Biospheric Resonance

This being first and foremost an entrepreneurial blog, I generally don’t talk about politics here. Unless, that is, it concerns an issue that strongly affects a community, market, or industry that I’m engaged with in the pursuit of my profession. I believe that this is the case with the following:

With election time looming on the horizon, the politicians are hitting the campaign trail hard, talking up all manner of  schemes they promise to implement if they are elected. One of the issues that is getting some attention in this way  here in Hawaii is agriculture and food. From what I’ve heard so far, the typical idea being spouted by some of “our” candidates boils down to this:

1. To divert more juicy pork towards subsidizing local undertakings that are unsound and unsustainable, otherwise they wouldn’t need subsidizing in the first place, and
2. In the process, to take more control over food  matters away from local farmers and consumers and give it to the government.

The typical result of such a plan is exactly the opposite of what it purports to be: it always causes there to be less sustainability, less economic opportunity, and less food security for the people.

As a challenge to this year’s candidates and voters, I propose a plan below that would really work to create a secure, independent, resilient food system as well as revitalize the entire economy in Hawaii if implemented. As a voter, you can litmus-test candidates’ integrity and allegiance by presenting points from this plan to them and observing their responses.Most politicians, no matter what they say to your face, are in the game to enrich and empower themselves  at your expense, in which case they will not like this proposal at all. Here goes:

1. Permanently exempt all agricultural products and services produced locally by Hawaii-based businesses and residents from all state and local taxes, at all levels (production, wholesale, and retail).
2. Exempt said products and services from all state/local health department (“food safety”) and trade regulations, such as, but not limited to kitchen certification, pasteurization requirements, and vending licenses.
3. Require all food products with GMO content sold in Hawaii to be labeled as such.
4. Lower the age at which Hawaii’s extremely onerous child labor restrictions apply from 18 at least down to 15, preferably 13, empowering our youth to take any job agreeable to themselves and their parents, and thereby building precious marketable skills and self-esteem. Many will want to explore the myriad opportunities in agriculture opened up by the previous 4 points.
5. Declare that industrial hemp is not a drug  and allow it to be grown without any restrictions.
6. Nullify (resolve not to enforce) any and all federal laws pertaining to health, food, energy, agriculture, and commerce that violate the U.S. Constitution and/or the inherent rights of the Citizens of Hawaii,  those laws existing on the books as well as any  that are currently pending or may be passed in the near future. This would also include arresting and deporting any federal agents attempting to enforce those nullified laws on Hawaiian soil.
7. Vigorously oppose the pending and future passing of any further laws of such kind, e.g. the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2010, to name but one example.

These measures are what it would realistically take to achieve the secure and thriving communities most of us here in Hawaii seem to be saying we want. The expanded command-and-control plans the politicians are proposing will only lead us in the opposite direction. Now, dear fellow Hawaii Citizen, it is up to you. Go ahead and suggest these ideas to your candidates, and see if any are willing to listen to you and get themselves wholeheartedly behind something that upholds your rights.

Let me know what you think. Anything you would want to change, add, or leave out? Why? Do you know of any candidates who would adopt one or more of these points, or is already supporting something similar?

Tags: food politics, food security, food supply, Hawaii, Hawaii agriculture, modest proposals, sustainable agriculture

Due to its enormously centralized structure, the current food supply system of the U.S. and most of the western world is extremely vulnerable to a myriad of disruptive factors. These include economic downturns, energy shortages, acts of God, unhygienic production practices, environmental disasters, terrorist attacks, civil unrest, etc. Any one of these on its own can cause serious interruptions in the supply lines. Two or more happening at the same time could shut down the entire inflow of food to your area for several months.

How likely is this really, you may wonder. I’m not trying to peddle fear and doom here, but an honest, matter-of-fact assessment of where everything’s at right now and how it got to be so shows that the odds aren’t exactly in favor of rose-colored glasses. There’s no denying we live in “interesting times”.  Of course I fervently hope that such extreme circumstances won’t come to pass. But what if….how will you cope with a challenge like that? How much do you currently rely  on the centralized system for sustenance? What alternatives are available to you in your situation?

Am I preaching to the choir, or is this a new concept to you? Are you young or old, living alone or with a family? In the city, the ‘burbs, or the country? What kind of resources are you able to invest in the peace of mind and positive outlook that come with knowing you’re prepared for challenging times ahead?

