Summer in March etc.

SUMMER IN MARCH Alex investigates a heat wave in North America and Britain - in March! Guests Joe Romm of "Climate Progress" & Jeff Masters of "the Weather Underground". Plus University of Michigan Professor Raymond De Young on relocalization and mental survival. Includes a naughty song by climate scientists. Radio Ecoshock 120328 1 hour 14 MB.

Sustainable lifestyle

The food in the supermarket may have come from thousands of miles away.
The conditions under which your chicken wings were produced is possibly unknown to you.

I heard on the radio yesterday that the embroidery for many wedding dresses is done in India. They make the dress here, or in China, ship it to India, and then it comes back to be sold to you for way more than it's worth.

The wedding dress is just one example of how inefficient cheap oil has allowed us to become.  So what's in store for us when the prices go up due to natural market forces: supply and demand?

That and that the economy is likely never going to be the same.  Nobody is buying anything they don't absolutely need, companies are not hiring because nobody is buying (included governments). Everybody is clinging to what assets they have, fearful for the future. Me too!

Plus the US government has gone totally batshit.

What needs to happen for our economy and our lifestyles to become sustainable?

For the lifestyle part, I think it's both obvious, fairly easy, and in the end humans will be happier living, working, eating, buying locally.




This lecture was interesting, but too academic for what I was trying to convey.

Locavore etc.

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Nice new Farmer's Market behind Coco's on Edinger (in HB).
I also notice the local mega marts brag "California grown" for some of their produce.
Expect better labeling about where the produce was grown in the future.

I buy cage free eggs, but it appears the local farms keep the chickens in cages (but bigger cages than they used to be).
I thought this was interesting:

United Egg Producers Invite Mom and Daughter Into the Hen House
There's more at this site. See for yourself how those eggs get into the carton.

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Eventually, as gas prices go higher and higher, folks in the Northeast will pay through the nose for citrus. Folks in the Southwest will pay an arm and a leg for good apples, or any other produce that needs a cold winter. Bread, and other products using wheat/corn etc. will reflect the increasing frequency of crop failures.

We hope to have a greenhouse where a couple of dwarf citrus will thrive, and perhaps even an avocado (Haas!).

I'm still torn about cows. Lots of work, but having a couple of cows would really really make us more independent of the grocery store in days to come, as crops fail due to drought and flood, and the cost of transport goes through the roof.

I have been bending my mind around the whens of all this. The hows are pretty obvious.

We have reason for optimism given California and other states taking the lead where our federal government failed. I am not sure whether China's green commitments are green or green wash. Time will tell.
Europe is doing all the right things.
But, and it's a very big but, things are happening far sooner than predicted! What civilization is doing to save itself very well may be too little too late.
I give us a 50% chance of turning it around by 2050. What chaos and misery we'll experience between now and then may shock even the pessimists. I predict a nasty decade in  the '20s... with signs of collapse or survival appearing in the '30s.

Some really interesting technologies are being explored. If any of those turn out to be magic bullets, then, maybe, we can all breath a sigh of relief, provided the technology isn't buried.