Sustainability is what happens when humans achieve the same kind of balance that nature does.

The small, family farms of 100 years ago are an excellent example of sustainability.  Crops were grown in rotation and some were plowed back into the earth using animal power to add nutrients to the soil.

Animals were raised to pull plows and carts and for food.  Their manure was composted and used as fertilizer.  Wells were dug and windmills caught the wind to pump the water to the surface.  The food was grown “organically” or without chemicals and the energy used to run the farm was “renewable” as opposed to non-renewable.
Today we use petroleum to fuel our tractors and fertilize our fields.  Petroleum is another word for oil.  Oil is the result of millions of years of underground pressure on ancient dead plants.  Once all the oil is pumped from the ground, it will all be gone.  It cannot be renewed, which is what we mean when we say non-renewable.

There are very few small family farms left.  Today, most most of our food is grown by huge corporations which produce single crops like corn, wheat, and soy.  These farms aren’t even called farms anymore – it is called Agri-business.

Unlike the small family farms which grew many crops in balance with nature, agribusiness relies heavily on petrochemicals made from oil to kill insects and weeds and fertilize the soil.  When the crops are mature, they are shipped long distances using – you guessed it – oil.

Small, organic farms are coming back.  Many of them use renewable energy and none of them use chemicals.  These farms grow food in balance with nature just like they did 100 years ago.

ENERGY

Many smart people are working hard to find renewable alternatives to oil.  They don’t want to wait until the oil runs out to develop new technologies.  Renewable sources for energy include sun, wind, plant matter, manure and heat from the earth.

SOLAR – ENERGY FROM THE SUN

After the oil runs out, the sun will continue to shine.  Solar panels capture the sun and turn it into electricity.

When the sun shines on solar cells, they absorb its energy causing a chemical reaction that generates electricity.

The electricity generated by these solar cells – or photovoltaic system – can be used at homes and factories or it can be stored in a battery. This stored energy then can be used at night.

WIND

Wind power, in its most basic form, is taking the breezes and winds that you feel on your face or that cause a flag to flap and converting it into energy. It has been used for hundreds of years for sailing, grinding grain, and for irrigation.

A wind turbine turns wind into electricity. It consists of a nacelle, rotor, tower, foundation and transformer. The wind turns the rotor of the wind turbine. The rotor turns a generator (a dynamo), which makes electricity

Wind power can provide income to farmers, reduce air pollution and help reduce electricity supply disruptions.)

BIOMASS – PLANTS, MANURE AND VEGETABLE OIL

Using biomass for energy is not a new concept.  Humans first began burning trees and other plants to produce heat 470 million years ago.

Humans also burned manure.  Buffalo chips, those flattened, dried bison manure patties were burned for fuel as recently as the 1800’s in the American west.  Dried manure is still being burned to produce heat in the some of the developing countries.

Today’s manure-burning facilities can’t rely on the hot prairie sun to dry the fuel, but the concept isn’t much different – there’s energy stored in manure solids.

In the late 1800’s Rudolf Diesel, developed an engine designed to run on vegetable oil.  Shortly after that, humans figured out how to pump crude oil up out of the ground and refine it to burn in engines like the diesel engine.  After that, it was much easier and cheaper to pump oil out of the ground than to grow oil producing crops like peanut and soybean and squeeze the oil out.
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Two hundred years later, the world has pumped out and burned the easy half of the crude oil that lies within our planet.  The second half is getting harder and more expensive to get at.  But even if it were easy, we are finding that burning oil is releasing long sequestered carbon into our atmosphere with dire consequences.

Sustainability requires a return to plant, manure and vegetable oil based fuels.  We can’t afford to wait until the oil is gone to develop a new spin on the old practice of burning biomass for energy.

WATER – HYDROPOWER

Hydropower isn’t new either. Water wheels harness the energy from flowing or falling water and may date as far back as Sumerian times 4,000 years ago.  It is not uncommon to see an old mill with a water wheel beside a river or stream.

Modern Hydro-electric dams are the descendants of the water wheel as they too take advantage of the movement of water downhill. Hydropower can also be energy from the oceans and waterfalls.  The latest version of hydropower is microhydro which uses smaller water flows such as water flowing out of abandoned mines to run small generators. These small generators can then power equipment on remote sites to help treat the pollution in the abandoned mine water flow.

