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Someone is a local citizens’ group on FB just now was trotting out that old widespread fallacy, about how we have to “find balance” between “the environment” and “the economy.”

Sorry if I sound impatient here, but I am!

This is a sad and deadly false dichotomy. A popular fallacy, among both officialdom and everyday citizens, is to pit “the economy” and “nature/environment” against one another. When in fact, not only can they go hand in hand — they MUST go hand in hand.

For any city or region, continuing down this road will ultimately trash your local natural beauty and ecosystem health (if it hasn’t already). And will harm wildlife, ultimately leading to mass die-offs of your local beloved animals and plants (if it hasn’t already, as with the mass die-offs of our beloved manatees here in Florida). And it will trash the health, both physical and mental, of local humans too (if it hasn’t already).

And in the long run, on a macro level this deadly and selfish dichotomy is what will lead to the extinction of the human race if we continue down this path.

It is not a choice between two “extremes.”
One prime example of the overlap between environment and economy is agriculture; we need to support our local farmers, local agriculture industries. And we can’t have local food resilience if we’re paving over most of the land, and spraying the rest with lawn chemicals and other poisons.

And regarding the challenge faced by elected officials and other leaders who must balance the various demands of their constituents … When it comes to ecosystems and carrying capacity, and having respect for our nonhuman brothers and sisters (or even having respect for all of our fellow humans), we passed “balance” many long miles ago. If I’m a city or county official, and some of my noisiest constituents are calling for things that keep my local region on a self-destructive course (in terms of nature AND ultimately in terms of the economy also), then it is my job as a leader to stand up for what’s right, even if it means temporarily enduring some disapproval from people who don’t have the collective wellbeing in mind.

Oh, and by the way, regarding willingness to deploy financial resources: If in our human shortsightedness we somehow cannot “come up with the funding” to address environmental urgencies, Mother Nature will be more than happy to take care of that for us. And then we’ll see what REAL expensive is.

My approach to eco-activism is to try to get people to see their self-interest in conserving resources and protecting ecosystems, via their daily household habits.

I’ve often heard it said that it’s easier to motivate people to change their behavior than it is to motivate them to change their attitudes or beliefs. What have you noticed about this? It does, for example, seem to be pretty easy to get people to recycle when there’s actually a bin for that. Same with composting.

In some countries, such as Japan and England, it’s just naturally easier to lead a low-footprint life than it is here in the USA, because of how things are set up. Streets; living spaces; public transport. You can be green without thinking about it. Imagine if supermarkets just didn’t give out plastic bags! We’d all instantly have a lower footprint by default.

Besides our everyday physical surroundings, another force that can prompt green choices is if we get people to 1) see their self-interest in doing something (or refraining from doing something), and 2) make a pledge to do (or refrain from doing) that thing.

According to a talk by Erik Thulin, “Saving Nature with Behavioral Science,” local fisher folk were motivated to self-limit their take to sustainable levels, once 1) they were guided to see their self-interest in limiting their take; and 2) they took a public pledge to limit their take.

Further Exploration:

• Saving Nature with Behavioral Science (TEDx Cambridge Salon talk by Erik Thulin on YouTube).

“When I retire …”

This deadly mentality is skewing our economies, hollowing out our Main Streets, wrecking people’s health, setting a bad example for our youth, and contributing to the demise of neighborhood cohesion. And it’s keeping a lot of people’s creativity tied up, which could be channeled into pursuits that would enrich our own lives while also helping to restore ecosystems and address longstanding societal inequities.

If you want to do something, start right now. Even if it’s just on a small scale at first. If your job keeps you from doing what you are really longing to do but are putting off “til retirement,” then either find another job or make your own.

If you are harboring this “When I retire” mentality, get free of it now. My book, and the resources I recommend here in this blog, can help you. And you are always welcome to contact me directly too. I’m here to support you — I mean that!

On this DEEP GREEN blog over the past year, I’ve written a fair amount about schooling and working from home. And I have shared what I hope are helpful resources for households and communities to manage this balancing act and reap the benefits that come from being able to spend more time at home. Today, I’m honored to bring you a guest post on this topic.

