Partial home energy

[kevinc_63366]

I have done reasonable well. The problem was that I lived in our "starter" house for over 20 years, had it and everything else paid off, and was managing to put over 25% of my gross income into savings. We bought a new, larger, house in a much better neighborhood, with the intention of moving our family and two of her sisters daughters into it, and then she decided she didn't want to move. Things were rocky before that, and went downhill rapidly after that. Judge gave her the paid for house and car, 2/3rds of my retirement savings plus 1/2 my pension, and over half of my take home pay (about evenly split between alimony and child support) - all based on the fact that I made most of the money and could theoretically "recover" easier than she could. I got the new house, highly mortgaged, a car loan, and what was left of the retirement and pension accounts. Alimony was awarded to her for life.

Basically, the theme from the court was: "Its your job to support your ex-wife at the level of living she is use to for the rest of her (or your) life".

Divorce sucks.

FWIW - my new wife and my plans for a future house consist of a much smaller house than we now live in, although still about 600 sq ft per person, that is very environmentally friendly and designed with as many passive solar features as I can cram in. I'm trying to design for a 20 kwh/day maximum electrical usage without compromising lifestyle. Why 20 kwh/day? Thats an affordable amount of solar/wind generation capability. Unclear if I want to grid connect or not, if so I could feed excess power into the grid, and perhaps design for 80% or so of my peek need.

[Patrick]

Kevin, I applaud your efforts to live a more sustainable lifestyle. It is very encouraging to hear from someone such as yourself.

To truly live sustainably, we must live within the means of the available resources. This means making due with the amount of land that is our per-capita share, which happens to be 4.5 acres per person. I quickly did an estimate of your ecological footprint using the earthday calculator.
This is what your footprint would be if you did the following:

Food
-meat is consumed once per day (one meal w/meat)
-75% of all food consumed comes from sources less than 200 miles away

Goods
-only buy what is needed and only buy things that last a long time. (unnecessary consumer goods are not bought)

Shelter
-600 sq ft per person
-green-design features
-energy conservation and efficiency

Mobility
-Drive a maximum of 300 miles per week
-seldom or never walk or cycle for important trips (shopping, job)
-never fly
-vehicle gets 35-50 mpg (assuming you are getting a hybrid)
-almost always drive alone (more than 75% of the time)

Your total footprint comes out to around 13 acres. Now, this is a lot better than the average American's footprint of 24 acres, but still much greater than the available 4.5 acres. With the conservation standard you have set, a maximum of 1.5 billion people could be supported with a stable biosphere. Here is a breakdown of your footprint:

Food 4.2
Mobility 2.7
Shelter 2.5
Goods 3.5

The easiest way to reduce your footprint further would be to reduce the size of your home. This would result in a reduction in both shelter and goods, since fewer goods are needed in a smaller home. To get to that 4.5, though, will require you to give up the car (even if its a hybrid) and walk, cycle, or take mass transit everywhere - not an option in most rural settings. So instead of that, you and your family should consolidate your trips, and share a single hybrid car. When two people are riding in a car their per capita energy consumption is halved for the duration of that car trip, than if they were to both drive alone. It will be a hassle scheduling everything and running around different places, but compared to the hassle of maintaining multiple vehicles it is actually easier. You could also adpot a vegan diet to reduce your footprint, but most people would prefer to sacrifice in other areas before giving up meat (I know I would). Remember, living sustainably means more than reducing carbon emmissions, it means living within the means of one planet.

For more information:
Ecological Footprint Calculator
Sustainable City

[kevinc_63366]

Patrick -

I appreciate the feedback.

In fact, my wife doesn't drive - however that is offset by planned trips to her home country of Russia every other year - at least in terms of carbon output.

Once established, I expect most of our fruits and vegetables will come from the backyard rather than the store. Meat, sugar, flour, milk and butter will be store bought. Milk & butter at least tends to be locally produced. We avoid Walmart meat from Argentina in large part because it taste like its been flown and stored from someplace far away <smile>. We do enjoy deer meat, which is absolutely locally harvested.

I do have one concern, and I suspect it will be politically unpopular: Why 4.5 acres per person? Is that simply available land divided by the current population? If so, does that imply I should live on less land if the less developed countries of the world decide to double their populations? I'm not good with that. Unfortunately, following my feelings results in the conclusion that the planet is over-populated. I'm not totally cold, I'm not suggestion we should neutron bomb 75% of the population just to make more resources available for the survivors, but I have to believe the population will naturally (and more rapidly and painfully than I like) decline once we run out of oil and the worlds oil based economy shifts, painfully, to something else.

