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Adbusters - The Movie!!!
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grufty jim
grufty jim
1978 posts

Re: Sustainable urban living
Feb 24, 2003, 15:25
I should stress that when i talk about "self-sufficiency", i'm actually talking about a "sustainable lifestyle". I often use the two phrases interchangeably, which is wrong, and confusing. Sorry about that.

A sustainable lifestyle is one in which the community you live in can support itself without the need to import resources. In other words; communal self-sufficiency.

Western rural communities are no longer self-sufficient; but they could easily become that way if compelled by circumstances. Urban communities, however, can never be self-sufficient. Rural communities cannot become self-sufficient if forced to accommodate the total urban population.

This presents problems.

Profligate use of fossil fuels can sustain the unsustainable, of course. There's a great quote by HT Odum, i think, along the lines of "Modern agriculture is merely a process by which fossil fuels are converted to food" - it's a gross simplification; unlike most of Odum's work ;-) but it gets his point across.

I know i've repeated this _ad nauseaum_, and i truly do apologise for it; but i honestly don't believe that most people are aware of just *how* reliant we all are on fossil-energy, in particular cheap oil. It's not just what we fill our cars up with. It's so very much more.
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Re: Sustainable urban living (Joanna)
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