism so this is serious nonetheless.  The basics of survival are centered around globalism so it is not going to magically disappear and a wonderful localism sprout.  This bifurcating process will have consequences that will require pain and suffering and for some death.  That is ultimately the hospice part.  Now is the time to at least evaluate your life in regards to an existential insecurity everyone is faced with.  Even the elite and the privileged have nowhere to hide.  This economic pandemic will touch everyone.  Is it a pathogen pandemic yet?  Does it matter really because it has shaken the economy into a new level which is a lower level of affluence.  These things are related so don’t be fooled when people say the virus is no worse than the flu because on the economic level it is and our economics are global and the global is survival.  Adapt this while you can.

 

 

“Why I’m Not Preparing for Covid-19”

https://tinyurl.com/qkzx2za     low carbon life

 

“We’re not preparing only because we’re already prepared, at least on the most basic and most useful level. I can’t think of much I could add today that would significantly increase our safety. Slightly, maybe, but not significantly.  The great news is that getting ready for one bad surprise gets you at least half way ready for all the others. Ice storm closed all the roads? Better make sure you don’t have to run to the store for food or bleach, and you have some other way to cook, heat and poo in case the power and water stop. Community-level health problem? You’re safer not leaving home, and you should probably assume that power and water employees may not be able to get to work. Lost your job? Better not go to the store, and maybe do without power and water in favor of paying the rent or mortgage. Are you seeing a pattern here? I certainly do.”

REAL Green is about a journey and the behavior during that journey that manifests itself in the building up of localism.  REAL Green is green prepping which is a hybrid prepping of enhancing localism to boost resilience and sustainability.  Normal prepping is often about isolation with a bunker mentality.  REAL Green recognizes the need for strategies to protect your local from outside shocks but the key is recognizing that no amount of prepping will ensure survival.  Instead REAL Green recognizes that shocks can vary with the shock of the steady decline of the planet and human system being a priority.  Addressing this type of shock also enhances one’s ability to deal with specific shocks that are more dramatic and more localized.

 

The journey is first and foremost one of behavior, attitudes, and lifestyles.  One of the most important aspects to this mental condition is the acceptance of decline with the corresponding pessimism but a pessimism that is optimistic.  This juxtaposition is because the journey that is a way of life creates meaning and hope.  The meaning is active efforts at survival strategies.  This is an art lost on the modern human.  Our ancestors lived the constant threat of a collapse in their local.  Back then globalism was not present to jump in and mitigate localized failures.  The hope comes from feeling your preparedness will allow a better chance of survival.

 

REAL Green is more than the preoccupation with decline and collapse because it is a green way of life.  This green way of life involves permaculture strategies, embraced simplicity, and restoration of nature in the local.  This means even if the techno optimists are correct and the human experiment will succeed long into the future a REAL Green who embraces decline is still a success because of the rewards of permaculture and localism.   Real Green is for everyone and every local because it is a way of life that seeks relative change in hybridization of the old and new.  The relative part allows anyone to adapt and mitigate their local away from delocalization and towards localism.  It allows a guilt reduction and a way to address helplessness.  REAL Green acknowledges and accepts we are carbon trapped in path dependencies so there is no way to transcend this determinism.  This difference allow meaning to all adaptation and mitigation strategies.  It allows a spiritual dignity of decline when one realizes this decline is the force present with the planet but also human systemness.

 

So, this REAL Green journey is a spiritual one that manifests itself in action.  Prepping and permaculture come from the realization the status quo is going in the wrong direction.  Limits and diminishing returns are recognized.  More efficiency and power do not make life better beyond a point.  This then leads to efforts at scaling.  This scaling is relative to a local, the people in that local and one’s position in that local.  This influences an attempt to lower one’s footprint for the planet but also resilience.  This is done respecting the fact we are trapped so one can only disengage so much from the delocalization of modern life.  Most can’t quit their job or move.  Those who can should if it is determined that a local and their community is not a positive one.

