Biospheric Resonance

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

Earlier today the 8th Annual Hawaii Island Seed Exchange took place at the Amy Greenwell Ethnobotanical Gardens in Captain Cook. It was a much more low-key event than the previous years, which had seen it grow into a veritable festival, with last year breaking the record at about 500 attendees. This year the deliberate choice was made to tone things down and shift focus to the actual exchanging of seeds and expertise between people who saved seeds from their own gardens and farms.

Though I have thoroughly enjoyed the festival-style annual event since 2005, I must say that this year’s changed approach also has a lot going for it. Maybe it’s just because I’m not a big crowd type of person, but to me the really focused and dedicated energy this morning had a wonderful flow to it. In terms of networking and  sharing and receiving knowledge, this simple new setup seems to work better, perhaps thanks to the absence of  “white noise” and overwhelm.

Organizer Nancy Redfeather opened the gathering by teaching us a Hawaiian chant created by Kumu Keala Ching, titled E Ala E. This chant may be what set the tone for the energy of the meeting, as it is a gentle but powerful call to focused cooperation. Then came an overview of the current state of affairs in seed work  in Hawaii, with an opportunity for those who had  attended the recently held Seed Symposium to share what they had taken away from that event.

This was the general gist of these findings:

• Agriculture and food security in Hawaii are under severe threat from invasive species piggybacking in on imported produce, the huge loss in biodiversity of crops grown in America over the last 100 years, and the skyrocketing prices of seeds purchased from mainland seed companies.
• To turn the tables on this trend, the seed growing activity on the Hawaiian Islands needs to increase dramatically in terms of both quality and quantity – from knowledge acquisition to production.
• To this end, the formation of serious local working groups from among attendees is encouraged.

After these discussions, it was time to swap seeds. There was a U-shaped row of tables set out under a tent pavilion, where I found a place among all the others to lay out the seeds I’d brought to share, accompanied by descriptive labels. I spent the next while alternating between walking around the tables to see what my fellow seed savers had brought and pick  up a few varieties to add to my collection, and standing by my own display answering questions and dispensing growing tips and botanical information about my seeds and those of my neighbors while they were of on their rounds.

After the first intense exchange buzz had passed, Nancy gave a lettuce seed harvesting and cleaning demonstration, and lettuce farmer Greg Smith generously shared his excellent organic growing techniques that he uses on his very productive farm.I learned a lot of useful, actionable information and have some exciting new seeds to trial in my gardens, and very much enjoyed being able to help others add to their knowledge base and garden biodiversirty as well.

While today’s exchange dealt with the agriculture and food situation specific to Hawaii, similar issues exist everywhere in the world now, and I can’t stress enough how important it is for the survival of the human race for people everywhere to take back responsibility for the food supply from the big corporations and government agencies that currently control so much of it. The past century has seen a whopping 90-95% of the many thousands of available vegetable seed varieties disappear. It was not because they were in any way inferior – on the contrary, these lost varieties were delicious, nutricious, productive, and highly adaptive.  They were very well suited to fulfilling the people’s food needs. It was solely due to the crony-corporatist takeover of agriculture that all these wonderful crops are gone forever.

If you enjoy good food and want to keep enjoying it in the foreseeable future, please consider personally taking on a role in preserving the remaining 5% of our agricultural genetic legacy. Need farm or garden coaching/planning/design/construction/management? Talk to me.

Tags: farming, food security, genetic diversity, Hawaii, seed exchange, seed savers, seed saving, sustainable agriculture

Yesterday I presented the first of two centering meditations to help perceive the reality of the oil spill disaster as it is and relate to that reality in a meaningful and helpful way. Today it is time for the second of the two. This one I call The Inner Picture. Where the previous one is about liberating yourself from limiting factors in your personal background to arrive at a universal perspective, The Inner Picture takes the opposite angle. This one is about deep introspection and soul-searching on the most individual, microcosmic level.

Assuming a relaxed position, consider the activities that are part of your daily life and the goods you make use of in those activities. Now envisage the inputs of different kinds of energy that make up these various goods and activities. How much of that energy was produced by you moving your body, or others moving their bodies? How much from burning various forms of fuel, how much harvested from sun, wind, and water? Do this for every way of using energy in your life that you can possibly think of. How does food get to your table, how is it kept from going bad, how do you get to work, how does water get to your faucet, with what and how was your home built? Etc. etc.

Now just from a limited, deeply personal perspective, without theorizing, is there anything about the emerging picture that you don’t like? If so, ponder how you would go about changing it, and what is blocking you from already having done so. What else do you have that you are willing to sacrifice so that this part of the picture can be the way you desire it to be? Keep shuffling the pieces of the puzzle until you have an overall image you’re quite satisfied with. Make sure that any pieces you offer up in exchange for your desires are yours to begin with, created by you.