What would YOU consider the most challenging or frustrating part of  kicking dependence on the system and achieving resiliency in terms of your food needs? (Sourcing, purchasing, bartering, growing, preserving, storing, securing, etc.) Which resources do you have plenty of, and which ones are you short on in this context? Money, equipment, knowledge, skills, indoor space, land, like-minded people, local producers…

Whether you agree or disagree about the likelihood of a food crisis or the importance of personally preparing for one, whether you are just beginning to take some steps at this or are a dyed-in-the-wool self-sufficiency pioneer, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic.

Tags: clean food, disaster preparedness, food security, food supply

With no end in sight to the current housing market contraction, anyone looking to sell a house is under increased pressure to make the property stand out in a positive way in order to improve the chance of getting a decent price for it within a reasonable time. At the same time, measures taken to achieve that goal must not be too high of an investment to make if they are to generate the desired return.

Despite the dismal economic climate, many people are getting passionate about wanting to live in a harmonious, ecologically sound,  and healthy environment. They are still willing to pay a premium to get it.

It is possible to do a number of low-cost tweaks on a property that give it a dose of green credibilty and make it more appealing to those home  buyers. The landscaping is the easiest area to achieve an immedate  impact. Standard property management practices tend to make a place look ugly, barren, and cheap. Without spending much more, your home could get a smart, chic, luxuriant look that draws the attenton of potential buyers.

If the property is still to be renovated before putting it on the market, there are also many ways to breathe some life into the house itself, both inside and out, to make it virtually shout healthy, wholesome, and ecofriendly, and again, the expense need not exceed that of a conventional approach.

If you are a homeowner or real estate professional needing to sell, does this sound like something that could be of help to you? Does there seem to be a demand for homes with “green curb appeal” in your market? Have you had any experiences, whether positive or frustrating, with selling into this niche? Would you be interested in learning how to tweak properties this way? Or how to develop new ones from the ground up with this factor in mind?

Tags: green building, green credibility, green curb appeal, healthy homes, housing crisis, landscape construction, landscape maintenance, real estate, real estate marketing

Every environmental issue that I examine – and I have carefully examined many in the past 25 years – has the tendency to give me the same basic overall answer, namely that self-mastery is THE KEY to securing the survival of planet Earth and its inhabitants for the foreseeable future.

Personally, when I think of self-mastery in this context, I think of getting to know myself really brutally honestly well, learning what my true motives are for doing every little thing I do, learning what kind of effects various external influences and stimuli have on me, what kind of effects my own actions have on the external world. From this follows learning how to consciously override automatic responses and self-direct every decision in my life in a way that is authentic and appropriate to me.

This is just one perspective though. I’m sure there are many more as to what self-mastery being the key could mean.

What is YOUR take? What does “self-mastery” mean to you? Do you feel affinity with the term? To you, what does it have to do with solving environmental and other problems in the world? Is it something you feel could empower you to make a difference?

Tags: be the solution, conservationism, personal development, personal ecology, self-directed-living, self-mastery

Depleted aquifers, chemical pollution, microbiological contamination – these are just the three biggest challenges among many facing the fulfillment of the world’s need for a sustainable and secure supply of clean, safe, potable water. Clearly, such a supply is of the absolute essence for the survival of humankind and all life on the planet. By reviewing, enhancing, and securing your own water needs and supply system, you can indirectly  contribute to water-related wellbeing worldwide.

In the developed world, most households are hooked up to a municipal water utilty for supply, and to a sewer or septic tank for wastewater disposal. Though this may seem mighty convenient, a worse system for dealing with our water needs could hardly be conceived of.Wastewater from the sewer often gets re-deposited in the very same lakes and rivers that serve as the source for the water supply. It is true that this wastewater usually undergoes various “treatments” before it is piped out, and then gets even more of those as it is recycled into tap water, but as we will see, this does not make for an end product that comes anywhere near true drinkable quality.

All that these “treatments” do is remove solid particulate matter, kill microbes, maybe remove a few easily detectable chemical contaminants. Worse yet, other highly toxic contaminants such as chlorine and fluoride are deliberately added. Still typically present are countless pharmaceuticals, agricultural inputs, jet fuel ingredients, and other hazardous substances.  Not exactly an enticing cocktail, is it? And because most of these water utilities are run by political entities or political-corporate partnerships, you have no control whatsoever over the quality, nor over the cost of any of these processes.

