12-27-2008, 03:04 AM
As for the cooperative kilns--perhaps it's already been done. Maybe that sort of thing has been forced to move underground because there is no green living that isn't small, and no sustainable techniques that aren't small. I'm not alone in thinking that, I'm just alone, yet, on Punaweb, of yaking that. I expect that will change soon. Small means inexpensive, too, as financial footprint matters every bit as much as anything else. What it costs to do something is a very real metric of its impactive costs. There is absolutely no sense in big expensive green houses and lifestyle that can only be financed by a corporate career in the oil industry or working for Haliburton. In the current political climate here in Puna one would be very well advised to play under the radar, as the likelihood of being shut down as a violation of one thing or another is very high. Does it matter if what one is doing is beneficial? No, it simply matters who one might run afoul of.
So, I'd suggest you'll be doing it in secret in barrels unless you have friends at UH or some such that can come up with the million dollars of study and create easements, ordinances, fees, and an area granted by the state to take on the study--of course of what people had been doing for thousands of years. And, when you get done, some gigantic conglomerate will take your findings, build a huge biomass plant somewhere in Puna, and proceed to denude the island. Oh, those damned invasive trees! All those eucalyptus! Must go!
One must be very wary of unintended consequences. The terrible thing the biofuels industry has become is probably the best example--probably the most ecologically destructive industry in the world at the moment, and certainly the one that is causing the most human suffering--
Unless we learn to live vastly less consumptive lifestyles all this is pure self-indulgent vanity.
And, frankly-- as a late afterthought. . .
Both my grandfathers were farmers.
They were better farmers than other farmers, by some measure, and so they prospered.
They quit farming, and sold out, when farming became about finance--as they couldn't compete. They grew products, not shares of a farming corporation. They didn't understand how to do both, and figured they would do one or the other.
Over the last 20 year my family farmed paper. We did as well with that as we did growing pears.
2 years ago I sold out of paper.
I'm now planting taro and u'ala with wild abandon.
I'm less worried about the economics of real sustainability every day. Real sustainability is going to kick all the pretenders in the coconuts here very soon indeed.
So, I'd suggest you'll be doing it in secret in barrels unless you have friends at UH or some such that can come up with the million dollars of study and create easements, ordinances, fees, and an area granted by the state to take on the study--of course of what people had been doing for thousands of years. And, when you get done, some gigantic conglomerate will take your findings, build a huge biomass plant somewhere in Puna, and proceed to denude the island. Oh, those damned invasive trees! All those eucalyptus! Must go!
One must be very wary of unintended consequences. The terrible thing the biofuels industry has become is probably the best example--probably the most ecologically destructive industry in the world at the moment, and certainly the one that is causing the most human suffering--
Unless we learn to live vastly less consumptive lifestyles all this is pure self-indulgent vanity.
And, frankly-- as a late afterthought. . .
Both my grandfathers were farmers.
They were better farmers than other farmers, by some measure, and so they prospered.
They quit farming, and sold out, when farming became about finance--as they couldn't compete. They grew products, not shares of a farming corporation. They didn't understand how to do both, and figured they would do one or the other.
Over the last 20 year my family farmed paper. We did as well with that as we did growing pears.
2 years ago I sold out of paper.
I'm now planting taro and u'ala with wild abandon.
I'm less worried about the economics of real sustainability every day. Real sustainability is going to kick all the pretenders in the coconuts here very soon indeed.