REAL Green Adaptation

What we have today is FAKE Greenism.  FAKE Green believe growth and increasingly complicated tech will decarbonize the economy “AND GET THIS” make us wealthier.  This is a fairytale narrative that is needed because there will be no support for a REAL Greenism of degrowth and less affluence.  Even more, REAL Greenism say degrowth and less affluence will not save us.  Our fate is sealed and consequences are to be paid for.  REAL Green does not say tech is not part of our solution tool box.  What REAL Green says is let’s start from the beginning and acknowledge an unavoidable collapse process.  So, the starting point is behavior not tech.  The wise application of tech behavior tested is what should drive tech not profit and efficiency.  Collapse is coming and nature is showing us why and how.  We have time to live.  The sky is not falling tonight for most of us.  During this time we can adapt and mitigate the coming trial by fire. 

REAL Green goes further and says this honesty and proactivity cannot be adapted to at the top because of systematic drag of entrenched behavior.  If we go the REAL Green route of acknowledging a collapse process and embrace degrowth and lower affluence it is not clear if our globalistic system that is based on hyper growth can manage this forced degrowth.  This includes green and wise degrowth.  This house of cards may just collapse without explanation.  This is the real danger with honesty and degrowth.  Further dangers are human nature.  How do you harness fear and anxiety of a people who have been conditioned to growth and improving living conditions and most recently, lied to that everything will be fixed?  Human nature can ruin this whole project too without any rationality. 

This is where REAL Green goes local and individual.  REAL Green individual follows the bigger picture but only to adapt his life and his local to a coming collapse process.  He leverages the status quo of growth to degrowth with dignity.  The degrowth with dignity is an orderly process with meaning.  REAL Green acknowledges a collapse process and acknowledges civilization is hopelessly trapped and unable to change its trajectory.  There will be no 100% renewable world with social justice.  There will be no space travel and asteroid mining.  There will be increasingly failed states and regions trying to adapt to failure.  Pain, suffering and death will increasingly be common place instead of happy faces we constantly see on TV.

REAL Green gets with the picture by triage and hybridization.  Remove items and lifestyles that will impede your survival.  Embrace the old ways with new knowledge.   Use the best tech that is tested for REAL Green localization to find a better way.  Be skeptical of complicated high tech.  If tech scales to the local and has robust durability then it is likely a good fit for REAL Green.  What we see now is aggressive tech with constantly tweaking efficiency without reality testing and cost accounting.  The old ways of harvesting solar energy locally with animals can be adapted to include renewables gathering solar energy.  All of this embracing intermittency, seasonality, and increasingly climate instability.  Demand management and adapted behavior will drive a new kind of efficiency that really is what humans used to do.  Animal power has a place in all this.  Growing our own food and dwelling in a local instead of a culture of travel is the REAL Green way out of the rat race. 

To achieve this, REAL Green says embrace these changes relatively based upon who you are, where you live and the degree of understanding of your significant others.  Do not alienate your family, friends, and community but challenge them and reach out to them.  Bend the rules and step on some feet but don’t burn the house down.  Remember REAL Green acknowledges a collapse process.  REAL Green engages in prep but not the mentality that prep will save you.  REAL Green prep is about getting lean and mean.  It is about being able to sprint and do long distance but it also acknowledges you can’t out run collapse.  REAL Green is seeking to yield to greater forces and attempts to slide under the radar screen as a motive.  It is ready to apply maximum force because REAL Green understands survival will be tested and death will be close at some point.  Start the process of engaging in activities that expose you to pain and suffering but at the same time enjoy life.  That may sound like an incongruous juxtaposition but it is really just more of a paradox.  Embracing pain and suffering will allow you to enjoy life.   Add REAL Green on to your existing higher power program.  All REAL Green is trying to do is localize and prepare for a paradigm shift.  It is an add-on not a system.  REAL Green is not trying to start a new religion.  REAL Green is about meaning and harnessing the truth. ����������������>a+T

I would caution anyone who thinks we can solve the worlds problems on the backs of the rich.  First there is not enough rich to matter.  They may be energy hogs but there are so few rich in relation to the rest of the economy that their extra energy use is not that great.  Their wealth is significantly digital and therefor ephemeral.  In a collapse situation much of their wealth would vanish.  Much of their toys would not operate.  We also have to consider the economic impact of rich in the overall economy.  If you want to have more equitable economics with less of a footprint you must be very careful how you impact the economy.  A drastic change could actually make the economy overall less affluent.  It is true many rich are part of the parasitic class of FIRE and sports and celebs.  Yet, many rich are very successful and have taken risks and should be rewarded. 

As the modern economy concentrates knowledge there is going to be divergence.  This is another macro area that should be addressed.  We have regions that have wealth concentrating and this becomes unfair at a certain point.  Limitarianism is a new branch of thinking on redistribution.  This subject is important going forward both from a social standpoint both within an economy and globally.  It also should be addressed at the individual level.  Individually we should have an upper limit of wealth accumulation.  The problem with this will be loopholes and corruption but this is always the case.  No way to get around the ingenuity of human nature.  The wealthy can hire an army of consultants so this should be limited.  The very wealthy especially those who gain wealth in the financial side of the economy need to be limited.  Sports and the entertainment industry likewise need to be limited.  These are industries that do not contribute to sustainability or resilience after a point.

