sustainablility Archives

Time Capsules: Food production

Old books are time capsules and there were plenty on offer at the North Queensland Conservation Council (NQCC) garage sale six months ago. I intercepted some which were otherwise bound for the recycling bin, being too interesting to simply discard but not relevant enough to keep. Here’s one from 1985.

Have we learned anything since then?

Given the steady grind of news about our two major supermarket chains, I doubt it.

We need to reclaim our autonomy, buying as much fresh and local food as possible. There are lots of reasons for doing so and many of them are covered in Eating for the Planet, here on Green Path.

More time capsules – activism, global affairs, etc., and indigenous history.

Resilience

We’ve just had our first real wet-season rain, foreshadowing the approaching cyclone season. It’s a reminder that our weather is getting less predictable and more dangerous to ourselves and our cities.

We can’t do much about that, although we should still do what we can, but at least we can cultivate a more resilient lifestyle. This is not about going into full ‘prepper’ mode, with a bunker in the back yard and a tinfoil hat, but about making minor and generally painless adjustments to how we go about our daily lives.

Some of them look quite old-fashioned but there’s a reason for that.

Continue reading “Resilience”

A better Christmas

One month to go!

There are both good and bad aspects to Christmas. This meme from One Million Women mentions some of the bad and suggests ways to reduce them. Green Path has been saying similar things for years. Click here for last year’s article, which links to older posts on the subject.

EV overview 2 – freight transport

The first part of this overview of Electric Vehicles looked at the progress in electrifying everything from bicycles to cars, 4WDs and tradie trucks. Now for the heavy haulage!

As vehicle size and weight increase, batteries need to get bigger to maintain similar ranges; but bigger batteries increase vehicle weight, too, as well as costing more and taking longer to recharge. At some point the combined weight and range requirements seemed to be ‘too hard’ to achieve with battery-electric power. That is where everyone thought that hydrogen power would find its niche, but the latest studies show the point being pushed out so far that the niche has probably vanished.

Delivery vans and small trucks

The Brits already have plenty of vans to choose from, Continue reading “EV overview 2 – freight transport”

How can I decarbonise my life?

The question

What can we, as a family, do to reduce our carbon footprint and have a more ecologically sound lifestyle in general?

I know there are a lot of resources out there but I don’t have any particular expertise or the time to research everything, so I need a step-by-step or a handbook.

A related question – a lot of the difficulty is inertia. Any advice on how to get momentum turning away from the consumerist vortex of middle class American life (give me convenience or give me death) towards a more sustainable lifestyle?

This excellent question was posted to an online forum recently. It received some very good answers so I thought that I would treat it like a similar question on ethical investing a year ago and turn the discussion into a blog post.

Continue reading “How can I decarbonise my life?”