If the water in your home is coming out of a municipal pipeline, the first absolutely essential step for your wellbeing is to run that water through one or more additional filter(s) before you use it. I will  set up a separate resource page discussing the pros and cons of various end-user filtration methods, so bookmark this post and check back soon. In my series of posts on soil conservation, I have written  about what I consider the best universal alternative to municipal water wherever conditions allow: rainwater harvesting and storage. On this topic there are already some resource pages up and running with tons of practical information on how to do this.

The same issue exists on the outgoing wastewater side of the equation. Here, it is important that we move to systems that separate the different kinds of waste at the source, instead of throwing them all together.  Apart from the stormwater, which was discussed in the soil conservation posts, there are two other distinct wastewater streams from the household. One is that from sinks, showers, baths, washing machines, etc.  The other is from toilets. The first, also known as greywater, is fairly easy to treat on site and recycle into garden irrigation water. (This can be a future post topic, if you’re interested.)

The second is a waste product that really shouldn’t be mixed with water at all. That means considering the switch to a waterless composting toilet the next time you renovate/move/build. Composting toilets have become accepted into the national and international building codes, and various highly efficient units are available ready-made on the market.  DIY is also an option, especially in exurban and rural areas. Watch this space for the release of a set of building plans and instructions for the ultimate DIY composting toilet in the near future. For now, remember: when you flush something down, it isn’t really gone – part of it comes back, via a detour,  out of your kitchen tap. Eeuwww.

Looking beyond the home and the water you use there, it is wise to look at the water usage in industry and agriculture. Most of the stuff you can buy represents a greater or lesser amount of embodied water usage and degradation in its production process. Food, electricity, fuels, paper, and many other products can take surprisingly large amounts of water to produce. Within each category, buying those alternatives that are easy on water supports the development of more innovative production technologies that can achieve high quality results using no or as little water as possible. Please make it known in the comments if you’d like to see a product-water-usage report chart made available on ths site for your perusal.

Clean water is a resource that is becoming scarce at an alarming rate. Skyrocketing prices and violent conflicts are just around the corner. By taking resolute measures now to make your water supply safe and sustainable, you have a better chance of being to enjoy this necessety for the foreseeable future at an affordable price and by peaceful means.

Tags: clean drinking water, composting toilets, ecological sanitation, greywater, potable water, rain water catchment, resource conservation, wastewater treatment, water pollution, water purification, water usage

Going into my garden these last three mornings, I have been a-maize-d at the buzz of bees up in the tops of my Cherokee corn.  Corn relies on wind, not insects, for pollination. But that doesn’t stop the industrious honeybees from seeking out the male inflorescences in my corn patch. You see, bees don’t live on nectar alone. They also collect considerable amounts of pollen to serve as a food supply stored in their hives.

It was fun to observe the bees at their important work really close up. This was no problem, as they were way too busy to worry about me standing there watching them and taking a few pictures. They seemed particularly excited at having stumbled upon such a bonanza of pollen in their neighborhood and were collecting it with great enthusiasm, if the loud hum from just a handful of bees is anything to go by. The pollen gets formed into little clumps that the bees carry back to the hive with them – quite a feat, if you ask me! If a bee were as big as a human, the clumps of pollen would be at least the size of a football, and carried in a similar manner to how a football player runs  along with the ball. But instead of a bladder filled with air, these bees are carrying a solid mass of nutrients.

As I had never considered that bees would go beyond the attractive nectar-bearing plants in search of sufficient pollen, seeing them go gaga over my corn made me think about all the recent news on Colony Collapse Disorder, the name given to the strange die-off of honeybee colonies happening in many places. Given that the  majority of corn grown in the world today is genetically modified, and that evidently bees consume corn pollen, it doesn’t take a big leap to wonder if GMO crops are a factor in the perilous plight of the honey bee.

This is something that needs to be very seriously and honestly looked into, as bees play a crucial role in pollinating many of our food crops as well as many ecologically important tree and herb species. It also raises the question whether it will be possible to keep harvesting bee products for human consumption that are not contaminated with GMO materials. Bee products such as Raw Honey, Bee Pollen, Propolis, and Royal Jelly are of such perfect nutritional composition that their absence from our repertoire of medicines and healing foods would be a great loss to human health and wellness, provided we could still even grow enough regular food without our heroic little helpers from the insect world. And honey is the archetype of all that’s sweet in life – if it were to disappear from the world, it would take a good part of our souls with it.