 On the regional level there needs to be limits but this is harder to control.  A wealthy region is generally a productive region.  The problem becomes once this region entrenches its wealth and privilege.  Redistribution and limits are needed but harder to assess.  This is currently being done at the federal level but increasingly it is falling short because of the nature of the modern economy.  Money concentrates and with-it power and privilege so we are seeing entrenchment as affluence stalls.  At the international level redistribution is even becoming harder especially as limits are reached to affluence.  Affluence is under pressure everywhere.  In a time of a shrinking economic pie less redistribution will be possible.  Poor nations are getting poorer for many reasons’ redistribution will not solve.  Overpopulation is overshoot making policies difficult to implement unless the underlying problem is addressed. 

This is where some REAL Green might be of use.  REAL Green is local based and decline based.  A macro REAL Green look at the systematics of the global economy calls for a holistic approach to Limitarianism and planetary health.  Let’s Place an upper limit on wealth but lets also move more people local with less affluence.  These people moved to the less affluence of localism must be protected from the competitive condition of the wealthy and privileged individuals, regions, and nations.  This needs to be incorporated with intermittency of renewables.  Take people to localism.  Give them security of medical and income.  Provide them with energy but require them to live with intermittency.  Have them focus on low carbon solar energy harvesting and gathering.  Gardening and more animal husbandry is needed.  More animal power which is plenty fine for a localized life. 

While I call this less affluence in reality that is only in relation to a modern definition.  The reality is spiritually and materially affluence can be relatively greater if we consider health and wellbeing.  Consumerism and leisure can be adapted locally and with less of a footprint to offer more spiritual satisfaction.  On the other end of the equation is the relatively richer individuals, regions, and nations.  If we are going to maintain a modern way of life and attempt to avoid a cascading collapse then we will need a modern knowledge and producer class.  There are aspects of production that are only efficient at the global level.  Higher Knowledge can only be maintained with affluence and concentration of wealth and energy.  The key is determining what and where.  So, going forward REAL Green says we need a two-tier society.  One that goes into a localism of less but with ample material and spiritual satisfaction protected from the competitive destructive nature of market-based capitalism.  We then need a highly educated and productive class who produce those items that can only be produced at this level.  These products and people are essential for maintaining modernity. 

REAL Green acknowledges this is likely beyond our human capacity especially since market-based capitalism with its individualistic liberal democracy is not up to the task of controlling people.  Yet, it is still important we offer this theoretical solution as a benchmark for current policies.  Let’s be clear on what will work and what won’t.  Unfortunately, we have control that is becoming more nefarious and Orwellian.  This combined localism/globalism requires sacrifice at both ends but what we see now is nobody wants to sacrifice.  REAL Green then says go local anyway and harness this global engine to improve your local.  The fact that our current arrangement can’t change means it is now the case more than ever to find a strong local and invest in it.  Leverage the power of globalism for your local.  Use it to leave it.

 “For the Sake of Life on Earth, We Must Put a Limit on Wealth”

https://tinyurl.com/y469yp9f     resiliance

“A series of research papers shows that income is by far the most important determinant of environmental impact. It doesn’t matter how green you think you are; if you have surplus money, you spend it. The only form of consumption that’s clearly and positively correlated with good environmental intentions is diet: people who see themselves as green tend to eat less meat and more organic vegetables. But attitudes have little bearing on the amount of transport fuel, home energy and other materials you consume. Money conquers all…There’s a name for this approach, coined by the Belgian philosopher Ingrid Robeyns: limitarianism. Robeyns argues that there should be an upper limit to the amount of income and wealth a person can amass. Just as we recognize a poverty line, below which no one should fall, we should recognize a riches line, above which no one should rise. This call for a levelling down is perhaps the most blasphemous idea in contemporary discourse.  But her arguments are sound. Surplus money allows some people to exercise inordinate power over others: in the workplace; in politics; and above all in the capture, use and destruction of the planet’s natural wealth. If everyone is to flourish, we cannot afford the rich. Nor can we afford our own aspirations, which the culture of wealth maximization encourages.  The grim truth is that the rich are able to live as they do only because others are poor: there is neither the physical nor ecological space for everyone to pursue private luxury. Instead we should strive for private sufficiency, public luxury. Life on Earth depends on moderation.”

Technocratic optimism is much like bible thumping in that it is seeking immortality.  True spirituality is a letting go into a higher power that is much greater.  Instead of a human centric formula true spirituality is above and beyond humans.  We are but part and expression of this whole.  We can only approach what that is because the part can never know the whole.  Instead modern humans want to be the part and the whole and know it all.  Science is corrupted by this lack of wisdom as is spirituality.  This corruption means we actually need to be less intelligent but wiser. 

Wisdom is knowing what intelligence to embrace and what not to embrace.  A specialized scientist is not much use except in a world of specialized science.  Scientific specialization is a luxury not a force of nature.  True sapience starts with the sustainability that produces a survival resilience of community and place.  This does not mean a whole scale rejection of our accumulated knowledge.   Nor does this mean the society of the technocratic or numerous religions including the pseudo religion of modern consumerism needs to be rejected.  It should be understood that this is the natural evolution of a species like ours when it reaches the point of imbalance or overshoot. 

