"Ask yourself what your country could do to move its Earth Overshoot Day to December, or off the calendar all together. Maybe they should give the folks in Uruguay a call."
Not only do we not have to wait for "your country" to act, if you mean government policy, the fastest way to lead them to act is to act ourselves. I know someone in Manhattan with a lower footprint than Uruguay's per capita, who made the video here: https://spodekmethod.com. The biggest source of resistance is other people saying they can't do it, not realizing they'll be happier. Luckily no one told Uruguayans! They can do it and so can we.
On the Global Footprint Network Calculator, I answered for food questions:
beef, lamb, pork, poultry, fish, shellfish, eggs, cheese, dairy: never
"fresh, unpackaged foods," "locally grown or produced": both 95%
"How much of the food that you eat is unprocessed, unpackaged or locally grown?": 95%
I just responded to the other questions as I could. Still, some probably overestimate my impact. For example, for "What percentage of your home's electricity comes from renewable sources?" I put 100%, but I disconnected from the electric grid. For "Compared to your neighbors, how much trash do you generate?", I put much less, but I haven't filled a load since 2019 and salvage things that I give to people through Craigslist or the Freegan free exchange days.
I hope you can now imagine it, since it's hard to do something you can't imagine. I hope you can also imagine that I would never go back to my old mainstream American ways.
This way has more abundance, freedom, liberty, community, family, values, and love.
I'm obviously wrong that "someone" could not have a small energy footprint. Whenever I catch myself saying, "I find it hard to imagine", I try to ask myself, "Perhaps I just lack imagination?" But I didn't this time!
But the bigger question is, how can this possibly scale? Could even 50% of Manhattan do the same? How about 20%?
At some point, it simply is not possible to feed 19,000,000 from "locally grown or produced" sources, no?
I do this as well, in a rural environment. But all of us in our rural area *could* also do this — indeed, many of our neighbours are supplying significant amounts of their own food.
"Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country." — William Jennings Bryan
What problems would happen if everyone used less grid power? No one in the world used grid power more than about a century ago. With more people not using the grid, we could shrink it. Even just with more people living resiliently -- for example, able to withstand no grid power for a week or two -- we could obviate the need for peaker plants and rely on more intermittent power sources.
Or do you mean food? Cities of over one million people existed thousands of years ago. People ate almost entirely locally a generation or two ago. As more people ate more locally, the market would respond with land currently paved over becoming more valuable as farms.
As for 19 million people, we can always ask about population densities and overall numbers that require pollution and depletion levels to sustain them that kill people elsewhere. I propose we don't exceed those densities and overall numbers. Where we have, I propose we restore previous, sustainable levels. Those restorations are some of the results I'm working for.
"No one in the world used grid power more than about a century ago… Cities of over one million people existed thousands of years ago."
Without questioning your "facts", I'll just mention the obvious: a century ago, there was only about a third as many people on this planet, and to reach population density of "thousands of years ago", 18/19th of the people of New York City would have to "go away" somehow.
Even then, I disagree that such population levels were at "sustainable levels". We've been on this path since the advent of grain agriculture, some 7,000 years ago, when it first became possible to store food for more than a turn of the seasons, making hoarding and withholding possible.
By no means do I imply that you and I should stop trying to live as sustainably as we can! But the late ecologist Howard Odum's "Maximum Power Principle" says that, in the aggregate, the human species will continue to dissipate as much power as it possibly can.
Until nature stops us.
That happens to every other species, and it is only hubris that makes us think it doesn't apply to us.
"Ask yourself what your country could do to move its Earth Overshoot Day to December, or off the calendar all together. Maybe they should give the folks in Uruguay a call."
Not only do we not have to wait for "your country" to act, if you mean government policy, the fastest way to lead them to act is to act ourselves. I know someone in Manhattan with a lower footprint than Uruguay's per capita, who made the video here: https://spodekmethod.com. The biggest source of resistance is other people saying they can't do it, not realizing they'll be happier. Luckily no one told Uruguayans! They can do it and so can we.
What is a country but all of its citizens?
I find it hard to imagine someone on Manhattan could have a small energy footprint. Where does their food come from?
On the Global Footprint Network Calculator, I answered for food questions:
beef, lamb, pork, poultry, fish, shellfish, eggs, cheese, dairy: never
"fresh, unpackaged foods," "locally grown or produced": both 95%
"How much of the food that you eat is unprocessed, unpackaged or locally grown?": 95%
I just responded to the other questions as I could. Still, some probably overestimate my impact. For example, for "What percentage of your home's electricity comes from renewable sources?" I put 100%, but I disconnected from the electric grid. For "Compared to your neighbors, how much trash do you generate?", I put much less, but I haven't filled a load since 2019 and salvage things that I give to people through Craigslist or the Freegan free exchange days.
I hope you can now imagine it, since it's hard to do something you can't imagine. I hope you can also imagine that I would never go back to my old mainstream American ways.
This way has more abundance, freedom, liberty, community, family, values, and love.
Good on you!
I'm obviously wrong that "someone" could not have a small energy footprint. Whenever I catch myself saying, "I find it hard to imagine", I try to ask myself, "Perhaps I just lack imagination?" But I didn't this time!
But the bigger question is, how can this possibly scale? Could even 50% of Manhattan do the same? How about 20%?
At some point, it simply is not possible to feed 19,000,000 from "locally grown or produced" sources, no?
I do this as well, in a rural environment. But all of us in our rural area *could* also do this — indeed, many of our neighbours are supplying significant amounts of their own food.
"Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country." — William Jennings Bryan
What problems would happen if everyone used less grid power? No one in the world used grid power more than about a century ago. With more people not using the grid, we could shrink it. Even just with more people living resiliently -- for example, able to withstand no grid power for a week or two -- we could obviate the need for peaker plants and rely on more intermittent power sources.
Or do you mean food? Cities of over one million people existed thousands of years ago. People ate almost entirely locally a generation or two ago. As more people ate more locally, the market would respond with land currently paved over becoming more valuable as farms.
As for 19 million people, we can always ask about population densities and overall numbers that require pollution and depletion levels to sustain them that kill people elsewhere. I propose we don't exceed those densities and overall numbers. Where we have, I propose we restore previous, sustainable levels. Those restorations are some of the results I'm working for.
"No one in the world used grid power more than about a century ago… Cities of over one million people existed thousands of years ago."
Without questioning your "facts", I'll just mention the obvious: a century ago, there was only about a third as many people on this planet, and to reach population density of "thousands of years ago", 18/19th of the people of New York City would have to "go away" somehow.
Even then, I disagree that such population levels were at "sustainable levels". We've been on this path since the advent of grain agriculture, some 7,000 years ago, when it first became possible to store food for more than a turn of the seasons, making hoarding and withholding possible.
By no means do I imply that you and I should stop trying to live as sustainably as we can! But the late ecologist Howard Odum's "Maximum Power Principle" says that, in the aggregate, the human species will continue to dissipate as much power as it possibly can.
Until nature stops us.
That happens to every other species, and it is only hubris that makes us think it doesn't apply to us.
This series of replies is the most I've posted on Substack and even led me to post my first post here: https://substack.com/inbox/post/161232592?publication_id=4704827.