Bees have given us humans such great gifts for such a long time, it’s time for us to give them some appreciation in return. We can do that by casting our dollar votes in favor of clean foods that are grown without synthetic chemicals and GMOs, which will clear our own as well as the bees’ living and working environment of the hazardous, toxic substances that threaten their – and our – existence. As soon as enough people unwaveringly refuse to swallow the poisons, it will no longer be profitable to produce them, and so they will be dropped and the real healing can begin.

Tags: bee pollen, bee products, bees, clean food, colony collapse disorder, corn, corn pollen, GMO, health, honey bee, nature observation, pesticides, pollen, pollination, propolis, raw honey, royal jelly, wellness

Since the GOM oil spill, which is turning out to be one of the greatest environmental disasters in history, there has been much talk of America’s “addiction” to petroleum and its derivative products and a call for somehow ending that addiction. Unfortunately, most proposals purporting to aim at achieving that are harebrained schemes that mostly achieve ever more  egregious violations of civil liberties.

All the while there actually happens to be a way of weaning ourselves off of petroleum that can be done peacefully, painlessly, and profitably. It does not require a penny of public spending (in fact, it could greatly reduce such spending). It does not require we give up any of our modern comforts (in fact, it could enhance those and spread them among unprecedented numbers of people). It is so environmentally friendly that nothing else compares. But most astonishingly, this solution is not some newfangled, out there  high tech invention – it has been staring us in the face for over 10,000 years!

It sounds too good to be true, right? What could this wonder I’m talking about possibly be? It is one of the oldest agricultural crops in the world, and it’s called industrial hemp. Since the very dawn of human civilization, this plant has served to produce ultra-nutritious food, oil for body care, lighting, paints, and fuel, and fiber for clothing, paper, sails, ropes, animal bedding, and building materials. After developing the growing and processing technologies for so many millennia toward ever higher sophistication, we are currently able to use this amazing resource to make more than 25,000 different products to replace virtually anything that’s currently made of petroleum with a better product, including plastics.

The real kicker is that all this is possible without dangerous pollution and without depleting scarce resources. Hemp grows great without any use of irrigation, synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. It produces so much biomass that it actually helps conserve the soil and protects aginst erosion and flooding. The processing usually costs less energy and water than making similar products from petroleum, wood, cotton, corn, or soy. It is generally estimated that growing hemp on a mere 6% of land in the continental U.S. would be enough to supply all the raw material required to replace our oil consumption!

So, if this resource is really so great and so simple to use, why aren’t we replacing oil with it on a massive scale? Just one simple reason. The U.S. government forbids it. That’s the only thing blocking the widespread adoption of  industrial hemp. Why does the U.S. government do this? Because it wants to. Despite its rich history of cultivation in America,  for the last half century industrial hemp has been deliberately misclassified as a drug by the government in order to destroy the hemp industry and prevent it from becoming adopted as an alternative to the very heavily subsidized and very environmentally destructive petroleum, corn, cotton, and soy industries.

If this is the current state of affairs, what can you do to stop this insane prohibition that is destroying the planet?

First, demand hemp products. Whenever you shop, ask for the hemp alternative. Ask for hemp paper at your office supply store, ask for hemp clothes at your clothing store. Ask for Hemp Foods and hemp soaps and lotions  at the health food store. Bother the packaging supplier for hemp packaging products, the home improvement store for hemp building materials. Be persistent. Keep at it until the demand is so great that it can’t be fulfilled by imports.

Second, bombard your elected representatives with messages about the importance of industrial hemp for an oil-independent future and demand that they legislate for the complete removal of hemp from the drug list and the  jurisdiction of the DEA. Don’t settle for anything less. If there was ever a time they might listen, surely it is now, with the oil spill debacle hanging around their necks.

Tags: biofuels, biomass, bioplastics, environmental disaster, hemp, hemp fiber, hemp oil, hemp protein, industrial hemp, oil addiction, oil dependence, oil spill, renewable energy, sustainable agriculture, sustainable economy

Increasing consumer concern about the side effects on environment and community of the way goods are produced has rightly led to the emergence of entrepreneurs who create and distribute their products and services in a way that addresses those concerns. This phenomenon has become popularly known as “green business”. Unfortunately, the demand for green products and services has also given rise to a large greenwashing industry. A plethora of both existing and new companies is exploiting the green trend by pasting a green, warm, fuzzy, feelgood image of purity and high ethics onto wares and activities that in no way merit such a name.

