What tools we use - Permaculture Principals - Earth Care

We will avoid the Permaculture definition of Earth Care/Care of Earth and define this in terms of what we are actually trying to achieve at La Fieffe. These aren’t prioritised in any particular order, as far as we are concerned each of these are as important as the next. I will take a look at each one and advise on what we are attempting to do.

Soil Improvement - healthy soils are a complex mix of worms, bacteria and beneficial fungi.  These soils promote good plant growth and typically have fewer problems with pests and diseases. Improving soil condition needn't be the reserve of master gardeners or horticultural specialists.  Your soil is hungry for organic matter which can include, paper/card, weeds, grass clippings, manure, hair and kitchen scraps.  As these break down the nutrients from them are made available to growing plants and the action of decomposition improves the soil structure allowing free movement of air and water.  This soil also becomes better at holding onto both nutrients and water acting like a sponge for both.

(These images above are typical of most of La Fieffe at the time of buying it, devoid of anything other then over-grazed grass.)

So, what is the simplest action you can take to improve your soil?  Compost.  Give your compost pile a name and treat it like a pet.  You feed it with a mixture of organic materials ensuring your mix of carbon and nitrogen are kept in balance.  Too much carbon and you will not create enough heat, too much nitrogen and you will create too much heat leading to a gaseous emission of ammonia!  Treat it like a science experiment and you should be able to achieve admirable results in no time.

(In this picture you can see a mixture of cover cropping and mulching taking place.)

Other soil improvement strategies can include the planting of legumes or green manures and plenty or mulching.  Plants like peas and beans belong to a family of vegetables that "fix" nitrogen with the assistance of a beneficial bacteria called rhizobium.  Nitrogen is taken from the air in the soil and "fixed" on nodules that the bacteria live within.  Couple this with the planting of a fast growing "cover" crop like mustard or clover and a good amount of winter mulching or your beds, you will improve the organic matter, beneficial organisms and earthworm activity in your soil; you improve the soils moisture retention and it's ability to prevent erosion; you provide habitat, nectar and pollen for beneficial insects which in turn will reduce your pests; with any luck this dual approach will lead to persistent weeds being smothered.

(Careful management leads to improvement in soil condition which leads to production of healthy organic produce.)

Organic Food - one of the key principals of growing organic food is health.  Organically grown produce has more antioxidants, fewer pesticides (if any) and less cadmium (a toxic heavy metal).  In fact a recent study by Newcastle University found that in terms of the antioxidants you’re getting, a total switch to organic crops could be equivalent to adding another portion or two of fruit and veg to your daily diet! (http://blog.journals.cambridge.org/2014/07/new-study-finds-significant-differences-between-organic-and-non-organic-food/)

 (This image above shows palm kale, an extremely nutrient rich brassica with a legume to help the soil condition and a fast growing and insect attracting nasturtium.)

(Apart from my gorgeous daughter, you can see raspberries and strawberries on the left foreground, corn, sunflowers, beans and squash left background and more palm kale on the right foreground.)

(It's important to attract the beneficial predators, in this example, the human child Freya has been attracted by lupinus.)

By striving to grow organic produce, your actions are improving the health of the soil, the health of the animals grazing it, the health of the humans eating from it and the health of the greater ecosystem too.

Sustainable woodmanship - We only have 1.5 acres of, mainly, beech woodland, but if we carefully identify already stooling plants we can sustainably manage our small woodland area indefinitely.  This identification process is not the biggest challenge we face...

(The biggest challenge is getting the processed timber out of the valley, just take a closer look at the image above and below.)

(Processing a stool in the winter has made us pretty hardy, Shands in this picture modelling the very fashionable red head cover and matching hoody!)

(This is the same stool as in the image previous, Freya adding 'scale' to the picture.)

(Danny, our first 'volunteer' ahem, using a four foot cross cut saw to process our wood, in unison with me of course.)

The majority of the wood we process will be used as a fuel source as our entire house is run on it.  Heating, cooking and hot water all get their energy from wood.  Some of it though, is selected due to it's straightness (if that's a word), for our impromptu building follys as evidenced in previous posts.

(The more time you spend in the woodland, the more little lads and lasses you come across.)

Hedgerows - Biodiversity has a natural tendency to increase; an accumulation of plants, insects, beetles, reptiles, amphibians, small mammals and birds will quickly fill ecological niches and develop a food chain. More plants mean more food, which means more insects, more birds, more reptiles, more mammals, which means more balance. Hedgerows play a hugely important role in supporting this biodiversity growth.

