Answering a Question

Sorry, there's no pics, craft or cooking in this post, just lots of my opinion on urban sustainability issues LOL. Feel free to skip to the next post if this isn't your 'thing' :-)


I recently received the following email recently from a reader:

"Bravo Crazy Mumma! I applaud your endeavour..... I am 1000% behind the concept of personal sustainability. However, if 1c is taken from the public purse to support such a proposition, it is un-sustainable! What is _truly_ sustainable? If we all did it (successfully), where would the money come from to pay for the upkeep of our (current) society. Clean drinking water to tap, sewerage treatment, street lights, hospitals, police force, road management, schooling, pensions for the sick, old or incompetent.......etc. etc. Is this proposed lifestyle "sustainable"? Maybe! Possibly you have thought of measures to accommodate such needs. I am keen to understand.

I am held back by the thought that, as a top level taxpayer who would love the opportunity to become independent and self sufficient, if I did it at anyone else's expense wouldn't it would be fraudulent? Unless, of course, my intention was anarchistic/the total annihilation of current societal systems?

I am keen to understand how people view what is truly sustainable vs selfish existence at others expense..... Do you have a comment to make on this issue - that you would be happy to make public? "

*****

In answer to your question D, firstly I think you are making a number of assumptions, the most significant of which, in my opinion, is the assumption that sustainability = self-sufficiency.

Whilst there is a sector of the Peak Oil-aware community who believe that we should head for the hills and create our own completely self-sufficient "lifeboats" complete with guns and ammunition to fend off the hungry hordes (the so-called "survivalists"), I am not one of them.

It's my belief that whilst complete self-sufficiency is a nice ideal, in practice it is unrealistic - and I believe unnecessary - for everyone to be able to provide for everything they need (notice I say 'needs' not 'wants').

Humans are very much social creatures which is part of the reason that we formed small villages when we became able to domesticate animals and farm food. In those villages, bartering and the exchange of goods and services was the norm, and self-sufficiency was the exception; farmers sold produce in order to buy fabric or sugar, and have their horses shod by a farrier for example. I see no reason why a modern version of this type of system couldn't function successfully in a future where oil and fuel are no longer freely or cheaply available, even (particularly?) in suburban areas with larger backyards and enough room for a vegie patch or a workshop.

Food is a huge part of our lives - the growing of it and the customs surrounding eating it - and so it is natural that when we socialise much of it revolves around food. In the sustainable society that I envisage, this would involve the local sharing of food (and other) resources through bartering and exchange as well. For example, you keep chickens in your backyard, but I grow fabulous tomatoes, so we agree to swap my tomato sauce for your eggs. Or my next door neighbour might be a talented seamstress so I swap her fresh tomatoes for some clothes mending. My examples are simplistic perhaps, but I believe that this kind of system is entirely workable, and in this way we won't each need 10 acres to provide all of our needs. We will however, need to acquire or brush up on some 'old' skills like food preservation even if we aren't actually growing the food ourselves.

In the same way, we might exchange services, such as the LETS (local energy trading systems) organisations around Australia already do now. For example I might offer to babysit the neighbour's children in exchange for a hair cut. In addition, in the near future as oil becomes more and more expensive, I hope to see a resurgence in the old corner shop and local suburban strip-shopping (with locally owned and run businesses providing services such as a butcher, baker, fruit and veg, haberdashery, tailor, doctor etc) to replace the huge 'malls' that designed around car travel. There are many communities around the world including in Australia, who have set up "relocalisation" networks (based on the fantastic U.K. 'Transition Towns' concept) with the aim to promote and facilitate this very thing, amongst other aims.

Your first assumption then flows into your second assumption, that a sustainable lifestyle = not paying taxes.

