adapting in place

April is the month that utility shut-offs are resumed in much of the northern half of the country - it is against the law to shut off people's primary heating fuel during the winter, but when they can't pay their bills, generally speaking, April 1 means that you can cut them off. There has been some upheaval in our area, where an unusually cold spring has meant that there is still a need for supplemental heating, and many poor people with very cold houses. I thought it was worth re-running this article - a version of this ran in 2005, and I've republished it several times since then. We…
Almost exactly four years ago, my friend Miranda Edel and I were discussing the recent IPCC report on Climate Change and George Monbiot's book _Heat_ and the reactions that we got when we talked about about the sheer depth of the reductions in climate emissions that would be needed to stabilize the climate. Whenever we began to discuss emissions reductions on the order of 80 or 90% (depending on your country of origin - for the US Monbiot's estimate was 94%, although there are reasons to question that number now), the universal reaction we got was that it was impossible - impossible to…
As part of their ongoing series on population, National Geographic has a fascinating, and typically visually brilliant article about how the Bangladeshi population is using strategies of adaptation to deal with climate change. This isn't the kind of adaptation most of us are prepared for, but as the authors point out, it may be the kind of adaptation we need: Ibrahim Khalilullah has lost track of how many times he's moved. "Thirty? Forty?" he asks. "Does it matter?" Actually those figures might be a bit low, as he estimates he's moved about once a year his whole life, and he's now over 60.…
I wrote this post years ago, and have republished it occasionally since - it has been a while, though, and it does go with the other one ;-) Reasons to Stay Together in Tough Times 1. Gives you something sustainable to do during those rolling blackouts (sex and fighting would probably both fit the bill, actually.) 2. You can't afford dinner and a movie, much less romantic gifts for your mistress or new sweetie anyway. You might as well stay with someone whose expectations have already been lowered by exposure to the real you. 3. Lowered economic expectations mean that even if you are no…
I'll be offline much of the next few days for the Passover holiday. This is a subject we're talking about in the Adapting-in-Place class, and one that comes up a lot - how do you make environmental changes with a spouse who isn't on board? What happens when this strains your marriage? I get emails more or less constantly on this subject: "I want to prepare for peak oil/live more sustainably/change my life to deal with climate change and my spouse (and/or the rest of my family) don't want to, or don't think it is important enough." This is something I've heard over and over - marriages…
Lucy Worsley has a Guardian piece about the merits of medieval architecture as a model for a lower-resource use future: Domestic life in the past was smelly, cold, dirty and uncomfortable, but we have much to learn from it. I spend much of my time working as a curator in Britain's historic royal palaces. But recently, for a television series, I've visited a lot of normal homes dating from the Norman period to the present day, and I've concluded that the houses of the past have a huge amount to teach us about the future. When the oil runs out, I think our houses will become much more like…
Let us imagine that you are MacGyver, that 1980s tv guy who can build an atomic bomb out of gum and duct tape. You are facing a world-shattering crisis. You have a pile of scrap materials out of which you must build a high speed vehicle to effect your escape from this crisis, which will certainly involve you outracing a dramatic explosion. There are wheels, gears, sticks and the all-important duct tape. There's also a big claw-footed bathtub. Now, when your need is for lightness and speed, do you attach the bathtub, just because you've got one lying around? This analogy was used to me…
Today is the first day of our Adapting in Place Class - if you are interested I still have 2 paid spots ($175 for the six week online asynchronous class - or equivalent barter) and have had two scholarship spots open up for low income participants (one through someone not taking a spot and one, kindly through donation!) . Please email me at jewishfarmer@gmail.com if you'd like to join the class. You can see the syllabus two posts down. So what is Adapting In Place anyway? I'm writing a book about it (coming out next fall), I talk about it a lot, but what exactly am I getting at? It is…
I still have space in the Adapting in Place Class that starts next week - the last one for some time, I suspect, given other projects (I have to write the book about Adapting in Place, for example ;-)). aron and I will be running our Adapting in Place Class online for six weeks beginning April 5. The class covers every element of adapting your life both for things to come and things that are now, from going inside the walls of your home or apartment to community, family and security issues, from the ordinary (laundry) to the extraordinary (handling life transitions). This is our most…
This week's project is getting the material up for my garden plants and herb CSA - I'm hoping to be able to offer a wide variety of plants from annual vegetables (my tomato list alone is insane) to unusual edibles, native plants, flowers and herbs. My garden obsession is making me a little nuts right now, since there are still 3 feet of snow on the ground and its about 12 degrees right now - nuts enough that I came up with this: my secret garden that can be planting in plain sight without anyone...not the neighbors, not the zoning board, knowing that it all (shhhhh!) delicious food plants! I…