(These two pictures, above and below,  illustrate the type of hedgerow we find on and around our land.  It is stunning and needs our help to protect it.)

Sadly, as is evidenced by this report, http://www.hedgelink.org.uk/files/Hedgelink%20-%20Report%20Visit%20to%20Normandy%20May%202010.pdf, hedgerows are taking a pasting in Normandie!  But, by now you must be getting a feel for the Palmers of La Fieffe and we are intending to "buck the trend" and do all we can to improve existing hedgerows and plant some new ones too.

(Freya preparing the 'nursery' for its first little 'uns)

(The willow growth after 12-months.)

(Hazel and hawthorn in this image.)

(Both these images, above and below, were taken last weekend after 18-months of growth in our nursery.)

 

We intend to take the plants growing in the previous picture and combine them with some shrub-like plants (raspberries, blackberries for example) and develop them into new hedgerows.

(Above and below show 'building up' where we think hedges would be best located to protect plants and create micro-climates.)

 

(Above and below show a mixture of plants that we are using, this is the most developed of our hedges.)

Provide a surplus - we recognise how lucky we are to live where we do and the choices we make each year on what we should grow always leaves us with surplus food.  It's not hard to give away such beautiful produce, we are very proud of what we produce and know that those that eat it will benefit from the nutrient dense foods.  If there is anything you struggle to find in the area and want us to grow it for you, please ask... we may say yes!

(In both these images there are a number of veg growing, see how many you can identify!)

(Onions curing in the sun.)

(Kale)

(Plump raspberries.)

(The three sisters.)

(Our first garlic crop.)

(Sharing the surplus with friends and neighbours, above and below.)

(And not forgetting organic free-range eggs... delicious.)

Next, what tools we use, Care of People.

Why we do what we do. A sustainable future?

Healthy ecosystems are necessary to the survival of humans and non-humans alike.  Keeping ecosystems in a state whereby they can provide for you now without compromising the ability of the system to provide for future generations is sustainability.

The possibility that human societies can achieve environmental sustainability has been, and continues to be, questioned, especially in light of environmental degradation, climate change, overconsumption, and societies' pursuit of indefinite economic growth in a closed system.

A sustainable future for La Fieffe can only be achieved through adopting sustainable living arrangements.  Don’t be disheartened that you can’t adopt all of these or that you feel trapped in your current living arrangement.   You should be able to identify from the following ideas even the smallest action that will help you live a more sustainable life.

ENERGY - Most of us don’t have the money to buy land and build an Earthship on it.  This shouldn’t discourage you though from identifying small incremental actions that will lessen your impact on the greater ecosystem.  There are easy retrofit ideas that can be carried out immediately.  Think of your house as a user and store of energy and it becomes easy to identify ideas; additional insulation in the loft, or (in our case) re-puttying the windows, fitting larger/thicker curtains all reduce your energy loss and thus reduce your energy use!

Consider the need to have things “on” constantly especially the scourge of “standby”; it doesn’t take long to learn new habits of turning it off when not using it.  Consider choosing only energy efficient goods for your house.  Yes the outlay is greater than say SPASDA’s own, but the savings in energy use over time will pay for itself.  Regardless of how much you THINK this saves, you ARE reducing your energy consumption.

FOOD – Consider where you get your food from; how much is produced under existing industrial agricultural technique?  This system is highly resource and energy intensive, requiring extensive irrigation, pesticide use, fertiliser application to produce a concentrated monoculture of low nutrient crap!  Long distance transport of food to enable all year round supply, which ignores seasonality, is estimated to cost 10 calories of oil to produce 1 calorie of food.

Adopting a more regional, seasonally based diet is more sustainable as it entails purchasing less energy and resource demanding produce that naturally grow within a local area and require no long-distance transport.  Local food production ensures food security if potential transportation disruptions and climatic, economical, and socio-political disasters were to occur.

Choosing organically produced food is a sustainable choice, as the primary goal of organic agriculture is to optimize the health and productivity of interdependent communities of soil life, plants, animals and people.

The environmental impact of meat production is high with regards to soil erosion, land degradation, depletion of natural resources and the overuse of medicines like antibiotics.  By simply reducing your meat consumption, this alleviates the demand for environmentally damaging industrially produced meat.

Preserving and storing foods reduces reliance on long-distance transported food and the market industry. Home-grown foods can be preserved and stored outside of their growing season and continually consumed throughout the year, enhancing self-sufficiency and independence from the supermarket.

