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From:
 David MacClement <[email protected]> Date: Wed Dec 31, 2003 3:02 pm Subject: tidying-up; paradigm-shift dates; solar-powered house. | |
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living after she retires sometime next year. � She has already decided that it costs too much to build a new house, and this suburb (if they don't build a commercial airport to replace the RNZAF airfield across the water from Greenhithe) is quite pleasant, so she'll stay here; her remaining decision is whether to lift the house and rotate it so the big "front" windows face nearer to north - for winter sun and a bit better view.(See my http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LessIsMore/message/10886 ) � In preparation for our remaining 20 years of life (equal to a third of what she's lived so far), she started a fortnight ago to go through the piles of things that filled about half our bedroom, built up since we returned from our trip in 1988 to India, Thailand and Wales {mentioned at the bottom of my 20 Dec: �freshly-brewed coffee: luxury in an ascetic life�: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LessIsMore/message/13041 As before, sign-in.} � She's currently taking a break from tidying-up; she, our daughter and her friend from Nova Scotia and Korea (visiting for a couple of weeks) left yesterday morning for about 5 days on our farm, partly to join in celebrat- ing New Year and Harry's birthday. � Some of the large envelopes and other assorted memorabilia are from the time in the 1980s when some of us had real hopes that the richer parts of the world, including New Zealand, would finally "get the message" and move away from solely consumption-and-money-making and toward a near-sustainable way of living. Some hopeful signs were that our North Shore City brought in curbside recycling, The Green Party reformed itself (mainly from the Values Party which started in 1972), and ECO, Greenpeace and the Royal New Zealand Forest and Bird Protection Society had a surge in membership. � That, and 1969-to-1974 (facing a future with much less petroleum {the Mid- East "oil-shock"} combined with the re-examination of "what is important" started by the Hippy Generation), are IMO the two paradigm-shift periods. In both cases, I believe, the danger to "business-as-usual" was recognised and the continued spread of "subversive" "people and nature first" thinking was effectively counteracted by those who saw it as a threat to continuation of their own power. Quite similar to what US negotiators did in the Kyoto Protocol negotiations a year ago - along with the Seattle, DC and European huge demonstrations. Do we have to wait another 12 years for the chance to come again? � IMO the world'll be a complete wreck if "business-as-usual" isn't derailed before then. � In the mean time, I'm keeping-faith with the idea that, even at this late date in the downward slide from the peak of civilisation the world reached during my working life, it may be possible to salvage the more valuable parts of what we all grew up with. At least in most of the earth. � In a fortnight I will have completed a full year of collecting data on the electric energy available from 300-peak-watts of photovoltaic (PV) solar collector; here's what I had by the end of Christmas day: http://www.geocities.com/davd.geo/DMsDailyPVenergy.gif {Copy-n-Paste; click doesn't work.} � Alone at home here, last night I nearly took this house off the grid again so I would be living totally on _"free"_energy_from_the_sun_, stored for night-time use in my 25-volt battery-bank. It's summer, so it's easy. (Last time was May 3; see: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LessIsMore/message/9086 ) � I reluctantly left the house connected (making do with using as little as possible, e.g. turning the fridge off for 3 hours and on for 45 minutes, repeated), because our nearly 40yo electric water heater has almost failed so it needs to be left on 24-hours-a-day continuously to keep our water hot enough to shower in, for example for the return of my family. (We've arranged with a plumber to replace the HW heater, when tradesmen get back to work again, in January.) David. (David MacClement) Civis Mundi davd @ ihug.co.nz http://www.geocities.com/davd.geo/ ZL1ASX **************************************** |
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