- Re: Why Just (sic) Stop Oil will win Archived Message
Posted by Ken Waldron
on June 9, 2023, 12:04 am, in reply to "Re: Why Just (sic) Stop Oil will win"
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"...if the govt ever decided (more likely: was forced) to facilitate a back-to-the-land movement, it would start to solve innumerable chronic problems both for society and for individuals starved of contact with nature and the psycho-spiritual benefits of meaningful employment." Yes. Unfortunately in the UK (and especially in Scotland) where the control and ownership of near all the land by a tiny number of exceptionally wealthy people and "Hedge funds" inevitably means taking on what is essentially the UK establishment itself. The next block obstacle would be the required dismantling of the Town and Country planning legislation... which would bring out the nimbys and property owners by the million as allies in opposition, frightened by the prospect of a massive decrease in their property prices (and thus wealth) brought about by the grubby peasants exercising their new freedom to build their own house and little farm "next door". The only way around the ownership issue is I think a "land tax". You don't nationalise the acreage outright to remove it from the wealthy: just make it far too expensive for them to hold any more than say, enough for a farm. As to the relaxing of the planning controls, I reckon one of the few criteria to be imposed should be that whatever was built should be parsimonious with resources and that as far as possible the materials be sourced locally. I was thinking about Smil's "four pillars" of modern civilisation I mentioned above, and looking around realised that my house and garden are near totally lacking in all these modern fossil fuel burning "essentials" as "Cement, steel, plastics, and ammonia" which were scarce or indeed non-existent commodities in 1850. Essentially the sum total of my entire house is a few pounds of iron nails and maybe a couple of tons of local coal or wood to burn in the old lime kiln on the hill for the mortar and plaster. The red sandstone and rubble fill were clearly quarried locally as was the timber sourced... when doing it up I was pleased to find my hundred and fifty year old lintels untouched by rot and worm as they were made of resin-rich Scots pine: knew what they were up to those old builders...The roof though is clad with Scottish slate which probably had a journey by cart from the west as we don't have any in Fife. But of course there are endless types of local materials that could be used in ingenious ways. The "disadvantage" of this kind of low fossil energy /local resource building is that everything takes much more time, thought, and lots of human labour but is that not what we are after in a world that has become deskilled and where most of us are now "surplus to requirement" as a consequence of the machine world we presently live in? |