This is the new ecosystem you must inhabit.  This new ecosystem is not scaled properly in relation to the planet so as with any imbalanced force in nature balance will force a restoration maybe not in human timescales but planetary ones.  Nothing defining can be done about this condition at the level of the human collective.  There are far too many belief systems and communities vying for a place at the table.  It is better to embrace this new ecosystem at the individual level and more importantly at the level of small community where adaptability can be attempted.  For most of human history until the recent time where we embrace agriculture and the empire impulse man has been tribal and in small communities.  Individually we can embrace this human background and still live amount the giants so to speak.  The giants are the forces of delocalization that has globalized this earth and changed the planets beyond its balance. 

It is not just the case that humans are out of balance and scale but also now this condition of a dominant species has destabilized the planet in regards to habitability for the web of life.  Planetary systems, ecosystems, and even geology are now adapted in an Anthropocene.  In this greater condition an individual and local can decline in place while still embracing this force of life.  If you think you can decouple from this greater force you will see yourself consumed by competitive forces.  Survival is precarious anytime but particularly if one is delusional of what can and can’t be.  You adapt to what you have even if it does not seem right.  Many of us feel a deep sadness for what humans have done.  We struggle to find meaning in all this imbalance.

The meaning comes from embracing decline that is evident in honest science.  This embrace includes giving into the power of those greater forces.  You will have to give to Caesar what is his.  Paradoxically this requires an embrace of less intelligence along with physical consumption.  Chose the intelligence you pursue wisely.  Limits apply to intelligence as they do to  our physical habitation.   Do this in a relative way that acknowledges a new human ecosystem of imbalance and decay.  The relativity means balancing growth and decline.  You will be building up into decline.  We have been killing ourselves slowly through the destruction of the habitability of the planet.  Eventually thresholds will be crossed and are being crossed.  The planet has its own timeline above and beyond the web of life.  This is at a different time scale but we are still part of it.  An asteroid might hit in 10 years destroying habitability this means ultimately there is human acquiesce to the planet.  Something we pretend we can transcend by the technocratic.

Wisdom of the moment in your local seems the best place to find meaning.  It has been what humans have done most of their history.  We have already lost our innocence of harmony but this does not mean we can’t make the journey back to what was once truly human taking with us the best of our modern experiences.  We have learned many things through science that can assist us in this journey.  Re-localize with meaning while inhabiting this globalized world.  It essentially comes down to behavior.  You are not going to tech your way out of this condition.  Limits and diminishing returns are now an dominant force preventing traditional growth.  Embrace less with more wisdom not the randomness of more intelligence with less wisdom.

Well, as usual with these articles (see below) it is all about technology.  There is not much on behavior except maybe a carbon voucher of sorts.  Vouchers are just like Band-Aids that come off in the water of reality.  They work a little but the real healing process comes from being careful with the wound.  The tech ideas are nothing new.  It is more like many of these examples mentioned will likely become a niche player.  There is nothing affordable on the horizon to replace mass travel.  All options suffer the same problems as all other tech that try to replace fossil fuels and that is net energy, on demand power, and storage issues.  Nothing new with all this tech and with all the usual FAKE Green ideas of how we will keep the status quo going.  Same FAKE Green wild forecasts of the situation in 2050.  Same shit and no reality testing of actual situation of the boundary to human activity.  We are in the neighborhood of peak everything but are in continued denial of this reality.  You know limits are around 2050 or 2100 not in a few years for technophiles.

What about behavior?  Just say no.  My wife is in Italy now seeing her mom.  I stayed home.  She is a little disappointed in me because I didn’t go.  I hate travel anymore.  I don’ like leaving the farm because so much I do needs daily attention.  You can’t find good help and it is expensive to have someone watch the place.  Jet lag sucks and going somewhere interferes with my routine that I feel makes me stronger and Greener.  That is the selfish side of why I have said no to travel.  It is easier for me than others and I acknowledge this.  My REAL Green side says no because I am pursing localization in a relative way.  I have family pressures that force me to travel or I would rarely fly.  So I say no when I can to a point then I give in.  To be fair to the young I have seen the world so the young should be given a chance at education travel but this should be structured to be Greener.  Too many young just do joyrides today instead of being educated. A trip to China to learn a skill is something.  I trip to backpack around not so much.  One way to travel is VR with google earth.  I tried that the other day on the kids VR and it was amazing.  Yea like the kids need all these electronics but that is another topic.

Instead of a vacation every year go every 3^rd year.  If you are one of these FAKE Green academics or scientific activists then see the writing on the wall that all those trips to FAKE Green meetings are a waste of time.  You are talking about the same things over and over with the same results.  Sometimes that is called insanity.  We know what works and what doesn’t already.  What works best is lower consumption.  These FAKE Greens think it is ok to do all this travel but it isn’t.  They could do the every 3^rd year travel effort to address lower consumption.  To be fair these FAKE Greens are better than the rich elite who travel as a way of life on private jets.  My family has one and they know my opinion of it.  The solution to this issue is stop trying to make the status quo work by new ways and just adapt the status quo.  There are many that represent vital travel people.  There are many that have skills that translate into more efficiency and travel leverages this.  Some travel actually makes life more sustainable and resilient.  These people need to be recognized as high value skilled people that should fly.