WATER – Your water usage is excessive.  Just the flushing of your toilet uses probably more than 20 litres of fresh, drinkable water.  Your obsession with being clean is using too much water, whether through bathing or washing your clothes... cut it out!  There are all manner of methods of reducing your impact on water, from inserts in your toilet cistern, to composting toilets and “tree-bogs”, low-flow showerheads, solar water heaters, increased pipe lagging (reducing the amount of time in the shower), collection and redistribution of grey water, rainwater harvesting, both for irrigation or refilling flush toilet cisterns!  Any of these can be applied in any setting, regardless of your type of accommodation and access to funding.

WASTE – Nature creates no waste, but oh my god, humans certainly do!  You should not ignore the impact your wastefulness has on sustainability.  Consider how you can reduce what you waste, what you reuse and what you recycle.  Composting is a very effective means of recycling a lot of your paper, card, kitchen and garden waste.  Don’t always recycle, try reusing some of your plastics and glasses as containers (for example we have cut the bottom off of plastic bottles and use them as ramekins).

This is just another reason why we do what we do, but by no means should it be considered an exhaustive list of actions.   What I am trying to tell you is that you can live more sustainably and reduce your ecological footprint, it’s your choice.

Why we do what we do. Lack of Resilience.

The previous three postings on Limits to Growth, Catastrophic Climate Instability and Accelerating Species Extinction should make us all think carefully about the Chinese proverb: To know and not act is not to know.  I thought the next in our series “Why we do what we do” should probably look at the concept of Resilience or lack thereof... just to keep things light!

So what is resilience?  Well, one definition is the capacity of a system to survive, adapt and grow in the face of unforeseen changes, even catastrophic incidences.  Or as it relates to ecology, the capacity of an ecosystem to absorb disturbance and still retain its basic structure and viability.

Try a thought experiment.

Look around where you are, at work, at home, on public transport (hopefully not driving) and start to look at the interconnectivity of everything around you.  Are you fortunate enough to be able to carry out your daily grind with little or any possibility of failure of the tools or systems around you?  Could you continue to function like a 21^st century western European, feed yourself, warm yourself in winter, cool yourself in summer and keep yourself adequately entertained?

·         I am resident in Normandy, France.  I work in Brighton 4 days a week in the UK.

·         I get to and from the UK by catching the train to the ferry terminal and catching the overnight ferries from and to Portsmouth and Caen!

·         I work as a Quality Manager monitoring a management system of a small company and access all my work via our network.

·         I have music on my headphones from my computer being broadcast across the Internet.

·         I use a mobile phone that allows me wirelessly to stay in touch with La Fieffe.

·         I walk to and from work each day.

·         I stay with a good friend at his flat, which I use as a dormitory.

Granted my situation isn’t the most normal but it doesn’t stop me from assessing where resilience “bottle necks” may lie. 

1. Interruption to the supply of fuel (diesel) would immediately stop me from getting to the ferry terminal.  The ferries are currently also diesel fuel engines, so interruption of fuel would stop them in their tracks. 

2. The majority of energy generation in France is Nuclear (about 80%), so at least temporarily this would remain unaffected but in the UK it’s still fossil-fuel based, therefore interruption in these fuels would prevent electricity generation and stop my electric train in its tracks... pun intended.

3. At work my computer, music over the internet, mobile phone, heating and cooling system, refrigeration for food and innumerable other devices and systems that I take for granted would cease to work.

4.  This would extend to my friends flat.  The only facility available to me would be a bed and a roof over my head.

5. Now water is quite important to life, I believe... it is not taken from your house, cleaned stored and piped back by magic, there is quite energy expenditure in transporting it around the domestic water cycle.

6. There’s  food supply... we don’t, generally, buy locally anymore, the majority of our food (two thirds in the UK) is imported by lorry and plane, so those two have stopped because of fuel interruption and there is no food on supermarket shelves in 72-hours.

7. Loss of energy supply, potable water and loss of food wouldn’t necessarily mean collapse though, would it... maybe impromptu mass camping!  Think about hungry people with no access to food, water, alcohol, their smart phones and TV! HOLY SHIT!

That’s just my scenario.  It scares me half to death!  It shouldn’t be a massive leap to see why we identified our living arrangement in the UK as non-resilient and started looking for a more resilient set of arrangements.

After two years in France we are still massively exposed to the problems of any system failure.  There is so much to do, but we understand that to be resilient is not a static goal to strive for; the goal is to remove oneself from the system that is western industrial culture as it lacks the capacity to change.  That inflexibility will have a domino effect on other interconnected systems dependent upon the current system leading to massive collapse...