As I've said previously, I don't believe that complete self-sufficiency is necessary, or even desirable in many ways. Providing for every single thing your family requires is an exhausting and onerous proposition, and one that I am not currently prepared to take on even if we won the lottery and could afford to move to a 100 acre piece of land. More importantly, even if we did move - and decided to try the complete self-sufficiency thing - we would still be paying rates on our piece of land (a tax). Initially it would be unlikely that my husband would give up work completely, so we would still be paying some income tax, and in addition we would be paying GST on any number of supplies that we would need in order to set up and maintain a property that we could have little to no chance of manufacturing ourselves: fencing materials, building materials, water tanks, concrete, gardening implements such as hoes and rakes, piping for water and greywater; the list goes on and on. Whether or not many of these resources will continue to be available (as freely) in the future as the price of oil continues to skyrocket is debatable, however I'd suggest that when that happens, governments will have little choice but to divert taxes away from areas such as building motorways and ring roads anyway.

As you've suggested, taxes form an integral part of the way that services such as health care and law enforcement are provided. I am a huge cynic by nature and strongly feel that where/when taxes become harder to collect in one area they will be added on in other areas to make up the shortfall. I have already seen evidence of the ways in which the Australian federal and state governments are considering (or have already implemented) ways of introducing or raising taxes aimed at those people trying to live more sustainably; notably the much-discussed introduction of charging for rainwater collected on urban properties (there are already limits on the amount of water you are able to store on rural properties e.g. the size of any dam/s). How authorities would even begin to assess and charge for rain water I have no idea, but where there is a will there's a way, as they say.

Which leads me to your third assumption, that our current municipal utilities system, providing "Clean drinking water to tap, sewerage treatment, street lights, hospitals, police force, road management, schooling, pensions for the sick, old or incompetent" is working efficiently and sustainably.

I have issues with the ways that many of these services are being provided, particularly the provision of water. I believe that the current energy-intensive system of extensively treating all of the water provided to households and businesses to such a high standard is unnecessary and wasteful. We don't need chlorinated water for our gardens or for washing the car for example, and neither do many of the businesses and manufacturers who use municipal water in their processes.

Whilst providing and then retrofitting different quality water supplies and piping to existing houses and many businesses is unrealistic, the provision of rainwater tanks for these purposes is not. Indeed, I believe that the extensive use of rainwater tanks for both domestic and business purposes would dramatically ease the demands on our water supply systems, saving both water and energy (through the reduced use of treatment chemicals and the reduced volume of water being pumped around the city), and therefore the dollars we pay for the provision of this service would then stretch much further.

Plus, as a side effect, the reduced water usage and the reuse of greywater would also reduce the load on our sewerage systems and the treatment of sewage, again, saving energy and resources. It's madness that so much of our highly-treated water is used once - for purposes other than drinking - and then goes straight into the wastewater system! We urgently need to assess the way water in general is used in Australia, actually.

As for the provision and maintenance of street lights and roads, again I think the current system is unsustainable. Instead of looking at short term solutions to traffic congestion for example, if our taxes were being used to build dedicated, safe bike path systems and improve public transport, the reduced traffic would mean that less money would have to be spent on maintenance of the current roads. In another example, if Council planners were to demand that new residential subdivisions have adequate access to public transport and insist that there must be a corner store and doctor within walking distance, what a saving in road usage that would make, with no expense required by the Council! I could go on with examples in that fashion all day.

Finally, as I pointed out previously, I don't think that living sustainably means not paying any taxes, therefore I feel that with a long-term plan in mind (not the current short term, I-have-to-get-re-elected-next-year plans) there can still be adequate income for the provision of health and social services such as hospitals, schools and law enforcement.

Lastly, you mention a "selfish existence at others expense". Whilst there are many people who could happily live in isolation and complete self-sufficiency, never seeing another soul, I think that the majority of us seek out some level of community interaction, and I feel that a sustainable future is very much going to be based around local communities. In this way I see the exact opposite of our current society - wherein people have no idea who their neighbours are and elderly folks can die in their unit and not be noticed missing for months - evolving (returning). We are so de-personalised as a society at the moment, sitting in our little commuter car-bubbles, texting and emailing each other, cocooning ourselves in our surround-sound home theatres of a night, instead of actually interacting with other people. In a sustainable future I see a much more close knit community, not a collection of selfish individuals; surely that is what we are right now!

Anyway, I could blather on about these issues all day and I've only touched very lightly on most of them, but I hope that this gives you some idea of what living sustainably (in suburbia) means to me :-)