My response is admittedly globally anti-social: Procure what land I can now, and exploit the oil based economy while it lasts to position myself and my family for long term survivability. Although I don't agree with their religious beliefs, I respect the local Amish lifestyles - they are close to what I believe we will eventually settle into as a resource depleted society (100 years from now? 50 years? 200 years? Got me.) Communities will be required - no man is an island - but I fear very local lives are in our species near future. How to survive the transition is a real fear of mine. I do believe, or at least hope, that some cities, or at least knowledge and education centers, will survive based on technology improvements - but I don't believe 8+ billion people will be supportable in such centers.

Kevin (sharing his thoughts and fears)

[Patrick]

Collapse will happen before we get to the projected 8+ billion people. The double whammy of climate change and resource depletion (mainly oil) will see to that. My research has led me to believe that we are less than 100 years away from a major permanent breakdown, possibly occuring within the decade. You are correct in that the 4.5 acres equals the total amount of productive land, worldwide, divided by world population. The Average American has been able to increase their ecological footprint beyond the level that can be supported with the land/resources available within America's borders. This has been possible only be exploiting the land and resources of areas beyond our borders. Based on my studies we could support a maximum of a little more than 3 billion people (per capita footprint of 6 acres), worldwide, if all were to adopt the following conservation standard:

Food:
-meat once per day (or none). Going vegan allows one to consume more in other areas, for example you could make your house bigger.
-all food is grown from local sources, less than 200 miles away (creating a need for local agriculture and local communities)

Goods:
-drastically cut consumption of unnecessary consumer goods

Shelter:
-~300 sq. ft. maximum, per person
-green-design features standard in all buildings
-more apartment and condo-like structures (much more efficient than detached structures)
-mandatory energy conservation through energy rationing and more efficient appliances

Mobility:
-individual travel equal to 200 miles maximum by mass transit, per week.
-As an alternative to transit one could drive a hybrid car, with mileage of more than 50mpg (Prius isn't good enough), carpooling (at least one other person) at least 50% of the time, driving a maximum of 200 miles per week.
-walking and cycling are the primary means of transportation (this involves a drastic redesign of our cities along new urbanist/transit oriented standards)
-Never fly (less than 1 hour per year)

Sustainability is essentially about balancing population with the available resources. It is clear that a reduction in our numbers is required, the question is what kind of standard of living will we be content with, and how many people will we be able to support at that standard of living. The higher the standard, the fewer people can be supported, and thus the more people that will have to die. I would like to think that 1 generation of mandatory birth licences (less than 2 children per woman) would bring our population down to 3 billion within 100 years. This is the only way I see that will lead to a stable population without war, famine, & climate change doing it for us.

The question of whether or not we deserve more than another person, is a moral one that each individual must answer for themselves. However I believe that a world in which resources are distributed more equitably is a safer world for all of us.

[kevinc_63366]

In basic concepts, I agree.

I'm just trying to get to a state where my family has the chance to be in the surviving column after the die-off. The way the USA is setup today, few cities will survive - there will simply be no way to get food and sanitation to the population without oil.

Surprisingly, Russian cities are much better set up for this per my personal observations. Mass transit is the norm. Most people work within walking distance of their jobs or within mass transit and walking distance. Apartments, pretty much at your 300 sq ft/person or less, are common. Local farmers markets are the norm for meat and much produce.

Cheers!

Kevin

[Patrick]

Cities built before the invention of the automobile tend to have the features I describe - walkability, transit, smaller dwellings, etc. I think that the collapse in American cities will be proportionate to their automobile dependency. Older cities such as those in the Northeast will have an easier time adapting than places such as Phoenix, Atlanta, Houston, etc - all cities built to accommodate the automobile at the expense of walkability & transit. I think the best bet for survival post-collapse is to find a medium sized city (around 1 million) that has sufficient farmland surrounding it to support its population, with good mass transit. Remember during the depression breadlines were formed in the cities, not in rural areas. Those in the rural areas were pretty much on their own. Now if collapse was total, and there were roving gangs killing each other everywhere, than in that case you would want to be out in the country. Btw good job on securing a supply of locally produced food, this greatly reduces your footprint. Suprisingly enough, of the four categories (transport, goods, shelter, food), food is the largest contributor to an individual's footprint.

[kevinc_63366]

Agreed, but even those cities are going to have problems. Roving gangs will attack the rural country as well, at least until they run completely out of gas. Lone farmhouses will be easy picking. Wish I had an answer to that besides being obscure and not being flashy (don't use electric lights at night!).

[kevinc_63366]

Originally Posted by Corey

Wow that Is the first I ever heard of the court requiring someone to continue working in order to pay an alimony to retirement.

Found a good link that highlights my situation:

DivorceNet - Retirement and Alimony

Its as I feared...

Kevin