Once you are happy with your vision, write it down or mind map it. This is now your own original action blueprint for being a sustainable energy hero. From here on, the key is acting on it diligently, and impeccably walking your talk. Alternately practicing the Big Picture and the Inner Picture helps to build your own authentic relationship to the environment and find ways of taking care of it that work. I look forward to hearing of your experiences trying out these inner technologies.

Tags: ecopsychology, energy conservation, environmental disaster, meditation, oil spill, personal ecology

When a devastating disaster such as the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico takes place, it is natural for people to react with a wide range of thoughts and emotions, depending on their background and interests. Expressions of fear, anger, rage, sadness, attempts to answer the questions of why and how this could happen, who is responsible, what can be done about it, and who is going to do it, and how do we prevent such a catastrophe from happening again? These are all legitimate, important and meaningful issues to work through.

However, all this can and does at times turn into a cacaphony of directionless voices that accomplishes very little, if any, toward a satisfactory solution, and probably leaves you feeling down and powerless.  I would like to suggest two complementary meditative approaches that you can practice to enrich and empower how you relate both emotionally and intellectually to this extremely challenging world event. Here is the first one:

The Big Picture – the macrocosmic approach. Placing the incident in its proper context in terms of the whole phenomenon of our human need for energy technology and its role in civilization, past, present, and future. Here the goal is to distance yourself from the limited perspectives that spring from your personal identity, your personal background in terms of time, place, and culture.

Take off and leave your everyday persona at the threshold, kick off, spread your wings, be an eagle or an angel or whatever winged being occurs to you at that moment, and soar into the sky. As you do so, you find yourself expanding more and more. Now you’re so big you can lovingly wrap your wings  around the planet. Do so for a brief moment, then let go and keep on moving away and expanding until you’re as big as the entire solar system. Rest here as you look back at Earth from a state of relaxed alertness.

In a sudden flash, you catch a glimpse of the totality of human endeavor, past, present, and future, all concentrated into one single moment, filling you with compassion. Savor this feeling for a few more moments, then start slowly growing smaller again and gliding back towards Earth, until finally you alight at the same place from where you took off. Cross the threshold, put your persona back on, give thanks, and reaffirm your daily identity by saying “I am [your name]“.

After practicing this, you will be able to take in and consider information on the disaster from a position of inner clarity and peace in which your creativity and resourcefulness can flow more freely toward contributing to remedies for the situation. Tomorrow I will add another exercise that is the microcosmic counterpart.

In the mean while, I must emphasize how important it is to get your information on complex events like the oil spill from high-quality sources, avoiding  those that have degraded into blame games and pity-parties. A longstanding outlet of some of the most insightful coverage out there on all energy-related issues is The Oil Drum. Before signing off for today I’d also like to link to three other stories that provide great food for thought. Here is one about some unwelcome repercussions the oil spill is likely to have in another corner of the energy sector, and two more upbeat and inspiring ones about people who are actually doing something to make a positive difference are here and here.

Tags: ecopsychology, energy technology, environmental disaster, healing, meditation, oil spill, personal ecology

In the planning stage of developing a property, whether a single residence, a farm, a subdivision, or even an industrial site, some thought is usually given to the layout of the entire site. However, of all the many possible perspectives and concerns that impact how well the property will “work” once it is constructed, only a small handful tends to be given serious consideration in any one development plan. In one case the architectural image may take priority, in another construction costs are the main factor, in yet another it may be wildlife conservation, or traffic flow, or ease of maintenance, or unimpeded view, or one of many other criteria

What if it were possible, by applying a set of overarching principles, to integrate all relevant considerations for a particular site project into a unified, synergistic plan that is able to fulfill such a range of widely diverse needs simultaneously? This is (my holistic interpretation of) what Better Site Design is all about.

Taking extra care in the planning phase to gain thorough knowledge of the lie of the land as it currently is and of how these natural features may best be utilized and preserved while serving the objectives of the project can have enormous long-term benefits in terms of cost-saving, productivity, environmental protection, energy and water consumption, user health, public perception, and many other more subtle areas.To a somewhat lesser extent, the same principles can also be successfully used as tweaks in solving annoying problems arising on constructed properties already in use.

Thanks to my integrated intuitive/creative + technical/practical approach to land development,  I am uniquely positioned to help you make your sustainable real estate dreams come true and avoid common nightmares. Please add any questions and comments you may have – I want to know how I can best be of help to you.

Tags: better site design, holistic design, land development, land use planning, landscape architecture, problem-solving, sustainable design