How much space is needed for a family to live off-grid?

This infographic has been linked in a few places: How Big a Backyard would you need to live off the land? You can click to enlarge it, or click the link to go through to the original site: One Block Off The Grid.

2 acres is a lot of space for a family of four. It’s 8 of the old quarter-acre blocks that I grew up on, and more of the subdivided units that many people have now. You certainly couldn’t do this in the suburbs!

As they note, if you’re willing to buy flour you only need 1.5 acres. I’m thinking that if you’re willing to buy meat (and eat it less frequently) then you don’t need room for the pigs either.

But overall it makes me think of Aristotle’s way of determining whether something was a good idea or not: to figure out what would happen if everyone did it. I don’t think we can have Australia’s population all taking up 2 acres of space per family group if we want to preserve any bushland or leave room for native animals in areas that get enough rainfall to grow fruit, vegies and grain.

I don’t even know how much time it would take to manage this land. I’m guessing it’s nearly a full-time job.

That’s why we have communities though. Having some people do the farming while others do the building, caring, record-keeping, education, entertainment, etc and so on is more efficient. It also gives people a better chance at finding an occupation that suits their talents and personality. I like pottering around in the vegie patch, but I’d be a terrible full-time farmer!

I’m a big fan of community-suppported agriculture, where you agree to buy a box of produce from a farm every week. The farmer is guaranteed to have regular customers, and you know you’re getting the freshest food around. The famous Joel Salatin seems to have things figured out pretty well, and I’m sure he’s not the only one.

Some of you know more than I do about Transition Towns and other ideas for organising our communities in more sustainable ways – what do they propose for getting around the space issue?

At any rate, I don’t think our future will be a return to the agrarian past, where 80% of people were farm workers and the rest were either servicing that majority or just lucky enough to be idly rich. Populations were much lower a couple of centuries ago – even after Sydney’s first population boom during the 1850s gold rush, there were still only 200,000 people living there. That’s the size of a small regional centre now!

As always, there’s no easy solution. The environmental movement has some pretty damn smart people in it though, so I’m sure we’ll figure it out!

How does plastic get in the ocean?

You’ve probably heard about all the plastic swirling around in the ocean, especially in the North Pacific. Did you ever wonder how it all gets there?

I did! It’s not like we make trips to the beach just to chuck our plastic in the water, but it ends up there anyway. The Keep Australia Beautiful group know how it happens, and decided to show us in a creative way instead of giving us a lecture.

This 2:30 minute video shows what happened in Sydney and Brisbane when KAB played ocean animal sounds from the places where our litter gets into our waterways.

What do you think? I like that the campaign draws the connection between our drains and the ocean, making the relationship really clear. I’ve seen pictures of fish painted on the footpaths leading to drains before, but apart from a few curious children I’ve never seen anyone pay attention to them.

Peacock-spider mating dance: get on down

I had a post written about the household costs involved in the carbon tax, but stuff that, this is much more fun!

Peacock spiders are a very small and colourful spider found in Queensland and NSW. Dr Jurgen Otto has spent a lot of time filming them in the wild on his bushwalks. And he got the only footage of this spider’s mating dance.

I’m not usually a big fan of spiders – too many legs and way too many eyes ::shudder::  But these little fellas have a certain charm, and you can’t be too hard on them when you see how much effort they put into their mating dance. If only all blokes could dance this well…

You can also see them on this segment from the ABC’s Catalyst tv show.

Some criteria for judging next week’s carbon price scheme

Bernard Keane over at Crikey.com.au has written a quick guide to surviving the carbon price apocalypse. As he points out, businesses will quite naturally whinge and beg for money and deniers will get into a frothing rage.

The rest of us have to decide if it’s actually a good scheme or not, and get ready to make a fuss if it isn’t. Keane gives us 2 critical points to look out for: will it help create an international agreement on emissions? and will it actually help reduce emissions by our (very small) target of 5%?

He also gives another four additional points to do with compensation and adaptation. It’s an interesting little article, well worth a look.

Different ways of thinking about climate change: what’s yours?

I’ve been thinking a lot this weekend about how people react to the idea of climate change. Once they’ve heard about it, some people can’t deal with it, so they try to forget about it and carry on; others leap into action to prevent it.

I don’t think there’s a right or a wrong way – it’s just human nature to react differently to bad news, and a lot of it depends on what kind of experiences you’ve already had in your life. But it does affect the kinds of action you’d be willing to take.

A while back, Sara Phillips wrote an interesting article for ABC Environment: Floating your boat on climate change. In it she describes 6 ways people view climate change, if they believe it’s even happening:

1. A market failure – businesses create pollution for free, but it costs money to clean it up. Solution: a price on carbon pollution.
2. A technological failure – our modern technologies have the unfortunate side effect of carbon pollution. Solution: improved, cleaner technology.
3. A global injustice – developed nations were lucky and got to pollute the planet on their way to prosperity, while under-developed nations haven’t even had a chance to sort things out yet. Solution: equal sharing of future pollution ‘rights’ between all countries, rich or poor, while the rich countries pay to clean up the pollution they’ve already caused.
4. Overconsumption – too many people wasting too many non-renewable resources. Solution: a new ‘steady-state’ economic model (compared to our current ‘growth is essential’ model), and improved contraception.
5. Mostly natural – it was always going to happen no matter what we did. Solution: focus on adapting to our new circumstances.
6. A planetary tipping point – something that will change life on Earth so that it’s unrecognisable. Solution: whatever works, probably requiring massive geoengineering projects.

Most of the people I know would belong to at least one of these groups. I’m in the group that thinks of climate change as both a global injustice, and due to overconsumption.

But I’d happily get behind any of these solutions, although I’d prefer global geoengineering to be used only as a last resort after we’ve tried everything else. We’ve already done some accidental geoengineering when we started pumping carbon dioxide into the air, and that didn’t turn out so great!

A carbon price? Great, especially if it gets reluctant business-people involved. Clean energy innovation? Yes please! Equal pollution rights per person? Bring it on. Improved contraception? The sooner the better, it’s a human rights issue as well as an environmental one.

I even support adaptation, even though I believe the changing climate is our own fault. We can hardly avoid adapting, so it’s best if we do it with some planning ahead of time.

How about you? What solutions are your favourites, and does it match any of the groups in the article?