There is the systematic side of adapting travel.  We could realize a lot of savings to our sustainability and resilience ledger but the consequences are unemployment and lower economic activity caused by reducing the travel and leisure industry.  Going into an era of decline we have to be very careful about the pace of economic abandonment of degrowth both forced by circumstances and also managed behavior.  Our system is a high performance and complicated machine in a complex human ecosystem.  Bright ideas often don’t result in real life benefits. 

Degrowth is coming by forces of nature and hopefully our own realization that tech alone cannot make us sustainable.  Degrowth also is taking us into a new paradigm that man has not been to in recent history.  This means changes are ahead that we won’t understand fully by our status quo thinking.  It is obvious the 300% to 700% forecast in the article is bogus.  I see a meaningful decline coming soon how steep that may be is not well know because a lot depends on how decline affects globalism systematically.  How poor will we become once decline affects all aspects of life?  Population will continue to grow even if people start dying more because of that growth.  That is the nature of population and demographics.  Economics is a little different because of human nature.  What we need to do is address the human behavior side of the equation going forward.  Instead FAKE Greens will tell us all about electric flight and Zeppelins.  Ye Ha sounds like fun on paper.  The reality is it is mostly pain and sacrifice ahead.

“How will we travel the world in 2050?”

https://theconversation.com/how-will-we-travel-the-world-in-2050-121713

I have 12 x 300watt panels tied to a 48Volt 220 system batteries and inverter.  I cannot sell excess power back to the grid.  Yesterday I gathered 11KW of power.  I did this because the house was cooled with my Daiken inverter zone climate control system.  I have 4 wall units in different areas.  This is basically a very efficient A/C unit and my home is very well insulated.  I can also use an air handler to transfer cold air off the concrete floor from my bottom split level floor that is 5 foot in the ground.  This utilizes the cool ground to cool the upstairs. 

I did all this manually.  Each one of my home breakers is connected to a transfer switch so depending on needs and the weather I can switch different circuits to solar or grid to get maximum gathering.  If the clouds move in I come back to the house to switch some usage off.  The high draw items like oven, water heater, and cloths dryer are grid tied.  Of course I can line dry in the summer.  The electric water heater is a backup unit to my wood boiler.   If power goes out I have propane gas backup to cook with or charcoal grill.  The point I am making here is demand management can be done very inexpensively by somebody that is at home during the day.  It takes active engagement with energy usage (demand management).  I realize many people must leave their home during the day to work but those who don’t can do this manual demand management inexpensively. 

I also believe in a hybrid system of grid and solar supplied power.  This allows a homeowner to tie up less money in a home system because of the flexibility.  Grid power is cheaper than the cost of my solar system depreciated out over time.  I have done the numbers.  It is possible that one day grid power might get expensive if this happens I might have cheaper power from my solar system.  I also have a wood boiler with the added adaptation of solar water heating in the summer so I don’t need to heat water with wood.  This system is tied to an electric water heater.  The water coming into the water heater is preheated by the boiler system.  In the winter when I am heating the house the system can be switched to be all wood boiler heated water.  I have all LED lighting.  I ask my wife to use high draw on hot water when the sun is good in the summer.  In the winter I don’t care because the wood boiler heating the home always has a fire.  The wood boiler can be shut off in the winter and the home heated with electric tied to the grid if I go away for a day or two.  I can also run my inverter with solar on heat mode in winter.  I can use selected electric heat units with low draw in the winter if I get an exceptional sunny clear winter day.

During the day I maximize my gathering of solar energy.  I go all grid power at night.  I have my batteries at maximum charge for longevity but also in case of power failure.  We don’t use much power at night anyway.  The ingredients for success in this demand management system is manual switching of a hybrid grid and solar system.  It starts with a very well insulated home and good power usage behavior.  This kind of system adapts the best of solar and the grid for lower cost.  I also hope that eventually the grid is greener so when I use the grid I am actually also utilizing some green sources.  The solar system with batteries is a must from a prepper in my opinion as an added benefit.

“Companies explore how to make your home smart and 100% renewable-powered”

https://tinyurl.com/y2ww8krg     renewable energy world

“After he moved into a new home in 2013, he installed 23 photo-voltaic panels on the roof capable of generating 5.3 kilowatts of power, about enough for his family of four. Lightsource BP added a battery to store the electricity the panels generate, an inverter which can be programmed to dispatch the stored electrons when needed, and a diverter to send surplus power to heat the water in his tank.  Hill controls this kit, which he estimates cost about $13,000, with an app that gives real time information. So he could be camel-riding in Mongolia and the technology will still know the best time to generate power in his England home and charge the battery. At night, when the solar panels are effectively useless, the battery can juice-up his electric car. “The main aim is to use everything we generate within the home,” Hill, wearing a dark green shirt with a windmill on it, said over a cup of tea in his kitchen. “So anything that goes from the PV to the grid is a wasted opportunity that we can save money on.”