I'll be offline until Tuesday of next week, running my winter apprentice weekend (or Goat Camp as one attendee called it ;-)). The next one will be offered in May, and will be a family-friendly long weekend (tentatively Memorial Day weekend - I'll confirm that in the next week). You can bring the kids, stay with us or camp, and we'll have baby goats and chicks along with a chance to do herb growing, milking, dairying, tree fodder crops, and many other projects! If you are interested in a spot email me at jewishfarmer@gmail.com. In the meantime, Aaron Newton and I will be running our annual…
As you can probably imagine, Eric sometimes has more than a bit to put up with being married to me. One of the things that bothers him the most is that I'm absolutely no fun at movies. If you remember the show MST3K, I'm them - all the time. And just because the movie is supposed to be high art, well, that never did stop me. Early in our marriage we realized that we were both happier if we limited our joint film time to one of two categories - truly great movies, which we both enjoy, or ones bad enough that Eric doesn't mind pitching in on the commentary. There are, of course, far more…
We are living in the most destructive and, hence, the most stupid period of the history of our species. The list of its undeniable abominations is long and hardly bearable. And these abominations are not balanced or compensated or atoned for by the list, endlessly reiterated, of our scientific achievements. Some people are moved, now and again, to deplore one abomination or another. Others - and Hayden Carruth is one - deplore the whole list and its causes. Much protest is naive; it expects quick, visible improvement and despairs and gives up when such improvement does not come.…
Variations on the obligation to love one's neighbor show up across both the religious and secular spectrum. They tend to provoke a range of responses - from those who attempt to sort out what loving people who are not part of your immediate tribe would mean, to those who reject the necessity. This is not an easy idea - and even if you can sort out what it means to love people who you may not know well, or like much, or even trust, or know how to get to knowing, liking and trusting - it is a damned hard thing to put into practice. I want to talk a bit more about why even use the word love,…
Along the theme of time - finding it, using it, fast, slow, in-between - I thought I'd re-run this post. I have a *lot* of experience with four little boys, one autistic, in getting things done around the kids ;-) - they help now a lot more, but sometimes this is still necessary, so I thought it might be worth rerunning my meditations on how that works. Asher will turn five this week, and Eli is ten now - and while Asher is now one of my primary aids, Eli is still sometimes a lovable hindrance, despite some improvement - but in a nice way, and we're used to it. Still, getting everything…
One of the tensions in my life -is that between two kinds of time. "Fast Time" is the world I live in, the one with a two hour meeting scheduled at 7pm, my husband's classes at 12:35, Eli's bus at 8:15 and 3:30... payments due by the first of the month, etc... It is the world run on clocks and calendars, where expectations can be fixed and formalized. All of us live in fast time in some measure, some of us almost completely, others only barely. There is, however, no good way of escaping it entirely. I also live in slow time. Slow time is the world of things that cannot be subject to…
I'll be there this weekend for the first ever Urban Adapting-In-Place event - I'll be speaking on Friday night about urban adaptation and on Saturday a whole host of local resources will come together to talk about New Haven's future. I think it will be absolutely wonderful, and I hope you will be there! http://www.sare.org/mysare/Events.aspx?do=showevent&event=2734 Sharon
As most of you will remember, we came very close to moving during the summer. It was an agonizing decision to make - there were compelling arguments on both sides, and while we ultimately came down in favor of staying in place, we also recognized that the problems we saw with our present situation are real, and need to be resolved in some way. All of this came back to us last week when Eric and I took the boys to our favorite orchard, up near the farm we nearly bought. There was the house and its for-sale sign still there. We'd assumed that the house would sell, and now we were back to the…
This post ran a year and half ago at The Oil Drum, but I thought it was worth re-running, as I begin my new Adapting in Place class (still two spots if anyone wants them - email jewishfarmer@gmail.com - and no, it isn't too late!). How do you even get started thinking about how to prepare for a lower energy and less stable climate future? Beginnings The first question to ask is whether we should take in-place Adaptation seriously at all. Shouldn't we, ideally, try and choose the best possible place to deal with the coming crisis? Some analysts suggest we will have to have vast population…
Like everyone in the rich world, I carry bottles of water with me everywhere I go. Were someone from the past to spot me, they'd be stunned by the sight of all the people, clearly headed on long treks into the uninhabited jungle, carrying water lest they die of dehydration. Because, after all, in historical terms, at least in the US, one carries a canteen or other source of water while camping or otherwise engaged in a trek to uncertain, undeveloped lands. In populated areas, folks 30 or 40 years ago, would have told a thirsty person - "wait until we get to the water fountain." You remember…