DJ Droood wrote:Oh. I'm sure you leave a smaller footprint, make fewer "greenhouse gases" (if you are convinced that this makes a difference)...actually, I'm not so sure now, since I read your last confession about wood burning.... But your voluntary penury (if it is voluntary) is a choice that only a sub-culture has the luxury of making. If everyone was to chose this lifestyle, your country would quickly run out of land, firewood and ditch nettles, and then the die off would begin anyway. Your "anti-civilization" model, like that of the urban scavengers, is both parasitic and misanthropic.
I am convinced, as are most of the worlds scientists. As for wood burning, I think Katie has explained that burning wood for fuel is carbon neutral, we are both really suprised you didn't know that, it is common knowledge.
Re penury, I can assure you that we work, on average, two days a week. We could earn a lot more if we wanted to, but since all our needs are met and we prefer to spend our time doing what we want and pursuing our own interests, then we don't need to work any harder. I think most people would make this choice if they could, not that I'm being smug.
As for what would happen if everyone chose our lifestyle, well you are clearly and obviously wrong. For a start more people on this planet live like us than how I assume you live, and although this is an increasingly crowded country there is still room for every family, even in England, to have around 3-4 acres each were the space divided up fairly, more than enough room for a bit of hazel coppice to supply those 2 bucketfuls of wood a day! It has been repeatedly shown that the UK could feed itself were a mixed permacuture type agriculture adopted. Its not what would happen if everyone adopted my lifestyle that is the problem, its what would happen if everyone lived like the average Canadian we need to worry about.
DJ Droood wrote:I did mean "delusional"...my spell check changed it to disillusion, and I added an "al" on the end without checking closely, but thank you for being as pedantic as you are sanctimonious! Suddenly the promise of nuclear energy seems far less grating than having to live beside you in a tent.
I wasn't being pedantic, I just couldn't understand what you were saying. As for living next door to us, don't worry, you aren't invited.
DJ Droood wrote:Utopian nonsense. you are simply hiding, waiting until the End Times....which might not be a bad strategy...like I said before, get the jump on everyone else....you will probably survive better than many others...but if you think your strategy will somehow "heal the world", well....I should know better than to argue with the "faithful".
I don't really understand where you are coming from- do you actually want some kind of cataclysm? I am certainly not waiting for anything, just getting on with my life as I like and as I think is right. We have precious little chance of healing the world, as you say, if even those who are informed enough to know about what is happening choose to do nothing. You are a parent DJ, I am not. I'd have thought your vested interest in the future of the planet and the human race would be greater than mine.
DJ Droood wrote:You can live anyway you want, obviously, but your "growing movement" seems to be like the growth of mold on the decay of the previous oil culture, but just as dependent on it, in the end.
I must say it is rather depressing to hear such language from someone on a Druid forum, this is often regarded as an Earth-centred path, though I sometimes wonder if it is more accurately a self centred path.
Of course our lives are dependant on oil culture, that would be true of pretty much everyone who lives in a western country. The system of energy and food distribution is such that it is impossible to extricate yourself from it. However lot of people are trying to change that, look at the whole transition town movement here.
DJ Droood wrote:Log fire? How selfish! The CO2 produced! And you expect everyone in the UK to live like that? Do you really have enough trees to cut? Or is this just a lifestyle for a privileged "subculture" ? Or perhaps after the die off, there will be enough furniture from nasty civilization to burn for a generation.
We don't cut down any trees for fuel here, what falls down naturally is more than enough to fuel our stove. The farm owners who live in the farm house burn wood cut on the local nature reserve for conservation purposes (it is a heath- it is necessary to cut the saplings to prevent the heath from becoming a woodland). Almost everyone in the UK lived like without central heating until recently, according to the census only 30% of UK homes had central heating even in 1970.
Actually I find it sad and ironic that the people who use less should have to justify their behaviour to those who (I assume) use more.
Stupid people? All of the sudden ... what?