While some of the more blatant instances of greenwashing are easily spotted and exposed, there are also some insidious tactics that fly under the average green-minded radar, because they are baked right into some of the very business models we are misguidedly taught to associate with best practices. One might call it meta-greenwashing. These tactics exploit the widespread lack of understanding of economics and entrepreneurship in society.

From a holistic point of view, they are about as unsustainable as anything can get. You will often see them touted by people wearing toweringly tall white hats, but beware! Under those hats, big red flags are hidden. Whether you’re a consumer, an aspiring entrepreneur, or an investor, the wise thing to do is to watch out and steer clear of business models based on any of these constructs, no matter how nice and well-intentioned the people using and promoting them may be. Following here is an outline of the top 5 offenders among these practices:

Renouncing and/or denouncing the profit motive and/or operating as a nonprofit organization

These days it is very fashionable to look upon all entrepreneurs as inherently suspect – as the enemy, as greedy pigs who just want to rip the earth to shreds and suck the money out of everyone’s wallets without giving anything valuable in return. Business owners can be absolved from their alleged sins and get admitted to the “good guys” club by paying lip service to this insane world view and groveling in public, regardless of what their actual impact on the environment is like.

It is currently also all the rage for some folks to start a non-profit corporation, make up a woo-woo story about how they’re going to “save” the environment or some other popular cause, and schmooze up all the private foundatons, government agencies, and citizenry for fat juicy grants and donations. Once sitting on the cash,they first pay themselves and a few friends fat juicy staff salaries, and with the leftover crumbs start some well-intentioned, but useless “community” project.

Now how does that compare with a typical entrepreneur who first has to risk everything she owns, deliver customer satisfaction, pay workers’ wages, pay taxes, reinvest in the business to help it grow, and then finally, hopefully is fortunate to have something left for herself?

Profit is the difference between what the consumer is willing to pay for a good and what it costs the entrepreneur to produce it. Ths is by far the most win-win, honest and ethical way for anyone to make a living, and the strongest incentive a business could possibly have to be sensitive to the wishes and concerns of the consumer. Without the drive for profit, no sustainable business could exist at all.

Relying on public subsidies,grants,or loan guarantees

Businesses based on this model are in fact committing those very sins it is so in vogue to assume all entrepreneurs guilty of. These types of corporate welfare allow a product to be pushed onto the market that consumers would either not buy at all, or at least would not buy at a price higher than it currently really costs to produce.Worse yet,it unfairly disadvantages more competent people trying to serve the same market niche with a higher quality and/or more efficiently produced product. For a good case in point, look at the massive subsidies to the horrendously eco-destructive (and super-greenwashed) corn agribusiness that saddles us with the obesity and diabetes-inducing HFCS and the highly polluting and engine-rotting ethanol fuel, both of which have decimated their much higher quality alternatives.

Relying on intellectual property privileges such as patents

Intellectual property legislation has played a very important part in stifling the creativity and innovation needed to move science and technology into a new, more ecologically attuned paradigm from where it can be less of a problem and more of a solution in environmental terms.Inventors and technology firms waste enormous amounts of time, energy, and money obtaining, enforcing, and avoiding infringing upon IP privileges. This causes delays of astronomical magnitude in the development of earth-friendly technologies. And do I even need to mention how IP keeps consumer prices artificially high, often long after research costs have been recovered many times over, contributing to poverty? IP is good for lawyers, and bad for everyone else.

Accepting and complying with highly restrictive regulations in return for protection against competition and/or legal immunity from tort claims

This kind of backroom bargaining is very common in the food, health, transportation, water, and energy industries among others. The fact that it is commonplace does not make it any less felonious – this practice is also known as restraint of trade. You can safely assume in most cases that an “environmental” regulation was written not to protect the environment or your health and safety, but to advance the interests of a handful of well-connected corporations while giving you the illusion of being protected. Compliance with many of these bureaucratic decrees actually causes more ecological damage than that which they were supposed to remedy. But if you happen to be affected by such a situation, the perpetrators get away scot free because they were compliant, and you are thereby duped.

Relying on the trading of paper “rights to pollute”, such as “carbon credits”

This is just yet another way of stacking the cards against consumers and small business owners, and in favor of big players with a lot of pull. At best, pollution gets moved from one place to another. At worst, it actually increases under these schemes. Nobody has a “right” to pollute, and who, pray, has the moral authority to grant or withdraw such a thing? It should be obvious that the trading of an absurd abstraction like this is a fraud. Don’t fall for it!

