“We’re going to build a green home that’s totally sustainable.”   

I listen to the voice on the other end of the phone.  He continues: “Everything my wife and I want to do there is going be green… the roof is going to be covered in solar panels and the building is going to be airtight…”     

Ben Falk. The man finishes describing the couple’s plans and I ask him to tell me a little about the location for the building. “Where is it? Which way does the land face? What’s there already? How big will the building be, and how large is the landscape?”    

“It’s in a spruce forest on a north-facing slope, about half a mile up a private drive off of a long steep dirt road.  The building is going to be about 6,000 square feet.  The property is about two acres of pine forest and some wetland.”     

You know the rest of the story.  The couple builds their dream house, they move in, and live the same life they lived before the project, only now feeling a lot greener.  Neither the place nor the people end up any more sustained as a net result.  And as oil inevitably becomes more expensive and other realities of the post-oil age of debt surface the couple ends up little more secure than they were before their ‘green home’ project.   

I help people design and build sustaining home and community places for a monetary living.  We identify strategies for sustainable land development – from where to locate a house or a pond or an orchard, to how the site’s soils can be rebuilt, to where access into the site could be constructed most economically.  With each passing month I am increasingly approached by the kind of client described above, as well as another group of people, each at different points of could be called the “peak oil transition paradigm.”  I’d call the first view the buy sustainability approach and the other view the cultivate sustainability approach.  Each group embodies a way they believe will advance them toward a more sustaining, secure, and healthier lifestyle.     

The “buy sustainability” approach implicitly assumes that by replacing current consumptive technologies with greener systems, such as swapping an oil furnace for solar hot water, passive solar design and a ground-source heat pump, the movement from an unsustainable lifestyle to a sustainable one will be achieved. This is the cornucopian view so prevalent today, which assumes we can adjust the science and technology involved to equal a sustainable outcome. This group uses the words “efficiency” and “green” often, and uses the word “sustainability” to imply a destination and a goal that can be achieved/accomplished.  This group of people tends to envision a future where most of their daily activities will be similar to what they are today, but the tools they use will be different – e.g., “I’ll drive a Prius on my 60-mile commute instead of an Audi.”    

The “cultivate sustainability” group tends to believe that the movement toward a more livable future both locally and globally will involve not only a major change in technologies but an equal or greater reformation in the daily lifestyle itself: in skill sets and knowledge, goals and attitudes, habits, diet, allocation of time, and for some, even in the way one makes a living.    Pursuing a more sustaining lifestyle, the first group often starts by calling an architect or solar energy provider or by trading in their SUV for a hybrid.  The second group often starts by planting a vegetable garden, getting chickens, or weatherizing their home.     

The buy sustainability approach fails to be meaningful under a variety of conditions, always relating to the lack of capacity within that approach to maintain and evolve the resource systems that are implemented.  If you have the money it’s easy to create a passive solar home, a cultivated field, or a renewable energy system.  But without an ongoing capacity (or interest) to live on less energy, to weed the crops and top off the batteries, to build healthy soil, to keep the snow off the solar panels, and a few dozen (or hundred?) other regular tasks, the reality of a more sustainable and secure life is elusive.  Meaningful and lasting sustainable developments start with holistic planning and evolve over time through ongoing cultivation; their real value does not exist at the outset but arises from the level to which the capacity of the living human-land-technological system evolves over time.  Sustainable, regenerative systems are complex – not only including buildings and electrical components, but biological systems such as plants, fungi, water, soil, people and other animals.     

Future columns on this subject will go into depth on the primary components of sustaining land-based systems.  This one concludes with an outline of those components, broken down by the aspect of the system involved: human, land, technology. Consider it an eight-step plan to getting off oil, beyond debt, and into community.  This is a long process, so best to start now.

Human                                        
1.    ReSkill
•    Master something people need (food, clothing, shelter, energy, information, tools, wellness, inspiration).
•    Re-educate yourself and those around you.  Ask yourself, “What parts of my skill set will be most relevant in the future, and where are the gaps?”
•    Become basic-tool literate: In a solar society there are few people who would not know how to put a keen edge on a cutting tool.

2.    ReValue
•    Evolve, if necessary, your concept of what’s most meaningful and enjoyable to align yourself with the conditions of a rapidly changing world.  E.g.: You can enjoy tending a garden as much as you enjoy hopping on a plane to the Caribbean.  One of these values will be more useful than the other.

3.    Cultivate community
•    Ensure that you are developing a way to “be in this together” with a great group of people. It will be a lot more fun and productive.

Land                                             
4.    Establish land base
•    Ensure long-term tenancy to a piece of the living Earth you can cultivate.

5.    Initiate biological systems: build soil, plant, and cycle fertility
•    Compost, mulch, char
•    Plant, plant, plant – focus first on nutrient density and storability
•    Animals – start small (chickens/ducks); continue toward grazers if applicable
•    Grey water, ponds, swales, water capture and storage

6.    Make food and fuel
•    Vegetables
•    Small nuts and fruits
•    Tree nuts and fruits
•    Foraging and hunting
•    Animals
•    Fuel crops
•    Grains

Technology                                        
7.    Develop passive shelter
•    Small
•    Highly insulated, thermally “massive” for heat-storage
•    Wood heated – ideally mass-based and hydronic
•    Solar accessible
•    Water capable via gravity and/or hand pump
•    Food store-able – root cellar
•    Work-able – shop space
•    Durable for a changing climate

8.    ReTool
•    Transition your tools (from mobility to culinary to shelter to landscape) to be solar powered, high quality and impeccably maintained – e.g., trading the cheap gas-powered lawn mower for a hand-made scythe, a propane furnace for an efficient woodstove.

Ben Falk grows food and fuel in the lower Mad River Valley, and develops post-petroleum human habitats with Whole Systems Design, LLC.