The Perma Life » Uncategorized http://www.thepermalife.com Experiments in Living Lightly Wed, 28 Apr 2010 22:52:24 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 The sky may or may not be falling http://www.thepermalife.com/2009/08/the-sky-may-or-may-not-be-falling/ http://www.thepermalife.com/2009/08/the-sky-may-or-may-not-be-falling/#comments Sat, 22 Aug 2009 17:45:03 +0000 admin http://www.thepermalife.com/?p=85 Last night I watched a really interesting program on the History Channel about the history of the Earth. The geologic record tells this incredible story about where the Earth has been…it’s been a pretty violent history and there is no evidence that indicates that the Earth is not still vulnerable to cataclysmic events that would wipe the slate clean once again. From volcanic eruptions across an area as big as Siberia to other forces of nature that created the land bridge between North and South America, subsequently changing ocean currents, lowering the average global temperature and plunging us into an ice age, these events in our home’s history serve as a reminder of how truly small, insignificant and young we are as a species.

This rise and fall of Earth through the eons made me think of climate change and the role we play in exacerbating it, or our lack of a role, depending on who you talk to. I have always been a waffler on the climate change issue and have not spent a lot of time thinking about why that is. This show helped crystallize some of the thoughts that have been swimming around in my head.

First- that any change in climate patterns due to human action are insignificant in both scale and time. We are talking about scale in thousands of years, and Earth is on the hundreds of millions of years time clock when it comes to shifts in global climate. So, the moral of the story is that, no matter how badly we behave, we aren’t going to have a either a hugely positive nor a vastly negative impact on the life of Earth on the geologic scale.

So, when you really think about it, the only thing we have to lose when it comes to debating about climate change is life as we humans know it. Sliding the global temperature thermometer one way or the other by a few degrees over the course of the next couple of hundred years isn’t going to hurt anything but everything we hold dear.

The moral of the story? Even if you think global climate change is a load of hogwash dreamed up by tree huggers, if you are a human lover, a society lover, then maybe we shouldn’t take that chance. The Earth can take care of itself. And it may just take care of us as well.

]]> http://www.thepermalife.com/2009/08/the-sky-may-or-may-not-be-falling/feed/ 0 Fall Gardening- The Saga Begins http://www.thepermalife.com/2009/08/fall-gardening-the-saga-begins/ http://www.thepermalife.com/2009/08/fall-gardening-the-saga-begins/#comments Sun, 16 Aug 2009 14:07:27 +0000 admin http://www.thepermalife.com/?p=78 This morning I am clearing out the spent veggie plants from my summer foray into gardening and getting ready to plant some fall veggies. I still need to figure out how many seeds of each veggie to plant and when, but I am finishing that up this morning and then will get outside to finish the clearing before it gets too hot and muggy this morning. I know today is going to be a good day, because when I went to Fort Brawks (my chicken coop) to let the chickens out, I found this monster waiting for me:

egg which turned out to be a double yoke…yum!

friedegg

]]> http://www.thepermalife.com/2009/08/fall-gardening-the-saga-begins/feed/ 0