“For anyone with less interest in tinkering with their day-to-day power use, Lightsource BP is offering to take control. The company specializes in efficiently generating Hill’s own electricity so he doesn’t produce any surplus which can only be sold to the grid at discounted prices. And ensures he doesn’t end up buying more expensive fossil fuel-generated power.  When the customer moves around the house, the artificial intelligence box learns patterns, like when a person works from home, or is on vacation, with the purpose of closely matching electricity generation with in-house consumption. It can do things like predict the next day’s weather, detect individual appliances, collect data on how often and at what times they are used, and help produce a greater share of the power at home.”

There are some things that can be done.  Some things are being done and many things are not being done.  This planetary situation is not going to be adapted much from the human point of view.  This is because the urge to populate is beyond much control and the drive to being affluent and comfortable is not being confronted.  Fake Greens are honest about the climate science but not the solutions.  They think it is about investment decisions and the right tech.  We need to end fossil fuels they say and go carbon neutral.  The science of doing this is not honest.  It is not even close.  This individual wants his cake and eat it.  Peace on earth, fairness, and more happiness without fossil fuels but more comfort.  These things don’t add up.  The blame game is everywhere with no accountability.

 Pointing the fingers at the 1% by a 1% is hypocrisy.  Everyone reading these words is a type of 1%.  An aboriginal in the jungle is a TRUE Green none of us are.  The minute you turn on your devise and read theses words you are in a way guilty.  Sure, there are psychopathic trends in the rich and powerful but not really as a group.  The system allows it so some do it.  Any of you can instantly be rich and these rich poor.  This is a systematic condition of overshoot.  It is about a self-organizing force of a civilization of intelligent humans seeking survival and happiness.  No different than our ancestors but what is different is the tools within our reach.  What is also different than in the past is we have been delocalized and now are helpless to live differently in aggregate.  Some can make the effort to live differently but not much.  Globalism has meant comfort and high populations but also loss of freedom to live differently.  We are prevented by choices and fate.  Our choices are surviving economically or be consumed by a system and become destitute.   Fate is being delocalized. 

Fake greens will whine about the planet being ruined by fossil fuels as they use tech and talk about tech that has a fossil fuel basis at lunches that were brought to them via fossil fuels.  This is all brought to them via a basically high energy civilization which can only run on messy energy, tech, and resource exploitation that come from such a large and consumptive population locked in economies of scale and comparative advantage.  Fake green individuals should be talking about efforts we can make for when nature ends this process.  This is ahead because honest science tells us this.  We can mitigate and adapt but most will not or cannot.  We won’t for many reasons because we compete to be better than others and we cooperate to allow others to do what we want to do within a frame work of laws.  Until procreation has draconian rules and consumption is rationed out in a draconian way any other approach will fail. 

Talking about what is not possible over and over is insanity.  Instead you acknowledge what is wrong and accept what must be done.  This is not to say we should not leave fossil fuels as best we can.  We should also build out as much efficiency and renewable energy as we can but be honest about what we can do.  Man should know his limitations.  He should be honest about his footprint.  He should be strong enough to face pain, suffering, and death that is inevitable for many.  Instead we pursue comfort and pleasure in the here and now and read about these horrible things with our morning coffee and then go about our business.  If you were to dwell on this issue of planetary destruction you risk going mad.  If you are in a trap with a predicament that is beyond fixing then you adapt and mitigate as a life system. 

We also have those who make a living on this.  Our modern-day journalist makes a living on talking about these tragedies and fantasies.  Climate people have careers based upon these discussions.  This is hardly a real solution with flying and driving to seminars and conventions to talk about what cannot be fixed.  This is where wisdom comes in.  Wisdom in this situation says the best one can do is adapt locally and individually and hope this effort will gain support in one’s immediate environment.  It is also true those who are gifted with leadership can make large impacts on bigger levels but nobody is going to change this situation until a power of fate and reality steps in.  Fate and reality work at different levels of time and space.  The planet and the web of life may adapt and change because of what we have done but not in our life time.  We may have initiated a hot house world who knows in that case the time and space are actually space time as in a new planet eon from now somewhere among the billions of stars. 

It is my opinion that REAL Green applications ultimately can reach the level of small local communities.  I am doing REAL Green individually.  I do reach out locally but I almost never explain what I am doing in detail.  Most of my neighbors would not understand this way of thinking.  For them much of what I do is natural for where I live.  Animals, wood, hay, and a well running farm is normal.  The environmental activity well that is for the hunting effort.  So, I am somewhat camouflaged to my true motivations which are REAL Green Deep Adaptation for a coming decline by embracing less and living locally.  This is done relatively with the understanding the status quo must be leveraged to achieve your goals. 

Ultimately it will take a community to realize strong REAL Green results.  What I am doing is not economic in the status quo.  Electricity is cheaper than wood if looked at from strictly a cost approach with labor and material.  Hay is cheaper done by big operators and purchased.  Animals cannot be raised with small stocking rates and expected to provide you a living.  My REAL Green approach to life must have an income source.  Many can do this by having one or more members of the family working a status quo job.  I am retired living off my investments from when I was “status quo”.  If you want to live a life with modern benefits you have to remain attached to the status quo. 