Here’s an alternative for you, hat tip to John Michael Greer, collapse now and avoid the rush!

Why we do what we do. Accelerating Species Extinctions.

Some estimates put the number of species on planet earth as low as 1,500,000.  A National Academy of Science paper from 2000, conservatively estimated that there may be somewhere in the region of 7,000,000 species.  In 1980, one scientific research trip in Panama of just 19 trees, found that 80% of the 1200 beetle species found were unknown to science.  In fact, scientists have a clearer idea of how many stars there are in the galaxy then how many species there are on Earth.

The natural background extinction rate is estimated to be about 1 species per 10,000,000 per year.  Until recently human impact was thought to be 100 times more than this background rate, it turns out that it is greater than a 1000 times and could be as high as 10,000 times this rate!  For example, for the 10,000 species of bird on the planet you would expect a natural extinction rate of 1 species per 1000 years.  In fact, in the past 600 years there have been 140 bird species extinctions...

But who cares, extinctions happen all the time, why does it matter?  Well that’s a very good question and it’s to do with the role biodiversity plays in ecosystem function.  There are a number of services that our ecosystem carries out for us.  These include nutrient and water recycling, soil formation and retention, resistance against invasive species, plant pollination, climate regulation, pest and pollution control. 

This biodiversity is under attack, constantly from humans.  We attempt to dominate the natural world instead of act as ethical and thoughtful stewards.  Maybe if we thought more about our great grandkids and not our own selfish needs we would make better decisions, but that is for another discussion!  The threats to biodiversity are primarily habitat destruction and degradation, overexploitation (including extraction, hunting, and fishing), pollution, disease and climate change... and my list certainly isn’t exhaustive!

If we choose just one of these, habitat destruction, it’s not hard to see that we certainly all play a big part destroying ecosystems.  We dredge water courses, drain wetlands, plant monocultures of crops with poor farming practices, cut grasses, destroy hedgerows and needlessly cut down healthy trees.  We have inadvertently (ignorantly?) created small islands of biodiversity, forcing all manner of species, plants, insects, birds, mammals and reptiles to survive in smaller and smaller enclaves making them more susceptible to extinction.

What do we try and do at La Fieffe?  We let the wild ones in!  My father obsesses over grass, cut grass, lawns... he makes all manner of argument about how it prevents slugs and snails getting near our food and prevents ticks and other nasties from getting my little girls... BUT we’ll take them, the lot.  The stingers, the biters, the slimy, the prickly, the ugly and the smelly, IF they improve the overall biodiversity in our small holding “island”, which they will, as long as we continue to mimic nature (through Permaculture design techniques) and not fight her. 

The interconnected nature of an ecosystem is immense.  Those creatures that are unpopular with some gardeners are food to something else, and do actually carry out a function in the bigger system, removing rotting vegetation, in the case of slugs.  If they start eating your delicates, perhaps you should be thinking about providing a sacrificial foodstuff, which could have a secondary beneficial effect (i.e. companion plant?) instead of choosing the industrial farming approach of sterilising the land with insecticides and fungicides.

We often comment about the diversity of what we see around us.  The fact that our 15-acres supports a couple of breeding pairs of buzzard or the diversity of fungi we see in a small patch of woodland is astounding, or the discovery of something beautiful like an elephant hawk moth... all are a sign of a healthy ecosystem.   But we do not rest on our laurels.  The ecosystem needs our attention.  We carry out small acts of kindness to help our non-human friends along, it’s the least we can do after years of neglect and destruction.

Why we do what we do. Catastrophic Climate Instability.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the leading international body for the assessment of climate change and was established in 1988 to provide the world with a clear scientific view on the current state of climate change and its potential environmental and socio-economic impacts.  It is open to all member countries of the UN and WMO with currently 195 countries represented.  1000’s of scientist contribute to the IPCC work as authors, contributors and reviewers and NONE of them are paid for their contributions!

More information on the structure and governance can be found here (http://www.ipcc.ch/index.htm) , but the point I am trying to make is that the body as a whole and its reports should be considered apolitical and representing the scientific consensus on the current state of climate change.  The first assessment report of the IPCC was published in 1990.  In the executive summary it states:

“... there is a natural greenhouse effect which already keeps the Earth warmer than it would otherwise be... emissions  resulting from human activities are substantially increasing the atmospheric concentrations  of greenhouse gases carbon dioxide, chlorofluorocarbons and nitrous oxide.  These increases will enhance the greenhouse effect, resulting on average in an additional warming of the Earth’s surface which will further enhance the warming of the main greenhouse gas, water vapour.”

