Living Within Our Means

...means living locally and sustainably - indefinitely. It really is the sensible and responsible thing to do.

Living la vida local

Local means that we get our necessities as close to home as possible. It's that simple, and it's smart. Do we really want our groceries coming from thousands of miles away, from other countries with often questionable - and certainly difficult-to-police - food quality standards? (And labour standards, and environmental standards.) The recent scares over tainted pet food and toothpaste from China are the tip of the iceberg.

When food comes from distant places, any sort of disruption can leave us...well, hungry. If the producing country runs low on food, their own people will be first in line. If the price of oil goes up, so does the price of food, because transportation is such a major factor in the price. Wars and civil unrest can cut supplies.

Food security alone should be a sufficient reason to cause us to want to grow close to home, but there are also serious concerns about the quality and safety of food from afar. Practically speaking, we have no way of ensuring that the food from distant lands meets our standards. The problems mentioned earlier about pet food and toothpaste are symptoms of a larger problem: a recent study by Chinese government authorities found that almost 20% of food produced in China does not mean their standards, never mind ours. Corrupt people put antifreeze in toothpaste and plastics in pet food to shave a few cents per kilo off their costs - at the cost of the lives of thousands of pets and the health of countless people.

When food is grown and produced locally, the price is less sensitive to oil price fluctations. Far less greenhouse gas emissions are produced, because the distance-to-market - meaning from farm to the grocery story - is far less. Monitoring food quality is within our control; we don't have to trust our food standards to others. Growing and producing food locally just makes sense.

It's not just the food

Food is not the only necessity we want to make sure is under our control. Being dependent upon some other country for clean water is equally senseless, yet this is the path that the United States is pursuing; they are permanently draining underground aquifers and have suggested that water be piped from the Great Lakes to the southern states. Many experts predict that wars over water supply will be fought in the not-too-distant future.

And what about other things we would regard as necessary? Housing materials should be as local as possible; this reduces the price of housing and emissions of greenhouse gases, and keeps the local building industry healthy.

Transportation is more difficult, as building cars and trains currently requires large factories. In this case, local means within Canada. We have a large country, and don't want to be dependent upon other countries to be able to get around.

Energy is also critical. First, the sensible thing to do is to reduce our need for energy. Insulate our homes well, use passive solar energy for heat and hot water where possible, make our manufacturing processes more efficient, recover waste heat, use heat pumps and ground-source heat, move to hybrid or electric vehicles - these are all ways to reduce our dependence upon external sources of energy. They also reduce costs for homeowners and businesses - or even provide income - and cut carbon emissions.

The next step is to produce the energy that is needed as close to the place it is required as can be done. If your house is well insulated, gets most of its heat from the sun, and uses solar panels for its energy needs, you never need to worry about power failures. You may even be able to sell energy to the grid for those not-so-independent. Farmers and others in isolated locations should certainly have windmills or solar arrays. Factories can sell excess heat to local homes and offices. The possibilities are endless, and it just makes sense to produce our energy and other necessities locally.

Living Sustainably

Really, this simply means doing things such that they can be continued indefinitely. Windmills and solar panels don't "use up" the wind or sun for future generations, for example. Organic farming improves soil quality. And manufacturing processes can be re-engineered to leave the environment cleaner.

When I give my presentations, I often tell the story of a factory that did just this. William McDonough and his business partner Michael Braungart were contracted to create an industrial process to make a fabric in such a way that no pollution was generated. They took it one step further. When the government inspectors came to measure the fabric factory's effluent (waste water), they found it to be purer than the water entering the factory! Moreover, the fabric was entirely natural; when it was worn-out, it could be tossed on a compost heap where it would biodegrade naturally. And the factory workers were not exposed to any harmful chemicals during the manufacturing process. Interface Corporation, a major carpet manufacturer in the United States, is aiming to be the first major company to do this on a large scale - to be the first sustainable industry by 2020.

The Restorative Economy

In reality, every industrial process could operate in this way: an economy that encourages this sort of process is called a Restorative Economy, because it actually makes the environment - and all in it, including us - cleaner with each item manufactured.

This means no more harm passed down to future generations. No more birth defects due to toxic manufacturing processes. No more using-up of resources so that our children have less than we do. No more cancers from industrial wastes. No more turning pristine lands into moonscapes, no more dead lakes, no more landfills, no more climate crisis.

It can be done, parts of it are being done throughout the world, and it is something we must do.

Next: The City and Country Story