I congratulate you, but an island of sustainability proves little.

I congratulate you, but an island of sustainability proves little. Does it scale? How will it fare when all those local farms are competing especially for scarcer and scarcer water resources and an rarity of other necessary things, and a dearth of luxuries? How will a large population respond to a more limited diet? We’ve seen both of these happen before. After all, farming was once all-local.

You must know, the Club of Rome was about forty years off on its predictions. So was Paul Ehrlich with The Population Bomb. Ordinarily, I would just say better safe than sorry, except those exaggerations were then used to excuse all the environmental recklessness that followed. I think it was also the reason why climate scientists were over-careful with their subsequent predictions about the onset of climate change. Subsequently, climate denialists were so smug about their rebuttals because scientists kept putting the effects of climate change beyond our lifetimes. This meant denialists could make their whole careers out of fighting science before they’d ever be proven wrong. They were guaranteed to be right in their lifetimes.

That being said, I suggest you watch the video I posted. Michael Shellenberger, who was a sustainability activist, points out that solar panels on roofs will not provide near enough energy, especially if we’re going to be powering electric vehicles. The panels have a limited life and contain dangerous elements that can’t be recycled. The number of them that will end up in landfills will be staggering.

What your experience demonstrates is we’re not going to get out of this ecological trap through volunteerism. I hate to say almost all the changes will be forced on us by the environment we’ve created. Necessity and convenience will dictate their terms to us.