(Fellow bloggers and activists, if you have ever been approached by someone wanting to guest-post on your site, you know how great it feels — not only for the implied compliment to your site, but also for the opportunity to connect your readers with an additional source of support. Recently, DEEP GREEN blog seems to be getting more such requests, and some other forms of unexpected recognition as well. This site seems to be getting more widely known than I had thought! I take it as a wonderful sign that the #GrassrootsGreenMobilization is growing bigtime!)

And now without further ado, I present to you Cherie McLaughlin of CouchBasedBiz.com, on ways to balance work and remote learning in your home. Enjoy! And I hope you will visit Cherie’s site, and contact her to ask questions and thank her for this chock-full-of-resources post.

These days many parents are doing three full-time jobs— and feeling the stress of each one. Many are working from home while also supporting their children as parents and in remote learning as teachers. This can make home life very complex and complicated—but with the right organization and preparation it doesn’t have to be.

Are you struggling to find ways to create a new normal at home? Here are 5 tips for balancing remote work and remote learning.

Get the right technology for everyone

Sharing a laptop? Causes stress. Spotty wifi? Causes communication breakdown. Not enough headphones or earbuds? Causes distractions. Reduce your stress by making sure everyone in the household has their own personal remote work and learning equipment, but do so in an eco-friendly way. You can score major deals on tablets, laptops and other computer accessories by shopping on sites like Gazelle, which retails used devices so you can shop sustainably. If you’re getting rid of any tech pieces in favor of upgraded versions, know that while you can sell these items, giving them away is much more fulfilling. After all, there are many families right now that can’t afford to buy new or even used pieces, so knowing that you’re making a difference in their lives will also have a meaningful impact in yours.

Step up your coping techniques

Not only are you going to have to find new ways to cope with the new stresses, but you’ll likely have to teach these new techniques to the rest of your family. “Do as I say, not as I do” is not going to work here. Take advantage of the resources out on the internet to help you balance remote work and remote learning, such as podcasts like 10 Minutes to Less Suffering and The Less Stressed Life. Most importantly, cultivate an attitude of gratitude so that you can stay focused on all the good things happening in your life right now.

Make a clear schedule

Write out everyone’s schedule in a clear, organized calendar where everyone can see what is going on. This way, you can make sure you don’t schedule your first post-COVID performance review right when your kid needs to log on for a math test. While sticking to the schedule is crucial, being flexible is even more important. Roadblocks and challenges will happen, so it is important you stay flexible so you can adapt and adjust to keep everyone on track.

Make education fun

With so much time spent online, remote learning runs the risk of becoming boring and banal. That’s where gamification comes in. Investing in technology like VR (virtual reality) or enrolling your kids in extracurriculars like coding camps can boost your kids’ education and entertainment. Just be sure you get the right kind of internet speed for these online activities to avoid frustrating slowdowns. With more and more people working and learning from home, the internet has become an even hotter commodity.

Join a support network

You aren’t the only parent/employee going through this. Millions of Americans are learning how to work from home, while also keeping their kids on track. Reach out to other parents at your work and in your children’s school. Join or start a Facebook group for working parents to share ideas, ask for advice or just vent. Believe it or not, just the simple act of giving grace and support to others will help you have more grace and compassion for yourself.

Many parents, especially in the United States, are already devoting more and more of their time and attention to the emotional and physical well-being of their children. Balancing work and parenting with the addition of remote learning can add a new level of responsibilities— and that also means stress. Just remember there is support here when you need it.

The story of how Puerto Rico lost its food sovereignty is a familiar one, echoing a tragic pattern worldwide. We might call this pattern “the arc of colonialization.”

Food sovereignty is probably a pretty good indicator of economic sovereignty in general. A place that has to rely on imports for most of its food, probably also is having to import other basic stuff such as household goods.

In the old days, communities were able to get almost all their needs met locally. This was the only alternative, as people didn’t have access to cheap fossil fuels, which in turn enabled centralization, globalization, widespread use of large mechanized equipment, and so on.

The article and video linked below answer a huge question I had about Puerto Rico’s suffering after hurricane Maria. I wondered how did it get to be that the people weren’t growing their own food in that abundant land, and how it was that they didn’t have fresh water from cisterns and were dependent on bottled water. As I suspected: It was the legacy of colonialism, corporate profiteering. A deadly “hurricane” that hit many decades before Maria.