 

REAL Green is economic.  Embracing permaculture, prepping, and localization means less economic return.  The old ways of carbon capture involve small value returns that require much more labor.  Therefore, REAL Green is hybrid and involves relative efforts.  You will have to remain status quo too and this means behavioral strategies are essential.  You are going to be poorer in things but richer in value.  You will need to triage out the superfluous to get lean.  This leanness is boosted by the redundancy of prepping.  Stocking up and adding equipment that is not immediately put to work has a cost.  This lowers the return to REAL Green, but it also offers insurance and strength.  The key becomes the balance of the status quo with scaling.  Each local and individual has a different profile, but many similarities exist.  This involves farming but also home economics and crafts.

 

Advanced REAL Green becomes a monastery of knowledge and things that is a seed bank for future change.  The future is our youth and they will need education.  Once the basics of REAL Green scaling are accomplished and there is a functionality to the effort then efforts at training and restoration can be applied to neighbors and nearby space.  This must often be done in stealth because it is an alternative lifestyle that carries a risk of being seen as nutter.  Be careful in how much is revealed.  The gift of REAL Green is for the awakened to planetary and human decline not status quo promoters.  These promoters are both green and brown.  Fake greens want affluence and green and this is not green.  Browns want whatever produces growth.  Both mindsets are delusional about limits and decline.  They can be harnessed to enhance a REAL Green local because REAL Green is about using the best products and practices of the status quo of delocalization to enhance the old-world ways proven for a millennium of human survival.  Instead of globalism destroying the local in delocalization a REAL Green uses these delocalizing forces to boost the local.

 

Finally, this is about humility to the planet and to your significant others.  The humility to the planet is the understanding the planet acquiesces your living.  Second is the fact that you are awakened to acceptance and honest science means it is your duty to be other oriented.  You are tasked with helping others to be REAL Green not as one preaches a religion or a cult because REAL Green is local and individual, it is about offering an add-on to one’s existing higher power meaning by including nature and the decline process into their meaning.  The humility comes with being a shaman.  A shaman allows the planet to speak through them and that power is not for their own possession.  This is important because one usurps this planetary power for one’s own gain it is lost.

 

 

“The Four Dimensions of Change”

https://tinyurl.com/voqoucr     resilience

 

“The first dimension consists of “holding actions,” that is, efforts to slow down the damage of our current ecologically-destructive consumptive society. In essence, saving what we can of Earth and biodiversity and “caring for those that have been damaged” by “the unraveling of our social fabric.” While essential, these are defensive acts, as Macy and Johnstone explain. “For every acre of forest protected, many others are lost,” and therefore will never, alone, get us to a Great Turning… The second dimension is one of “Life-sustaining systems and practices.” These are the efforts to transform our cultures to reorient them on sustainability instead of consumerism and growth. I’ve explored this dimension for years and they occur on a vast array of scales, from the micro- to the macro… “these new structures won’t take root and survive without deeply ingrained values to sustain them.”… Cultivating and sustaining these values is the third dimension, the “Shift in Consciousness.” In the Yale article, Buzzell described it this way: “Raise your level of consciousness. And that could be getting more scientific information, or it could be doing some kind of consciousness practice like meditation or perhaps spending time by yourself alone out in nature.”… We take part in this third dimension of the Great Turning when we pay attention to the inner frontier of change, to the personal and spiritual development that enhances our capacity and desire to act for our world. By strengthening our compassion, we give fuel to our courage and determination. By refreshing our sense of belonging in the world, we widen the web of relationships that nourishes us and protects us from burnout. In the past, changing the self and changing the world were often regarded as separate endeavors and viewed in either-or terms. But in the story of the Great Turning, they are recognized as mutually reinforcing and essential to one another… But in this case the fourth dimension could simply be time. Our culture exacerbates time stress in myriad ways—from obsession with aging and mortality, to “buy now” advertising and constant tech upgrades, to poorly communicated environmental warnings like we have just “12 years to limit climate catastrophe.” But truthfully this may all be counterproductive and anxiety-producing, and frankly, is just wrong. The window to “save the planet” probably closed 40 or 50 years ago… Instead, we need to look at this as a lifelong journey (or even our own personal hero quests) rather than a sprint. And as we embark on these journeys, we have to ask ourselves: How, over the course of my lifetime, will my actions, my relationships, my work, and words help in healing Gaia?… In that process, we must also recognize that the only scale to measure this should be oriented on you—on your position in society”