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Okay, i've just bought Barbara Kingsolvers book that i plan on reading on the plane, "Animal, Vegetable, Miracles" about a family's experience of being able to grow and use everything only local to their area and not causing any more carbon footprints within their reach.
This is also my goal for independ living in puna like alot of people already do in the area...growing our own food, supporting our own local industries, using our own water and solar or alternative resources....its all very inspiring for our area.
I would like to hear about what has been successful for you and make impacts you have made to reduce global warming doable in your own terms, one step at a time.
Hopefully this will be an inspiration to all of us to follow in your footsteps....
noel
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Noel, This is one of the reasons we moved here (both the island & the house). We moved to the island so I could study at UHH (high ratings for their environmental studies program). We had lived on acreage in Chicago subs, and expected to do so here, but I started looking at the mileage we were adding up to get anywhere when we rented. We chose to live in Keeau due to the bus schedules (7 rt during the weekdays), the farmers market, the fact our house had a variety of well established food crop plants in the garden, & the house construction & layout was good for putting in a variety of energy saving techniques.
Still am figuring out what other plants to grow...Things I wish? I would not mind if we could LEGALLY have a couple of laying hens (some older neighbors still do, and most of the houses here have older coops that are now sheds...)
When we are done with the repairs on this house, we plan to add small catchments for 'grey water' needs & a grid tied solar lanai roof (currently like the amorphous panels bonded to the roofing material), & eventually want a EV with the charger tied to the PV (the Ranger EV & Rav EV were my dream vehicles for size & utility, but Chicago dealers were never able to purchase EV's & there was no tech support - There is a Rav EV in Kona that I lust after)
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Well this is an easy one for me, having made the decision when I was nine....when I saw a World Population Clock flipping away madly.
Don’t have children.
And if you’ve already had children, don’t have more.
And if your friends (or children) are contemplating not having children, remaining child-free, congratulate them, support them in their decision, thank them. Please don’t make them feel that they are less of a woman, less of a man, incomplete. Please don’t tell them that they are selfish….because their decision, whether they realize it or not, is a precious gift to the planet. Easily as precious as an additional human.
Don’t give them the ol’ “But who will take care of you in you old age?”-line. And don’t give them the “Soooo, when are you two gonna give us grandchildren?”-line. Ha! Can you believe there are actually people out there who say that?! Hmmm. Talk about selfish.
You need grandchildren?
Go volunteer.
In a school, at the hospital, at a rec center.
Be a grandparent to many…as opposed to the few.
And for those folks who are absolutely convinced that they must have children; that there’s some kind of biological/psychological imperative; that the world will just plain fall apart if they are not able to parent…..please adopt …and/or encourage others to adopt.
There are countless children on the planet in need of a good home. Adopt one. Or two. Or a half-dozen. Or a dozen. And then, if, after having done a bang-up job of parenting those children, one is still compelled to replicate, make a carbon copy of one’s self…go ahead…have one. One.
And encourage your friends and family to visit this website.
http://math.berkeley.edu/~galen/popclk.html
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Thank you for that, Malolo. It's harder and harder to understand why there are more and more babies in a place that's harder and harder to raise them. I agree with you wholeheartedly.
I have a difficult time believing though, if you put January 1, 1901 on the clock that there were only 1/2 million people on the whole earth...that doesn't make sense. Although, it is scary how many are here now!
Carrie
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Those are two very interesting responses with different approaches....for me consciously I wanted to leave a very urban environment away from a variety of toxic issues, pollution, overcrowding, noise, poverty, dependence on material conveniences, etc....living now in more rural setting, i'm becoming more an more aware about caring for our needs without relying on big industry to provide those conveniences and discovering that we can actually provide and work hard to do alot of things ourselves. The fact that Puna is more rural and people are forced to utilize resources more effectively was actually a very attractive opportunity to think about this type of independence on big brother....
When I do come here for good, my ideal would be to grow my own food, raise animals, draw my own power, recycle my own water, fertilize my land to become more fruitful and best share the resources that I hope to be blessed with others that may not have the same opportunities to become more self sufficient.....that seems like an ideal goal I would like to strive for and leave as a legacy to the world considering not too many have this type of opportunity.
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Carrie, you are right, for most of human history the population was probably between 5-500 million, wide spread, but this is from pre-ice age to the 1700's (it is estimated that the Hawaiian Islands had 750,000 - over 1 million people at the time of contact). My class notes & a couple of books from the courses I had last semester put the world population at around 1 billion in the middle of the 1800's, 2 billion in the 1930's, 4 billion 1975, 5 billion 1987, and we are now somewhere around 6.5 billion.
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This is an old post that has a subject we seem to hit every once in a while. This is an interesting slant, though - fighting global warming through population control.
We've waited until the clock is really tired of ticking because my wife saw that same population clock in 5th grade or something, and she let me know right when we met that population control was a huge issue for her.
So then we're cruising along in our mid-30's and she wakes up one day and decides she wants to have a child. It was really funny - she literally woke up and said "I've decided I want to have a child."
Since I thought it was kind of out of nowhere, I replied "Hmmm. No, thanks."
She didn't really see the humor in that answer. Anyway, we're balancing the urge to raise a family with the whole overpopulation issue with some research into adoption. My genes suck, so no need to really pass these on.
It's funny how people are on whether or not other people are having kids. We've been called lazy, selfish, strange, and stupid because we didn't want to bring more people onto the planet.
We were getting an even weirder reaction when I tried to explain to people why we were adopting and that we really didn't need a referral to a fertility doc.
Got sick of explaining that, so now I just take the fertility doc's cards and let all my friends think I shoot blanks. It's just easier that way....
Enough of a rant on the pressures to have/not have kids. The logic on this from an environmental standpoint is hard to argue: higher mileage per gallon cars are great, but less people to drive altogether is tough to beat.
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Malolo, I wouldn't incourage anyone to have children in today's world. I've got to tell you though, my three children have been the wonderous joy of my life. I would also commend your parents for bringing you into this world to share your insights with us. Back to the thread at hand; I think everyone today, no matter what size their family, should leave as small a footprint as possible. Buy local and eat your view!
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Oh MY god this is truly frightening!
http://math.berkeley.edu/~galen/popclk.html
My ideas fall far short of reality, it looks more like a petri dish full of bacteria than the birth numbers of human babies. Thanks Malolo for this insight. I need to re read my Diet for a small planet for sure!
mella l
mella l
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