If you are serious about sustainable growth and global warming please read this.

[Tian Zhuangzhuang]

Hatrack posted a Guardian article in the Environmental area about the Miskito Indians in Nicaragua. Now these Indians are almost a perfectly natural indigenous population. They live off the land much like they did 1000 years ago.

They are one of the only a few groups of humans that are successfully living in an environmentally sustainable way.

I hear endless talk about what we can do to help prevent global warming everything from tree planting credits to methane capturing. But it comes down to the elephant in the room people seem silent. We have consume less resources than the earth produces. On that note we are total failures. We continue to consume massive quantities of fossil fuels. We use more water from aquifers than rainfall can replace, and we over fish entire species to the brink of extinction.

An intelligent man will realize that we cannot continue like this.

Nature has a way of keeping populations sustainable. In the Indians case a massive hurricane struck their villages and swamps. Now it is obvious that in the last 1000 or 10000 years dozens upon dozens of similar storms have struck the Miskito. Their population always bounced back from such disasters and it seems one of nature’s ways to prevent man from destroying the land that sustained him.

So do we celebrate this natural way of keeping the natural balance of man and nature? Hell no! To quote the Guardian “The residents of hundreds of shattered villages are at risk from hunger, exposure, contaminated water and disease spread by rats and mosquitoes, according to relief agencies. Infants have started succumbing to malaria, dengue and diarrhea.”

So we blink, just this once, honest nature. We will send 40 million in food and medicine to “rescue” the Miskito. And since the hurricane scarred land can no longer support the 160,000 plus population most will move into the cities where they will now contribute to global warming and the destruction of resources.

And one of the few sustainable populations left on earth will have disappeared.

Maybe we should stop lying to ourselves. Nobody is interested in sustainable growth if it involves hard choices. If it involves less for everyone and allowing starvation and population decrease till balance is achieved.

We are riding a speeding train down a steep grade and we would rather keep putting coal into the engine than admit that the hill has a bottom and the crash will kill everybody.

[Tian Zhuangzhuang]

1. ?

I know it's not a topic du jour but I'm curious what people think.


Should this generation live in a sustainable way?

Or should we let the future worry about the future?

[baby_mouse]

5. I'm grateful to you for posting this information.

For my own part, I've been starting to scrape the surface of living more green all year, including a brief stint on a permaculture farm.

A lot of people hate the idea for some reason, but I really don't think it's going to be an option to live any way but sustainably in the not-so-distant future. What a large number of people don't get is that you can live really very comfortably sustainably and actually *I* think sustainable living brings significant, (although possibly to some people not very obviously *quantifiable*) improvements to one's quality of life.

[Tian Zhuangzhuang]

2. I cross posted this post to the lounge and added bikini pictures

Apparently more of my posts should include bikini pictures

anyway for a more um entertaining version go here....... http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x6978650

[nam78_two]

3. I missed this when you first posted it

But I agree with what you say. Pity this thread sank because you make good points. We are all unhappy about what this administration has done with regard to the erosion of environmental protections and the suppression of climate science, but as a people we seem to exhibit a lot of hostility to any suggestion of personal sacrifice. It is usually met with comments about hypocrisy, "get off your computer" etc., but it is one of the most valid suggestions out there. Obviously you can't leave modern society and go live in a mud hut, but it isn't that binary. We can all cut down on a lot of stuff and still have interesting and fun lives.

I am sorry I didn't see this in time to recommend it, but here is a kick :toast:.

[baby_mouse]

7. "You can't leave modern society and go live in a mud hut"

Well, um. Yeah, you can. :)

I did a bit of that this year and it was an eye-opener. I went to stay for a bit on self-built community, here are some pictures:




This is an Adobe. A mud-hut. It's made of mud. Here it is from outside...



And here's the little village it was part of:





Another building, there were 10 in all...



It was warm, comfortable and cheaper than living in a city. I loved it.

There was:

Electricity
Internet access
Recycling facilities for glass, paper, plastic, organic waste
A beautiful herb-garden
Gorgeous carvings everywhere:





In all, a much healthier, nicer environment for me to live in. Unfortunately, I can't go and live in it because it's owned by a nice gentleman who is absolutely inundated with requests from people who want to go and live there. He encouraged people to come and learn some of the skills necessary to make this kind of life and then go and apply them elsewhere. Which I am now, in a small way, attempting to do.

It's much easier to pursue this kind of project if:

1. You have plenty of space to attempt it (UK doesn't have a lot of space but the US does)

2. You go about it in a spirit of cooperation and community (which has entirely unexpected and very welcome benefits for one's mental health)

3. You don't mind the idea of changing a lot of habits that are probably making you unhappy anyway for a lot of new ones that are very likely to be more enjoyable to maintain and produce pleasant, nourishing results.

It's that third one that's the killer. Changing habits. The only reason we don't all go off and live in a harmonious dream of peace and delight is because we're too used to being miserable and pissed off all the time.

I firmly believe that the only thing stopping us living in a sustainable way is our own psychology.

[nam78_two]

9. That looks beautiful

Where is that, if you don't mind my asking?

(And yes I agree with what you said).

[baby_mouse]

10. It's in Wales, it's called Cae Mabon.

All built by hand... :D

[eppur_se_muova]

12. Yeah, but you have to surround it with Hobbitt traps ... nt

[qnr]

4. Well, I don't know that that is entirely true. A number of people I know openly discuss

the need. What do you do though? A couple of people, even tens of thousands of people, amount to nothing more than a dandelion seed floater in front of the onrushing train you describe.

[baby_mouse]

6. I think in this case it's a mistake to worry about things outside your own sphere of influence.

Sustainable living is something that you do for yourself.

[qnr]

8. I agree, in general, but was responding to the post, which required that I

consider everyone.

[baby_mouse]

11. okidoki nt

[RestoreGore]

13. I wish I had seen this sooner ...

I so agree with this post. I too am one who believes in planting trees to help mitigate Co2, but I also know that it won't mean a hill of beans if we then conversely do nothing about the deforestation taking place elsewhere. Our rapacious way of living has most definitely brought us to the abyss, so when we talk of living sustainably what do we really mean by it? Notice how so many environmentalists now also make a point of stating that you can live that way without being "uncomfortable" as if living closer to nature is somehow a punishment, when it is actually how I believe we were meant to live. I don't know if this world on the whole will get its act together in time to save this species because we are all so conditioned to our own comforts. We really have no idea of what sustainable means, unlike the Miskito Indians in Nicaragua. Thank you for this post. Too bad it wasn't recd up.