The above activities are collectively also known by the term rent-seeking. Staying out of these traps and pitfalls is an important first step toward a proliferation of more authentically green and sustainable entrepreneurship. By now you may be wondering, “if these are the DON’Ts, then what do the DOs look like? That can be the topic for another post. In the meantime, if you have any more specific questions arising about either side of the equation, please share them here, and I will try to address them in the sequel.

Tags: business models, entrepreneurship, fake green business, green business, green technology, greenwashing, IP, rent-seeking, restraint of trade, sustainable economy

Dear reader,

Given that my field of expertise can be such a wide and all-encompassing umbrella, it is often hard for me to decide which narrower topics within this field to pick to drill down into deeper for your convenience.

From food and agriculture to green building and building biology, from home management to business management, from personal health and life questions to nature conservation, from philosophy and science to green technology…a lot of ground  to cover. That’s why I’d like to ask you to think of and write down anything and everything that currently bugs you and challenges you on your path as it relates to happy, healthy, green, sustainable and profitable ways of living and doing business, of relating to the natural world.

It doesn’t matter how small and trivial or how huge and transcendent, if you have a burning question (or two, or three, or more), you’ll want to drop me a line, and I will set to work to come up with some actionable solutions, drawing on the accumulated wisdom of more than 20 years in the trenches  plus ongoing research.

So….. invest in yourself by sending in your bug list! You can do this publicly by commenting on the blog, or if you prefer privately via the contact form.

Tags: bug list, LOHAS, problem-solving, questions, research

After witnessing decades of expanding corporate hegemony and Wall Street excesses, many people who deeply care about keeping the planet liveable have come to believe that money and commerce are to blame for much of the environmental degradation in the world, and may propose that money be abolished altogether and we return to a simple barter economy as a remedy. But is money really the problem? Or could it be part of the solution?

Bartering is a perfectly sound way of  doing business, as long as there exist only a handful of different commodities that people seek to exchange. But as soon as a society is capable of producing a somewhat more complex range of goods, the limits of a strictly barter system are quickly reached. Many desirable transactions simply cannot take place this way, which is why money or currency originally came into being. A currency can be any commodity that fits a number of criteria that enable it to be a generally accepted measure and store of value as well as medium of exchange. Many different things have historically been used as currency, from livestock to shells or beads to salt (from which our word salary was derived), but ultimately the function has always gravitated toward precious metals such as silver and gold, because their qualities were simply best suited to the task.

If we look at the current situation with all its excesses and dislocations and its unsustainability, it turns out there is actually no money whatsoever involved. No real money that is. That’s right. What we usually identify with money, and in turn with wealth, is in fact neither. What it really is, is a great big stack of IOUs that can only be redeemed for more IOUs. Backed by nothing tangible. The only thing that keeps the monstrous and destructive machine going is people like you and me keeping on agreeing to believe that those pieces of paper and those digits on computer screens represent value, represent money when in actual fact there is no real currency backing them up.

So if you want to get rid of all that’s bad that you’ve come to associate with money, but you still need a currency to make trading (without which everyone would be poor and miserable!) an easy and flowing process, what do you do? If the whole system you’re familiar with disappeared overnight into the same thin air it came out of, and we’d have to start from scratch again, new real currencies would spontaneously evolve again, and gold and silver based currencies would likely gain a large share of the market.

The resulting economy would be a much more sustainable one, because all transactions would be exchanges of real value for real value, not castles in the sky. This doesn’t mean we’d all be walking around with big bags of coins, in constant fear of being mugged. Paper and computer technology would still have a great role to play, the difference being that all paper and digital money would be backed by a real physical commodity.

If you’re interested in protecting yourself and your family against the impending collapse of the global economy as we know it, and being involved with the beginnings of a new sustainable economy in which anyone who wants to can ethically make a decent living, you may want to explore the following ways of saving and trading with real money:

• Local Currencies and Local Exchange and Trade Systems (LETS)
• Find Goldand Silver coin deals on Ebay
• Get gold & silver online – safe, easy, low prices
• Gold-backed digital cash

(Disclosure: This is not investment advice. I am a happy customer of  Ebay auctions and of BullionVault – both those links carry my affiliate ID to help sustain this website and the work I do to provide you with useful information.  The other links are naked links.)

Tags: gold, green economy, LETS, local currency, real money, silver, sound money, sustainable economy