Where this might be improved upon is a community based effort that would embrace  “communitarian-traditionalist-socialist alliance”.  People of like mind in locals can come together socialistically and realize a REAL Green life.  The reality of the situation is if you are going to go low carbon and low ecological footprint efficiently it has to be local and community based.  It has to have a socialistic tendencies to operate efficiently.  What this means is a ordering of activity without the extreme profit motive and the hyper capitalistic approach of private property.  There has to be shared efforts, gift economy, and barter involved.  There must also be a social order with shared leadership that has a hint of authoritarianism.  We can look to the Amish to see how they have managed to maintain their lifestyles. 

If you are going to lower your footprint there are consequences.  Some can go as individuals into a TRUE Green way of life.  The consequences are a very meager life that only works in certain settings for example a very rural life that allows one to live off the land.  For most this is not practical.  I could have chosen this way of life but I would not be able to take my family with me.  It would have been a solitary living alone.  That was not practical for me.  Some might be able to manage this and I salute them because they are closer to TRUE Green.  An alternative for those who have been awakened to planetary decline and see through FAKE Green of the rich liberal establishment the alternative is a REAL Green community embracing socialism at the grass roots level not at the top where socialism is basically just another wealth transfer Ponzi scheme.

“Local Socialism and Civil Society”

https://tinyurl.com/y6ca6qo5     resiliance

“I am not suggesting some grand communitarian-traditionalist-socialist alliance here, at least not without a great deal of careful theoretical exploration and clear limitations (some of which I’ve attempted in the past, under the title “left conservatism”). However, I am insisting that advocates of democratic socialism hurt themselves in the realm of political debate, and misunderstand themselves in the realm of ideas, when they present socialism as too universal, and too rational, to ever be republican in the classic sense: that is, attentive to the res publica, to people where they live.”

I don’t know what to think anymore.  A few years after 08 and the pseudo recovery I was a little stunned.  Look where we are over 10 years later and still ticking.  I become stunned in 15 with how the traditional peak oil message was dead and immediate financial doom a boy crying wolf.  I call current growth pseudo because this recovery is really just wealth transfer disenfranchisement.  Personally I think real aggregate growth that has value is negative.  Sure China built vast amounts and markets are way up in the west.   To me much of what we have today is malinvestment that can never make the return these investments are supposed to.  We have monstrous unfunded liabilities everywhere with the wrong type of demographics.  The poor of the world that are young can never make this up.  The ever growing young are part of the problem.  At some point overpopulation is a negative and we are there.   Taken together all this is a huge systematic farce. 

I had done some radical adaptation for this 08 event I saw coming.  I began preparing for it in 05.  I was fully onboard as a peaker and once the CB interventions occurred I somewhat radicalized.  I became stunned as shale change the peaker debate and as the CB intervention grew feet.  This CB interventionism has impressed me from the point of view of just how well it has managed to keep the global economy going.  This is everywhere also with the US, China, and Europe in on it.  The EM’s are riding this wave too.  It has changed the world radically but more like a frog boiling than a phoenix. 

The only thing I can compare it to is a Ponzi scheme retirement party.  I mean where the hell do we go from here?  The debt levels everywhere except maybe Russia are in the stratosphere.  Russia ain’t shit without the rest of world being healthy.  It is almost like MMT will be inevitable although the socialistic paradise is a farce.  The neo socialist pretend all it takes is money for prosperity.  They think the rich have real money.  This is not the case because most of the money the rich have is digital.  Most debt is bad debt.  The rich own the debt and it value is not real.  Nations have debt that is not real.  The individual with debt as their life is becoming more and more difficult.  Much of the collateral backing most of the global debt is compromised or nonexistent.  This is one big farce. 

I see things continuing to slowly decline until we either stop cooperating in cold or hot wars or a black swan disrupts confidence enough that a Minsky moment occurs where the individual stops the economic activity by ending his participation in the game.  Liquidity is the name of the game and real liquidity is peoples trust.  Hyperinflation could be the result too.  At some point people will stop believing in fiat currency.  There is not enough gold to matter.  Crypto currencies cannot cover the whole currency spectrum.  A cashless society is not possible everywhere. 

I have no clue what is coming other than like with energy we are in decline and consequences of that decline will not be pleasant especially considering the current pissed off human behavior of people everywhere always expecting more and getting less.  I have been watching the financial side of doom now daily for years.  I am too the point of scratching my head dumbfounded and in amazement.  How long can this shit go on?  How long can bubbles inflate and be controlled?  How long can the deception be propagated?  This is lies built on lies.  It is even more horrifying because the fate of billions rests on a string of lies.

The referenced article at the end of my discussion is on my favorite topic of REAL Green Deep Adaptation and the fake green trend in society.  Basically we have very intelligent people that are deceived as well as unintelligent that are being deceived by techno optimist wonders.  In the process these techno optimist are discarding the earth because they feel we are moving off of it in the future with space colonization and space based mining.  It is also a fake green narrative that we can be green and more affluent for those who still see hope for the planet with a new green harmony.  Natural harmony is not consistent with human complexity.  This is the deepest of FAKE green deceptions.