GEOTHERMAL – HEAT FROM THE CENTER OF THE EARTH

Geothermal direct use dates back thousands of years, when people began using hot springs for bathing, cooking food, and loosening feathers and skin from game. Today, hot springs are still used as spas. But there are now more sophisticated ways of using this geothermal resource. In modern direct-use systems, a well is drilled into a geothermal reservoir to provide a steady stream of hot water. The water is brought up through the well, and a mechanical system delivers the heat directly for its intended use.

Geothermal hot water can be used for many applications that require heat. Its current uses include heating, raising plants in greenhouses, drying crops, heating water at fish farms, and several industrial processes, such as pasteurizing milk.

LOCAL FOOD

Conventional Agriculture is heavily dependent on unsustainable practices.  They no longer use animal power and therefore no longer use animal manure to enrich the soil.

It takes 100 to 500 years to build one inch of top soil.  We are currently loosing one inch every 16 years.  In the 1800’s when we first began farming the prairies, there was 21 inches of topsoil.  Today that has been reduced to 6 inches.

Most of our food is grown on enormous corporate farms which are heavily dependent on petroleum products for fertilizer, pesticides and distribution.  The average food item in our grocery stores travels 1500 miles from farm to plate.

Small, local farms are more likely to use compost than oil-based fertilizers to enrich the soil and their food does not travel hundreds of miles from farm to fork.

There are several ways to support your local farmers.  You can shop at the local farmer’s markets.  You can buy a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) share in their farm.  CSA’s help the farmers by putting seed money in their pockets before the season begins.

COMMUNITY

At first glance, community seems like an odd companion to Renewable Energy and Local Food.  The connection is this: The discovery of cheap oil, and the subsequent enabling of global food sources has destroyed the fiber of our communities.

Community is knowing that you are needed by the people around you.  The last two or three generations of people in this country have no idea what that feels like.  They grew up in an era which celebrated independence to the extent that every household had no need for the households around it.

We’ve become isolated within our independence to the point of depression.  One hundred years ago, small family farms represented 70% of the population and the others lived in urban neighborhoods.

Today, those numbers have become reversed.  30% of the population live and work on the land and 70% live insulated from the land by their paved roads, offices, cubicles and air conditioned markets.

For several generations, anyone could live and work anywhere because of cheap transportation.  Very few people can say they live in within a few hundred miles of where they were born.  Likewise, their friends and family have scattered across the globe.

As we lose our connection to the land we also lose our connection to each other.   A return to an agrarian lifestyle is good for community.  The Amish are a good example of how people can supply most of their needs locally,

The Amish use animal power to till and harvest their fields.  They compost the manure to fertilize their fields.  Big chores, such as building a barn, are tackled by all, leaving light work for each individual.  Theirs is a culturally sustainable way of life in a way that living a lifestyle based on cheap oil is not.

GOING FORWARD – FINDING THE WAY BACK TO SUSTAINABILITY

Live close to where you work
Walk, bike, carpool and use public transportation
Drive a vehicle that uses renewable fuel
Seek out and support local food growers and producers
Grow yourself a garden
Compost your household organic waste
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
Buy bulk and choose food in containers that recycle
Meet your neighbors
Volunteer within your community

GOOD READING

Agenda for a New Economy, David Korten
Reinventing Collapse – the Soviet Example and American Prospects, Dimitry Orlov
The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved, Sandor Katz
Small is Possible – Life in a Local Economy, Lyle Estill
Peak Everything – Waking Up to the Century of Declines, Richard Heinberg
In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan
The Small-Mart Revolution, Michael Shuman
The World Without Us, Alan Weisman
The Party’s Over, Richard Heinberg
The Long Emergency, James Howard Kunstler
The Great Turning, David Korten
Biodiesel Power, Lyle Estill
An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore
The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan
Collapse – How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond
Garbageland, Elizabeth Royte
The Case Against the Global Economy, Jerry Mander
Enough, Bill McKibben
Hope, Human and Wild: True Stories of Living Lightly on the Earth, Bill McKibben
The End of Nature, Bill McKibben
The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, Thom Hartmann
Overshoot – The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change, William R Catton
Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
Economics of Ecology, Paul Hawkins
A Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations, Clive Ponting
In the Absence of the Sacred, Jerry Mander
Why Things Byte Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences, Edward Tenner
Alternatives to Economic Globalization,  Jerry Mander, John Cavanaugh
Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, Jerry Mander
Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, Jared Diamond