Sustainability

Becoming self-sustainable in today’s changing and challenging times could well become a necessity rather than distant idea! One thing that is certain is that a radical life-style change is in order if a real and meaningful shift is to become a reality. I personally started walking down the path quite a few years ago, and it has been a wonderfully inspiring and also challenging one and not one step of the way have I regretted it.

My journey to “Re-Empowering” myself, both outside and in… It was actually not that long ago that I realized how damaging the whole centralized monopolistic power system is. Six years ago I was not buying energy saving globes and did not have solar panels on my roof, or a wind turbine whizzing in the wind, and certainly would never have thought that I would be cooking on bio-gas collected from the ‘poo’ … human and other!

The sun is a solution. 98% of light striking black is absorbed. Light is energy, not heat. Once absorbed it lowers its frequency and becomes heat. It has more than enough energy to cook with. To capture it, use it and enjoy it has been known for a long time. A naturalist by the name of Horace de Saussure designed the first box cooker. He developed it in the 1700’s. This remains the archetype solar cooking device.

So, spring caught us by surprise in this beautiful environment, not only with blazing hot weather, but also blossoms on our almond trees, birds and bees in the air and the pink heather on the hillsides fading to make way for new floral wonders. We’d been having so much fun doing as we pleased on a day to day basis, i.e. making soap for our future orders for November and December as we wanted to have plenty of stock before we got down to some serious marketing.

The AumFarm Eco-Community is a rural gathering of like-minded, spiritually aware people, who create a supportive social environment with a low-impact, minimum footprint, sustainable lifestyle. To help us achieve this, we are striving to integrate ecologically aware design practices and by using permaculture and bio-culture methods.

My husband and I have been really fortunate enough to have realised two dreams lately. The first one is that we have found a farm which we have moved to with our three girls, where we can live growing all our food organically and just basically live surrounded by beauty and nature.

Over the next several years food prices will increase sharply. These coming price increases are as unavoidable and inevitable as an increase in the price of oil. In fact the price we pay for food is interestingly and inextricably linked to the oil price, and this article will not only show how the two have become inseparably intertwined but how they cannot do anything other than escalate.

It was the radical ecologist James Lovelock and his “Gaia Hypothesis”, which — in the mid-90s — persuaded me that Global Warming was in fact, a myth perpetuated by ignorant greenies who had only themselves to blame for not listening to the planet.

The secret of sustaining life lies in the act of living sustain-ably: the sacred contract with nature that all life on the planet is imbued with. This innate intelligence – ability to live sustain-ably has been gambled with as different modes of ‘progress’ set in motion, especially with the onset of the modernist — post -industrial era.

Ideas to simultaneously reduce greenhouse gas emissions, save foreign exchange and create many jobs

A genuinely green car is, of course, impossible. Moving a tonne of steel and plastic around could never use no energy at all and even the zero emissions hydrogen fuel cell cars will require prodigious amounts of energy to produce the hydrogen in the first place.

Communities around the world have begun to adopt Zero Waste goals and Zero Waste Plans to implement those goals. The first community Zero Waste Plan was adopted by the Australian Capital City of Canberra in 1996.

Zero Waste is a goal, a process, a way of thinking that profoundly changes our approach to resources and production. Not only is Zero Waste about recycling and diversion from landfill, it restructures production and distribution systems to prevent waste from being produced in the first place.

Whether you eat meat or not (or how much) is a private matter, they might say. Maybe it has some implications for your heart, especially if you’re overweight. But it’s not one of the high-profile public issues you’d expect presidential candidates or senators to be debating – not up there with terrorism, the economy, the war, or “the environment.”

Ideas to simultaneously reduce greenhouse gas emissions, save foreign exchange and create many jobs

It is okay if the dominant world system fails. It has failed more people on this planet than it has assisted. It has exploited them and their world and offers them no hope beside vague promises of trickle down wealth, crumbs from the half percent of the worlds population that own nearly half of the world’s resources.

I was recently asked,”What sort of livelihoods would you like to see people preparing for and getting involved in now, so that we have a stable infrastructure or community in place when things turn for the worse?”

For a year five experts ditched theory for practice, running a Welsh farm using 17th Century methods.

You don’t have to start riding a tofu-powered lawn mower to help save the environment. There are plenty of simple things you can do that will help clean up the air—and save you a few bucks.

When buying anything in this modern age we all tend to buy the most cheaply priced articles. We buy not so much for value as for cheapness, ignoring the real costs of our false economies, for that is what they are when carefully examined.

Our planet is facing many dangers. Her very survival is being threatened as we plunder and pollute her at a pace that outstrips her capacity to sustain life.

It is surprisingly easy (and cost-effective) for households to reduce water consumption by between 30% and 60%.

There is a great need for an alternative to deforestation, harmful farming practices and crude oil. Hemp is the one plant which can replace most raw materials in a sustainable way.

Optimizing the use of hemp would be a startlingly effective move. Many people do not grasp the range of benefits that would be realized. Here is a full vision presented by John Roulac in his book Hemp Horizions: The Comeback of the World’s Most Promising Plant.

Imagine if you will, a village where people of all ages live together in harmony. Where diversity is celebrated and all villagers devote their goodwill, intelligence, capital and labour to meet the common goals of caring for the Earth, to live a peaceful and meaningful existence while honouring and nurturing all life-systems.

The name “Khula Dhamma” consists of the Xhosa word “khula”, which means “to grow” and the ancient Eastern word of “Dhamma” which has various spiritual connotations such as “the natural, universal law” and “the path that leads to enlightenment”. Since, as a community, we do not identify ourselves with any one particular philosophy or belief system we generally convey our name as “to grow on the path that leads to consciousness.”

This tiny little village, my home-town, now boasts more than ten buses plying through the only dusty main road. The majestic backdrop of the Western Ghats made this little village picturesque, almost out of a living canvass of nature.

Is there really a place on earth where human beings from all nations and ways of life, have come together in a melting pot with a singular vision of human unity, world peace and natural living? Could it be true?

“So what do you think Findhorn is really about? Why is it here?”
I turn towards the woman asking the question, and mumble through a few sentences before realizing that I didn’t really have an answer.

Our indigenous trees are a good source of food; they’re both beautiful, and bountiful.

Getting the best balance in life is not easy… making the hard choices needs thought and planning.