Community oriented Transition Town and Reeconomy projects to provide community services - this could be elderly care, school lunches or whatever - and permaculture oriented projects with the planting of food forests and edible plantings on public as well as private land.
@Stephan Bianchi - I would suggest taking it a step farther. We are currently, albeit slowly, disentangling our economy from carbon consumption. What we have put in place thus far won't be enough, either in magnitude or timing. I think we have to disentangle our quality of life from our 'economy', to ensure there isn't a collapse of quality of life as fossil carbon use is drastically cut back. This requires specifically ensuring that we remove the obstructions that prevent people from meeting their needs. Any number of examples exist - from ensuring people have health care, to finding ways to ensure that elderly people can live at home, to installing para-ramps to allow mobility. Most of these things have no real cost, if there is sufficient long-term planning.
It's the only way I see of ensuring stable communities in to the future.
I suggest we start by decoupling material wealth from fiscal health. Hoarders are admired so long as they collect things of value: houses, cars, artwork, money - whether or not they share things others need. We admire the pharaohs who left us with useless heaps of polished stones, but not “savages” who lived sustainably, leaving things as they found them.
We’ll still tend towards self-indulgence, but we should be embarrassed, not proud of our excesses. We must help younger generations lead a sustainable rebellion against conspicuous consumption.
Community oriented Transition Town and Reeconomy projects to provide community services - this could be elderly care, school lunches or whatever - and permaculture oriented projects with the planting of food forests and edible plantings on public as well as private land.
@Stephan Bianchi - I would suggest taking it a step farther. We are currently, albeit slowly, disentangling our economy from carbon consumption. What we have put in place thus far won't be enough, either in magnitude or timing. I think we have to disentangle our quality of life from our 'economy', to ensure there isn't a collapse of quality of life as fossil carbon use is drastically cut back. This requires specifically ensuring that we remove the obstructions that prevent people from meeting their needs. Any number of examples exist - from ensuring people have health care, to finding ways to ensure that elderly people can live at home, to installing para-ramps to allow mobility. Most of these things have no real cost, if there is sufficient long-term planning.
It's the only way I see of ensuring stable communities in to the future.
I suggest we start by decoupling material wealth from fiscal health. Hoarders are admired so long as they collect things of value: houses, cars, artwork, money - whether or not they share things others need. We admire the pharaohs who left us with useless heaps of polished stones, but not “savages” who lived sustainably, leaving things as they found them.
We’ll still tend towards self-indulgence, but we should be embarrassed, not proud of our excesses. We must help younger generations lead a sustainable rebellion against conspicuous consumption.