My thoughts on Sustainable living April 20, 2009
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Our lives are solely based on fossil fuels, a finite resource, which is rather stupid when you think about it for we have no alternative once demand overtakes supplies! Our very food supply is heavily subsidized by fossil fuels, from the fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides to diesel for tractors and then there is the transportation to the supermarket, along with refrigeration etc!!! Without fossil fuels our lifestyle will be drastically altered. Should we not be rationing our fossil fuels so that we have time to develop a more sustainable lifestyle? But no we humans wait until the arctic ice has melted, the oceans increase their water level so that parts of many countries are underwater, food production has ground to a halt and people are starving! This foolish lifestyle of not thinking ahead will at least will solve the problem of overpopulation! In 2008, we were very near or just past the point that fossil fuel supplies did not keep up with demand which means that higher prices followed. The higher prices of $147 a barrel closed a number of businesses which then lead to lower demand which lead to lower prices in 2009. Is this not a wakeup call? And why rely on countries half way around the globe for fuel and food? We have to develop locally for the majority of our needs.

But foolishly most people are too much in debt and most have not saved for a any kind of disruption of their lifestyle.

Our governments noticed the recent economic fallout and has foolishly decided to pump the economy with fresh printed money instead of doing any preventative measures in previous years which would have mitigated the problem in the first place . This will give the appearance of a turnaround in the economy but to be on a more sure footing there needs to be a sustainable supply of energy. At the same time the fossil industry noticed low prices for fossil fuels so their investment in finding new sources or investing in new equipment has declined so that when the fluffed up economy actually starts to put people back to work the fossil fuel supply will not be there. And the really sad part is that it is our pension money that is driving businesses and the unsustainable consumerism .....the stuff that is supposed to pay for our old age has to make a profit, because we demanded it, so if the economy flounders we have massive unemployment to keep the profits rolling but that is counterproductive!

So what should we base our energy on? Why the sun of course for it will always be there for the foreseeable future. This rather simple solution will meet with howls of protest because you can't at this time live the same unsustainable lifestyle that people are accustomed to. To live off of the sun means a great shift in lifestyle. Basically you will need to cut down on the energy you use by about 75% so that means walking or riding a bicycle to town, shopping locally, and spending a lot more of your time just feeding yourself and actully getting to know your neighbours. Now how can this work in our present society??? Well this will not work easily so that is the great difficulty we are all facing.

Our society has us enslaved from early childhood. Kids are encouraged by television advertising to have as many toys as possible and from that one grows to love cars, televison, ipods, computers, ice hocky in summer, golfing, car racing, and of course going into debt for any or all of it so that one must work till death to pay back ten times what they originally owed.

There are a few solutions to this. A lot could be solved by reducing our population on the earth which is a very touchy subject for most to consider so reducing our birth rate may be a good start.

There are quite a number of families that have already made great changes in their lives, moved to the country and are on their way to sustainable living. The offspring from these brave folks will have the life skills that are necessary for survival and as well as the ability to adapt to this earth in the years to come.

One can only hope that we run out of fossil fuels before we snuff ourselves out, but I doubt this will be the case.

So how does a university graduate start a sustainable life once they have understood sustainable lifestyles? They can't if they have amassed a large debt because society will demand repayment in money and that most likely will come from holding a job that requires one to own a house, drive a car, shop at the mall and eat out and take holidays in the south.

We have created a trap for all of us!

Think about our cities, towns and villages. They have sewer systems that take massive amounts of energy to function. Nobody thought that having a sewer may someday be made defunct because there was no more energy to be had or it became unaffordable. If we had composted our humanure, recycled it for use in the garden and ate those veggies then that would have been sustainable. But no we pump the sewage through pipes to a so called treatment plant, use massive amounts of energy to swish it around and then add chemicals and eventually declare it fit for dumping in the lake. If it was really fit should it not be recycled for human use as I do with my garden? My system is probably illegal too but not because it is unsafe but that someone just decided that it was unsavoury!!

I could go on and on about all of this but instead lets look at what I have attempted .

I decided to quit what people call normal life. Anyone with a grade 4 education could easily see that there was a reckoning coming in the housing and stock market. I sold all I could and moved to a small village where I started by living with no heat, water or flush toilet. I soon learned that I needed heat of some sort, a food supply other than the grocery store and hot and cold water. I purchased a property and got to work. I insulated and partitioned the house so that I only heated the kitchen, office and dining room. I constructed a very simple solar air heater and it worked with great success. Next followed a solar water heater that I developed from discarded tubing.... another success. I did not have hot water for a shower every night so I looked for ways to improve on that as well as other ways to heat the house. A great step in all of this was the solar cell installation for electricity. I started small even purchasing a used forklift battery. This worked so well I went off grid and never looked back! It was a slow process to start but is continuing at a ferocious pace as I discover other avenues to use the sun. One of the very obvious things I did was to put double walls in each room in the house giving the R value of the walls now about 40. I also added a vestibule to the front and rear entrances to prevent heat loss. It was so good that the biodiesel heater I had developed was too big for the heating. I have also discovered that my compost with the addition of Sunflower meal which I produce in our sunflower oil operation now heats to 130 degrees Fahrenheit!! Yes I can used it to heat part of the house.. .then there is the solar hot water evacuated tubes that I just purchased that will produce even more hot water for heating the floors of the house.

This is exciting and successful experiment so far! But I must tell you it is really fossil fuel subsidized and is not really fully sustainable? Yes that is the case and my current lifestyle is probably only valid for the next 10 years but after that I will have to live even more sustainably because to reproduce solar cells and machinery we need cheap fossil fuels! Now what reproduces itself and is very useful in energy terms? Well horses! So you can see where I am headed!

Mat Redsell april 20, 2009

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