A great point made in this article is power maximization that is the dominant social narrative of globalism is the wrong impulse for society.  This is what is driving globalism.   This is a duel force of human nature with the competitive nature of human groups but also the cooperative impulse of increased shared affluence.  The power of this force is beyond management.  It is highly resilient but with brittle bifurcation points once the criticality of degrowth is reached.  So we have humans turning to maximum power principal to satisfy our competitive/cooperative urges of liberal democracy and market based capitalism in the face of global and planetary decline. 

What we should instead being doing is energy efficiency and conserving.  This means less competition in the name of more natural security plus a change in what we perceive as a cooperative namely increasing shared affluence.  Instead we should be choosing degrowth principals as forces to combat the destruction of the planetary web and earth systems.  This is then a shared understanding of less affluence not more.  These principals would have to first be behaviorally based with broad based education.  A crisis may deliver these ideas but unfortunately a crisis may be too late.  We would have to compete less through cooperation based actions centered on degrowth.  This than becomes the new dominant myth that drives our social narratives eclipsing the current corrupted liberal democracy and market based capitalist version.  Our smartest people must drive this message in unanimity so our political and economic leaders get the message.  Currently our smartest people are fake green techno optimist except a very few awakened ones.  This means there is science denial by our brightest in regards to solutions.  This is perfect for the status quo because it allows politician to make phony pitches that will make things great again and industrial leaders have a new economic growth avenue.

This article is preaching New Green.  This is a macro version of REAL Green.  REAL Green is local and individual in Deep Adaptation because it has come to the conclusion the top cannot change because of the self-organization of the system of globalism.  Globalism may adapt with increased competition of regions in a new multipolar reality both political and economic.  This is still competitive cooperation but with an adapted version with nationalism and regionalism in a balance of power basis. 

REAL Green says human behavior is flawed in its global overpopulation of a highly complex civilization.  This condition is not scaled properly so poor behavior is inevitable.  The power principal will always win in these situations because humans are deceived by techno optimism both the smart and the low intelligence masses.  It is not allowed to have a negative pessimistic narrative.  This is not a rule it is a disposition.  Pessimistic realism not only does not sell with the general public but our system of academia and scientific publication process does not accommodate such thinking.  If it is allowed it is mainly as material for critiques on why techno optimism is the future. 

This then means REAL Green is the way to adapt to a deeply flawed world individually and locally.  This means focusing on small groups locally to adapt to a global complex civilization in decline that cannot change.  This can mean small groups on the internet sharing ideas but the expression of real green is local and individual.  REAL Green is not for everyone.  REAL Green is for those awakened to decline.  It is for those who can practice Deep Adaptation of a collapsing world.  Many cannot and most will not be awakened to it.  You adapt to this condition by coopting it for your individual and local.  You use the status quo to leave it. You yield to greater powers and at the same time harness these greater powers as individual energy to create a better life boat for the coming decline.  This means relative sacrifice for the planet.  Some things you will do will not be green but the overall impulse is REAL Green.  It is also about hospices which is the preparations for death both of a way of life and increasingly of you and yours. e

“The New Green Revolution, a.k.a. The Grand Transition to… ?? – Part I”

https://tinyurl.com/y5kxxwqm     LIFEITSELF

“Dr. Nate Hagens uses Hawking’s ideas about Mars colonization in his Reality 101 course at the University of Minnesota to illustrate the point that human society is composed of tiny islands of high competence floating in a vast sea of narratives.”

“The nature of intelligence, expertise, reductionism, IQ, etc. seem greatly skewed these days in favor of quasi-idiot-savant experts who are lifted into prominence by being apparently right about some very narrow slice of reality.  There’s currently not much status which attaches to synthesis, because synthesis is antithetical to most extremely stimulating beliefs about reality and the future. And this won’t change anytime soon. We are left with a choice between offering a bummer message nobody really wants to hear, versus crafting a message that has utility to move society toward chosen goals.”

“A vulnerable world,” where Jorge argues that one cannot be a consistent positivist, if one is not prepared to treat the Earth as a disposable planet, only to escape to the Cosmos later. This escape temptation is expressed by a more ample and complex “anthropofuge” movement, a movement of flight from the human condition that we must take seriously, and which we have to resist.  So beware of this murderous cosmic narrative that justifies Gaiacide”

“This means they don’t bother to do work all the time and are less energy demanding. This is what I imagine the preindustrial way of life to be like. It is not as power maximizing and is more energy efficient and conserving. What I believe we need to be doing is comparing the energy systems of different types of human civilization—the endothermic and the ectothermic—and stop asking which endothermic way of life is most efficient.”  In translation, if we want to live in more harmony with nature or be more “sustainable,” we must behave more like the ectothermic animals and slow down at times.  Says me, a creature that  incessantly works on something around the clock, including evenings and weekends.”

“By the way, I really try hard not to hallucinate.  In Part II, I will show you how naive it is to think than the “New Green Deal” will allow us to continue our current lifestyles, just by other greener means. This, my friends in the developed, power and resource hogging countries is impossible.”