Many places (maybe even most places nowadays) have suffered a version of “economic colonialism.” We all face the task of rebuilding our local food sovereignty, and taking back our local economic sovereignty in general. This doesn’t necessarily mean having to give up imported goodies entirely; it just means not being forced to depend on imports. And, it means being responsible about our import purchases, so our “treats” are supporting the wellbeing of everyday people in the source country, rather than adding to human suffering and environmental degradation.

Further Exploration:

• How Puerto Rico Lost Its Food Sovereignty: The young Puerto Ricans returning to the land (YouTube video). Starts with a succinct summary of how this situation came about. Then follows with the good news about the grassroots regenerative ag movement that seems to be building momentum. Very inspiring; I loved seeing the young Mom and other young women building a career path they love.

• A Local Food Revolution in Puerto Rico (foodtank.com): This article also offers a “bad news followed by good news” story: “The story of Puerto Rico’s food production is also the story of the island’s own colonial history. Large-scale plantations replaced native farming during Puerto Rico’s days as a Spanish colony, resulting in the consolidation of agricultural land and landholding, as well as the number of crops being grown on it. When the United States took over the island in the wake of the Spanish-American War in 1898, economic restructuring meant that the remaining agricultural activity focused only on cash crops like sugarcane and coffee. Then, in the 1940s, Congress launched Operation Bootstrap, a campaign to overhaul the Puerto Rican economy that focused on manufacturing and tourism—moving even further away from agriculture. Subsequent tax breaks and economic initiatives to encourage investment in these sectors solidified these moves. Deliberately, over the course of years, an import-driven food system was put in place in Puerto Rico, and all other farming fell by the wayside.”

(For USA residents — everyone else please pardon the USA-centricness of this post, and of my blog in general. But hope even those of you outside the USA will find this post helpful somehow):

Are you getting a stimulus payment? If so, how are you investing it? Someone in the Socially Conscious FIRE group (on Facebook) just asked this question. My response:

I am investing my stimulus money in:

1) Purchases supporting things that will help my household & community become more resilient to pandemics, extreme weather, and other disasters. So: Rainwater collection, native plants, food plants. And most of all: investing in my continuing education in my field (permaculture design, community organizing). Most of the classes I’m taking (which are online) are either free or cheap. And I have already reduced my overhead expenses super low in order to devote many hours a week to classes and community work. But since my overhead is so low, the stimulus gives me a big boost!
It’s basically a month of free income for me.

And

2) Buying from friends’ micro-kitchens and other micro-businesses that they started in order to get free of dependence on a corporation for their livelihood.

And come to think of it, #2 is boosting my community’s disaster-resilience also!

Building local economies is essential. So is restoring the health of ecosystems. If we don’t take care of our communities, or the planet that is our only home, no amount of financial gain or stockpiled money can save us.

Additional notes: I do not invest in Wall Street stocks or other nonlocal financial instruments. In my opinion:

• Such investments have an unacceptably high opportunity cost, in that every dollar we invest on Wall Street is a dollar not being invested in our own local Main Street.

• It’s too hard for me to find, and keep track of, the impacts of faraway, centralized, impersonal investments. And according to my research, those unseen impacts tend to be very negative (both environmentally and socially) in comparison with any benefit they produce, either to me or to my community or to society as a whole.

• Direct investment in ecological restoration, disaster-resilience, and in supporting local people and local businesses, is a better bet than any mainstream financial instrument I know of. The monetary ROI may be less (or sometimes even zero), but it’s still a safer bet all-around.

A frequent theme in my writing (and in my life, and in many people’s lives, particularly in the USA and other places where people tend to accumulate more material stuff than they can use) is the dilemma, “Do I keep this around in case I might need it someday, but in the meantime I’m burdened with storing it; or do I pass it on to someone else and thus risk not having it when I need it?”

This dilemma is particularly pronounced among people who don’t have money to just rush out and buy something new. Or people who have ever experienced poverty, even though they are now living in material comfort. And maybe most of all, this dilemma is particularly pronounced among those of us who just hate wasting stuff, and recognize the ecological and moral disaster of constantly buying new stuff rather than reusing.