So firstly it was recognised that the Earth requires some “greenhouse” gases in order to maintain a habitable environment for humans and non-humans.  But it was already recognised in 1990 that we were contributing more gases from our activities than was needed to stabilise mean global temperatures.

“These ‘long-lived’ gases adjust only slowly to changes in emissions meaning present rates of emissions will commit us to increased concentrations for centuries ahead.  The longer emissions continue to increase, the greater the reductions will be needed to stabilise these gases at a given level.  These gases would require immediate reductions in human activities of over 60% to stabilise their concentrations at today’s (1990) levels.”

Immediate reductions were needed in 1990 in order to stabilise these gases.  Sadly that didn’t happen!

“Under Business As Usual (Scenario A) emission of greenhouse gases, a rate of increase of global mean temperature during the next century of about 0.3°C per decade... which will likely increase global mean temperature by 1°C by 2025 and 3°C by end of the century... we also predict a rise in global mean sea level of 20cm by 2030 and 65cm by end of the century.”

BUT, also mentioned in the summary was the fact there will be SIGNIFICANT regional variations and all of this can trigger both positive and negative feedback loops, which will exacerbate already deteriorating conditions further.  For example, increased temperature in one region, could lead to reduced rainfall, deforestation and then desertification (positive feedback).  This removes a critical carbon capturing device, a tree, but also releases all the stored carbon from the tree into the atmosphere! Double whammy!

More recently, you may have read about a “pause in mean global temperature increase” in a lot of newspapers.  The argument then being made (incorrectly) that global warming is stopping altogether!  This simply is not the case.  A negative feedback has occurred ameliorating some of the warming of the atmosphere; this negative feedback has been the oceans.  70% of the Earth’s surface is covered with them and they appear to have been absorbing a lot of the warming from the late 90’s.  Great, temporarily for humans, but not so for non-human species like corals, shellfish, algae, plankton and fish in general as heating causes acidification of the oceans!

Other problems with oceans taking on board all this heat is they will give up some of this energy in the form of water vapour, which forms more robust and violent storms (do you all remember the winter of 2013/2014) illustrating the premise stated by the original authors that regional variations could be SIGNIFICANT.  This heating also contributes to greater reduction of the ice cover at the poles (positive feedback), reducing the albedo effect (reflection of sunlight by the white icy surface) and increasing the absorption of sunlight (energy) by the oceans.

By the end of 2014 the IPCC will be releasing its fifth assessment report.  24-years on from their original report, it’s interesting to compare what was said then, with what they are saying now.  You can get a copy of the Summary for Policymakers (http://report.mitigation2014.org/spm/ipcc_wg3_ar5_summary-for-policymakers_approved.pdf) but I will summarise some of the key findings.

“Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950’s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia."

“Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth’s surface than any preceding decade since 1850.  In the Northern Hemisphere, 1983-2012 was likely the warmest 30-year period of the last 1400 years.”

“Over the last two decades, the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have been losing mass, glaciers have continued to shrink almost worldwide and Arctic sea ice and Northern Hemisphere spring snow cover has continued to decrease in extent.”

“The rate of sea level rise since the mid-19^th century has been larger than the mean rate during the previous two millennia.”

“The atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have increased to levels unprecedented in at least 800,000 years... the ocean has absorbed about 30% of the emitted anthropogenic carbon dioxide, causing ocean acidification.”

“Human influence on the climate system is clear.  This is evident from the increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, positive radiative forcing, observed warming, and understanding of the climate system.”

“Continued emissions of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and changes in all components of the climate system.  Limiting climate change will require substantial and sustained reductions of greenhouse gas emissions.”

“Changes in the global water cycle in response to the warming over the 21^st century will not be uniform.  The contrast in precipitation between wet and dry regions and between wet and dry seasons will increase.”

“The global ocean will continue to warm during the 21^st century.  Heat will penetrate from the surface to the deep ocean and affect ocean circulation.”

“Cumulative emissions of CO2 largely determine global mean surface warming by the late 21^st century and beyond.  Most aspects of climate change will persist for many centuries even if emissions of CO2 are stopped.” (ALL MY EMPHASIS)

You have to bear in mind, that these statements are released by sober, conservative, scientific people with no political affiliations or vested interests and require a complete consensus for the reports to be released.  These statements are likely to have been influenced by policy-makers who have quibbled over terms and "scare-mongering", so quite probably are underplaying the threats!