My REAL Green has come to the same conclusion as the referenced  article.  What we are facing and what will achieve a degree of results in regards to our many predicaments are beyond technology.  Wind, solar, and storage combined with EV’s is not going to save us. It can’t because the issue is growth itself and more precisely how we live.  Degrowth is essential to solving our many predicaments but this must be a managed degrowth.  This degrowth must be a combination of triage of bad aspects of the current growth paradigm and a hybridization of globalism and localism.  Some aspects of our civilization must remain global.  Some of the manufacturing and trade is essentially only efficient at the global level.  If we want to retain a degree of modernity then some globalism must remain a feature of this.  Then there is a movement to localism with less affluence at least in regards to consumption.  This does not have to be the case with the wealth a strong community can realize  but let’s be honest materially localism will offer less. 

This will in a sense mean a two-tier social structure with a technical and energy intensive sector and a lower energy local sector engaged in the gathering of solar energy from the land.  Solar and wind may be part of this but so will intermittency and lower power potency.  The important point is the local will have to be supported and protected from the inevitable inequalities of a global intensive structure.  The fact remains certain aspects of our modernism must have economies of scale, comparative advantage, global transport, and global capital.  If we can greatly reduce what is part of these global attributes then we can realize some degrowth.  So, the vital degrowth needed will be achieved by taking a significant amount of people out of the global network and place them in a localized setting.  This means a degree of control many may not be ready for.  It means some will have the privilege of movement and other forced to stay local.  This means the whole nature of capitalism and liberal democracy of individualism and freedom of choice will be upended. 

This points to the fallacy of the current wave of liberal and socialistic green new deals being discussed as our solution to extinction and so forth.  These platforms push an agenda of affluence with modernism.  They want growth but camouflage it as clean green growth.  Technology is front and center to this as well as sustainable equitable development.  This is wrong as a paradigm of successful change.  It may be better than unfettered market-based capitalism for most but it is still a failure in regards to the reality of the predicaments we are facing.  The net result will just be a wealth transfer arrangement to those behind greens and away from those not.  You may think that is fine but it really isn’t in the end.  What it in effect turns out to be is an elaborate lie that we can transform society into a clean green arrangement with growth. What happens is the same failures of growth and a new aristocracy.

Technology is not the answer but it is part of the solution.  Telling people they can have affluence and change is not correct.  People must realize we can only have change with sacrifice.  Degrowth which is the only solution to our predicaments means less affluence and less choices.  It means a majority of the global population must be localized in less affluent arrangements.  If the vital parts of modernity can be maintained like networks, storehouses of knowledge, and infrastructure there must be a group who can produce and maintain these structures.  This means two tier way of life.  Deciding who is allowed to be in what tier and where one get placed in his local is the devil in the detail.  Who will volunteer and who will be forced? 

This points to our last predicament and that is of human behavior itself.  If a two-tier world focused on significant degrowth is the only way forward then can we change our collective behavior to allow these kinds of change. This means draconian changes with forced change.  It means consequences that are not going to be fully understood.   There will be those who lose and many may lose everything.  That is the nature of consequences.  There is no easy way forward.  I do not think we are up to this and this is why my REAL Green is about deep adaptation.  Adapt locally and utilize the status quo to leave it while it is still robust and in charge.  The current system cannot last but while it does go local but use the status quo to make your local the best it can be.  This is a kind of acknowledgement of the failure of human behavior at the collective level that is leveraged to create a successful human behavior locally.  Both market-based capitalism and the green new deal of clean technology and growth is a failure.  These two systems will both compete and stall in the trenches of economic and social warfare.  This is what happens when the pie is shrinking and the chairs are pulled away, stalemate.

“A globalised solar-powered future is wholly unrealistic – and our economy is the reason why”

https://tinyurl.com/y6zbq5ap     the conversation

“So the first thing we should redesign are the economic ideas that brought fossil-fueled technology into existence and continue to perpetuate it. “Capitalism” ultimately refers to the artefact or idea of all-purpose money…The policies designed to protect the environment and promote global justice have not curbed the insidious logic of all-purpose money – which is to increase environmental degradation as well as economic inequalities…In order to accomplish economic “degrowth” and curb the treadmill of capital accumulation, we must transform the systemic logic of money itself.  National authorities might establish a complementary currency, alongside regular money, that is distributed as a universal basic income but that can only be used to buy goods and services that are produced within a given radius from the point of purchase…Re-localising the bulk of the economy in this way does not mean that communities won’t need electricity, for example, to run hospitals, computers and households. But it would dismantle most of the global, fossil-fuelled infrastructure for transporting people, groceries and other commodities around the planet.  This means decoupling human subsistence from fossil energy and re-embedding humans in their landscapes and communities…Solar power will no doubt be a vital component of humanity’s future, but not as long as we allow the logic of the world market to make it profitable to transport essential goods halfway around the world. The current blind faith in technology will not save us. For the planet to stand any chance, the global economy must be redesigned. The problem is more fundamental than capitalism or the emphasis on growth: it is money itself, and how money is related to technology.” cerun:yes’>>��2��$