It is a dilemma for sure. And each person will resolve it differently (and we make different choices for different categories of stuff too. Clothing is more perishable than a pile of surplus metal. And surplus paper and art supplies may be moreperishable than clothing. There are also the “technologically perishable” items, such as the ancient phone-chargers and other dongles taking up space in people’s desk drawers.

One thing I am noticing for myself, though — and I’m sharing it in case it might ring true for you too — is that most often, the social capital I gain from giving away stuff I’m not using more than makes up for the potential cost of maybe needing to reaquire the same or similar item later.

Most often, I don’t end up having to acquire the item; I either don’t need it, or I find a used one discarded at curbside right when I need it. (The goddesses of curbside bounty are powerful, generous, and highly responsive; I highly recommend you cultivate a working relationship with said deities if you haven’t already! They take requests in all forms, even just a passing thought of the needed object will often suffice.)

By “social capital” in this case I simply mean a goodwill connection with a neighbor (“neighbor” could be either physically proximate, or proximate online even if they’re in a different geographic area from you).

This post came to me early this morning when I was in my garage doing garden-related tasks, and I happened to look up at my back deep-storage shelves and saw, for the umpteenth time, the never-opened boxes and boxes of metal flashing left by the previous owner of the house (I think he was into welding).

Metal is useful, and I guess I had been thinking I might fabricate something from it someday. But … I don’t do metal fabrication, nor do I plan to take classes in metal fabrication, welding, or suchlike. In the meantime, someone might really have use for that nice metal.

The metal does not seem to rust, even in our coastal climate which is rough on metals. It’s pretty darn near nonperishable from what I can tell. But, I get peace of mind from clearing away things I’m not using. And I’m a big believer in the idea that new good stuff, that we need right now, comes into our lives when we are willing to let go of stuff we’re not using.

On a related note, I once heard of a landlord who had 10 empty buildings, housing 17 storefronts. By “empty” I mean the buildings have no tenants. (Word has it that his asking rent is high.) He has been keeping the buildings to try to sell to one big buyer; he doesn’t want the hassle of trying to sell them to individual buyers.

Well, recently, his number of buildings dropped from 10 to 9, as a result of a strong storm that brought wind and hail. The building, already fallen into decay from not being in active use, was so damaged by the storm that he had to have it demolished. And, the contents of the building were irretrievable.

I mentioned the building was vacant — but I meant vacant in the sense of not having a tenant; not bringing in rent. The building was actually full — of stuff. Some of it historic; most of it probably very useful. All of which was a total loss, as the building was unsafe to enter for any of the stuff to be retrieved. It all got hauled away with the bricks and other rubble.

The owner had no insurance (building too old, etc.). So he has lost $100,000 or something. I imagine he’ll be able to write it off on his taxes, so it won’t be that bad for him financially.

Where I see his loss is social. He’s already incurred a lot of badwill over the years for keeping his buildings vacant and contributing to blight. And I have to wonder how much goodwill he might have built over the years by finding ways to get that building, and its contents, into circulation in the community. We’ll never know now, but I expect he could have built a significant amount of social capital — and probably made some money too!

I’m a strong believer in the flow. In permaculture design we talk about “stocks” and “flows.” A “stock” is a stash; a stockpile; a bank account; a pantry with canned goods in readiness for hurricane season; goodwill built up in one’s community over time. A “flow” is just what it sounds like. It’s what comes into our lives, and what we put out into our communities and the world.

Stocks are perishable. Even stainless steel, even money — are perishable on some level. Flows, on the other hand, are constant, dynamic, and lead to more stocks and flows.

Stocks are good and prudent to have, within reason.

If I had to pick between stocks and flows, I’d have to pick flows. The reality is, though, we never have to pick. We always have both, and they feed each other. As long as we don’t try to keep things around in a frozen state, stocks and flows will always be there for us in a fertile and self-multiplying interplay.

Too large a stock of something sucks one’s attention; stops the flow of one’s energy and creativity.

It’s time for me to post those boxes of nice shiny metal flashing on NextDoor — or just walk over to my neighbor’s and see if he wants it. Sure, some future housemate/co-owner of my sweet seaside urban permaculture micro-homestead could turn out to be a metalworking genius who will make us a super-awesome Rocket Stove or TLUD stove. But we can cross that bridge when we come to it!