What does this mean for La Fieffe, a small holding in Europe?  Well, we simply don’t know, but we can be fairly sure that an unstable atmosphere, with more heat and more water vapour will make our current predictable seasons hugely unpredictable.

How do you grow food if you can’t be sure of stable and predictable year-on-year temperatures, rainfall and sunlight?

How many crop failures can our small-holding deal with?  More importantly how many crop failures can the big farming and food selling giants cope with before the populace becomes desperate as shelves are no longer full?

Will this instability of the climate lead to instability of the people, unsure of where they will get support feeding their families?  Are policy makers considering this when they prevaricate about committing to carbon-reduction targets?

What are you doing to reduce your carbon footprint?  It isn’t just a 21^st century fad.  WE, the “pampered 20%”, need to do something about our consumption.  To not act, condemns my children and yours to a unpredictable, unstable and probably miserable future... think about that!

Why we do what we do. Limits to Growth

My good friend Olivier asked me at the weekend, why I had not written much on our blog for some time.  He enjoys reading it, I enjoy writing it, so I have decided to start a series of blog posts.  The premise behind this series will be, as the title suggests, "Why we do, what we do".  This will lead onto a series of posts on "What tools will assist us" and then a final series on " What these actions will lead to".

As a practicing permaculturalist it's important to share with you all, fulfilling one of the three principals of permaculture, care of people.  So, enjoy the first post in the series, Limits to Growth.

In 1972, coincidentally the year of my birth, a report was published by the Club of Rome titled “The Limits to Growth” (Meadows et al, 1972).  This report presented some challenging scenarios regarding global sustainability, by using computer modelling of five global economic subsystems, namely population, food production, industrial production, pollution and consumption of non-renewable natural resources.

The group modelled 12 scenarios of possible futures from 1972-2100 and the main scientific conclusion from these scenarios was that delays in global decision making would cause the human economy to overshoot planetary limits before the growth in human ecological footprint slowed.  Human society would subsequently be forced to reduce its rate of resource use and its rate of emissions, either through managed decline or through collapse!  The only thing that couldn’t continue was human society remaining in unsustainable territory, year-on-year, using more natural resources each year then nature can replenish.

More specifically, the authors identified 6 Limits to Growth.

1.       The human ecological footprint grew rapidly from 1900 to 1972 because of population growth and environmental impact per person.  Growth in the amount of resources consumed increased and the amount of pollution per person per year followed and since the report this has not slowed down.

2.       The human ecological footprint cannot continue to grow at the rate seen from 1900-1972, for more than a hundred years... why? Well simply put, Earth is physically limited and humans cannot use more physical resources and generate more emissions, than nature is capable of supplying in a sustainable manner.

3.       It is possible (and I believe currently happening) that human ecological footprint will (has) overshoot the sustainable limits of Planet Earth.  But debate and disagreement will delay any meaningful action, all the time the overshoot continues worsening the situation.

4.       Once sustainable limits have overshot, contraction becomes unavoidable.  We can choose to manage this contraction with something like the Montreal Protocol of 1987 which eliminated ozone-destroying chemicals, but we’ve all witnessed the ineffectiveness of our “leaders” to do anything about reducing CO2 emissions or limiting the removal of ANY resource from the earth in anything like a sustainable manner, so collapse is pretty much now guaranteed.

5.       Overshoot can be (could’ve been) avoided if human society is forward looking and simply decides to act.  We have NOT acted.

6.       It’s important to act as soon as possible – See points 1 through 5!

Since 1972, the real world has followed the Business as Usual scenario of the 12 modelled, and the original authors warned that we would come screeching up against resource limits and start a major contraction, probably via collapse between 2010 and 2030. 

I am as much to blame for the crappy world as anyone.  We are akin to a Parasitoid in as much as we live on Planet Earth our host; we consume all her resources and ultimately leave her at the very least sterile, at the very worst dead.

It’s 2014 and for the past 10 years I have been, along with my family, trying to work out how we can tread lightly.  How can we de-couple from the industrial world and act as ethical stewards using only what can be sustained of Planet Earth.  It certainly isn’t easy and our actions are miniscule on a global scale, but a good example is all I can teach my girls.

La Fieffe is our attempt at remediation.  It is our ‘triage tent’ where we can attempt to be the stewards that we ALL should be.  We are doing all that we can with the resources that we can muster.  Learning new skills, living in a sustainable and resilient fashion, and hopefully setting a good example to our friends, community and strangers who happen by!  Come and see.