Earth Overshoot and Living like a Victorian!

One of the many advantages of trying to provide more food for yourself and your family on an organic small holding is that you get to/have to (delete as applicable [d.a.a.]) spend a lot more time outside, using your own fair hands, to grow it.  This also means you get to/have to (d.a.a) spend more time with your family instead of travelling off to an air-conditioned box with relative strangers/work colleagues/fellow wage slaves (d.a.a.), which to my mind is good for me, my wife and my darling daughters.

Getting to/having to (d.a.a) work outdoors has a number of health benefits also, I am fitter now as a 44-year old man than at anytime since I left university, my weight is almost at an ideal (healthy) level, my mental health is improving all the while as I have a beautiful tan and I get to/have to (d.a.a.) experience the natural world in Basse Normandie and spying some creatures that I have never seen before and quite possibly would never have seen had I continued on my previous life!

This slow/boring (d.a.a.) lifestyle also means that preparing and cooking meals becomes a slow/boring (d.a.a) process of invention, creation, experimentation with seasonal foods, freshly picked and consumed just hours after coming off the plant or out of the ground.  This slow/boring (d.a.a.) lifestyle extends to our woodland that entices/burdens (d.a.a.) us with her woody bounty.  She provides a generous supply of energy which she entices/burdens (d.a.a.) us to come and collect from her, which adds to the healthy lifestyle that this whole way of living entails.  So we take our axe & saw/chainsaw (d.a.a.) down and enjoy the sounds of nature and slowly/tediously (d.a.a.) take the wood that we require to heat our food, our water and our central heating.

So what is the catch to living this way?  Well dear reader that is simply a matter of perspective.  I could say that we ONLY have one car and must share it's use between a group of 4-adults and 2 children.  I could say that we live 20-mins from the closest food market to buy foodstuffs and other home economic supplies.  I could also say that it is inconvenient that this culture treats Sunday as a day to spend with family and thus chooses not to open business on that day.  I could also point out that I can't just pop out and get a coffee at a popular chain coffee store or purchase some Chinese/Indian/Mexican/Thai (d.a.a.) food at a time completely convenient to me.  But again I stress, that is a matter of perspective.  So here comes the rub of my meandering thoughts.

Why do friends and family of my crazy French family describe us as "living like it's the 19th Century" like it's a pejorative. What they are really saying is, "I couldn't live that way" and that is probably true.  Most of us westerners have been used to living comfortable lifestyles having access to whatever we want, as long as you have the MONEY to purchase it.  But money is getting harder to come by, isn't it? 

We are not the baby boomer generation who got used to a comfortable lifestyle, year on year post World War 2, fuelled entirely by the cheap extraction of oil.  We are not the baby boomer generation who went on spending sprees at the expense of the Earths capacity to regenerate.  We are not the baby boomer generation who now think that the lifestyles to which they are accustomed can continue on a finite planet, infinitely!!!

We are and my children are the generations that must now live with the consequences of such profligate consumption.  AND YES, I was part of that consumption for the majority of my life, but like the born again Christian or the rehabilitated criminal, I am changing.  I am making changes, MASSIVE changes, in my life to try and give my children a chance.  What is the point in living a western lifestyle and pretending that my daughters will be able to enjoy the same lifestyle when they categorically will not!

Do you know what Earth Overshoot day is?  It is the date on which humanity's resource consumption for the year exceeds the Earth's capacity to regenerate those resources that year.  It includes but is not limited to extractive practices, like logging, fishing, farming, mining but also includes measures such as the Earth's capacity to absorb our carbon pollution we pump into the air as if it were a sewer, so trees and oceans ability to sequester that carbon.  In 1987 when I was 15, that date was December 19th, so we consumed 6 days too much in simple terms.  At the turn of the century when I was 28, that date was now November 1st, not completely horrific but a bit of a worry perhaps.  This year, 2016, when I was/am 44, that date was August 8th.  We have OVERCONSUMED the resources on this one planet, our ONLY home by 4 months... excuse my language but that is completely fucking unacceptable.

Yes I live a lifestyle that could be described as slower, a little low tech, low carbon, but perhaps that type of lifestyle is the type of lifestyle we should all be trying to achieve... FOR THE SAKE OF THE CHILDREN/all other non-human species, do not delete as applicable.  Think about it, please.