the Dervaes family is where it is, doing what it can do; I wouldn't have picked LA myself due to the precarity of the water supply, but it's where they found themselves. I coulda picked on any of a thousand or so other examples out of the literature -- people reversing desertification by permaculture planting out in Arizona; people reversing soil pollution (all over the place) by using brassicas, composting processes, and fungi to extract or convert toxins...
and yeah, suburban lots are larger in the US than in many countries. which makes the US, paradoxically, a more promising place to relocalise food gardening... even while it is the kingpin nation of corporate food. The difference between theory and practise in practise ...
The American suburbs are my favorite example. The idea of abandoning them is ridiculous - if it comes down to it, you start putting two or three families in one house, abandon certain houses and subdivisions, and fill in with farms. The near-term doomers have a comical over reliance on assuming that there will be no adaptation.
In the medium term I still think Europe is better off - in a world of declining (but not critical) energy resources, infrastructure efficiency becomes the main variable in determining your (mostly material) quality of life.
you are the media you consume.
the real problem is the quality of construction, for whuch in many cases "gimcrack" would be too kind. w/o endless inputs of repair/maintenance I don't see the average carburb home standing up well over a 40 year period. the structures are so flimsy that they rely on high-tech and lightweight roofing materials -- anything heavier wouldn't be borne by the spindly little wall joists. I imagine that creative survivalist families and townships would encase the entire structure in strawbale and adobe (or cob or whatever was locally available) to improve insulation and create a stronger perimeter to support more traditional roofing materials... but this is idle speculation and more appropriate for a sci fi story than our immediate discussion... The difference between theory and practise in practise ...
nice phrase. moi aussi.
it's one thing to watch the crowded bus roaring straight at the brick wall and still accelerating... that's fatalism... what's angry-making is that it's a small freestanding brick wall in the middle of a huge coordinate grid of other choices; knowing that the crash could easily have been avoided (where "easily" is a function of "preventing a bunch of greedy psychopaths from constructing our social reality"), that's (for me) the angry part... The difference between theory and practise in practise ...
fate rage....
it would be easy, if all were on board.
i see it as a communication challenge.
like speaking japanese to turtles, but more fun.
and hopefully a better payoff ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
