August 24, 2004

Sustainable living. Tinkers' Bubble is 40 acres of woodland, orchards and pasture in south Somerset. It was bought by a group of environmentalists in 1994, and a dozen people moved in, applied for shares and built themselves temporary houses. They imposed a strict set of rules on themselves, which included a ban on the use of internal combustion engines on the land.
posted by dng 20 years ago
  • Wow. The posts on the front page aren't even added in order anymore. I'm beginning to think that tracicle's husband has been paid a few million dollars to smuggle prehistoric monkey embryos out of Monkey filter, and has crashed the system to ensure his success
  • bah, chronological order is for wimps.
  • It's an interesting article but there are 60 million people in the UK and a land area of around 60 million acres so they're over their limit with 12 people on 40 acres.
  • Curious to see where this comment ends up. Think the first article may exaggerates somewhat -- but I suppose we may expect to see renewed interest in nuclear energy if that information is correct.
  • ugh, doomsday is so depressing.
  • Maybe I'm wrong, but their rejection of fossile fuel in favor or wood is not the most environmentally friendly choice. I know that buring wood creates lots of particulate matter and ashes and is really tough to burn as efficiently as you can fossil fuel products, especially for heat.
  • Thats the worry, really. If we replace oil with coal, it'd be a disaster basically. It'd be like living in 1950's London, for everyone, everywhere.
  • Peak oil production has been and gone for about thirty years now. Not peak absolute production, that's gonna land somewhere around the next few years (probably) but peak per capita production was in the late 70s. It's all downhill from here.
  • Something prospective back-to-the-landers don't get; you spend all your time working like a motherfucker for the basics - water, heat, food - are poor as shit, and so haven't enough time and money to do anything else but work like a motherfucker. There's nothing much creative or free about being a goddamn peasant. Yeah. I was raised by back-to-the-land hippies who eventually were so suffused with the joys of the land they ended up as Armageddonist lunatics with a gun collection (sawed-off shotgun, a crossbow, .22's, 30-30's, an M-15, etc). The first and last have no purpose as anything but people-killers. You know - for when the Bomb fell, and the City People would come and try and overrun the farm... /bitter rant. Off to take my nightly collection of anti-depressants I'll be on for life. *grumble*
  • I just like growing a few pesticide-free veggies and some nice big trees for birds to sit in. *ploughs obsolete computer into landfill, hopes nobody's looking*
  • I have a friend who seriously believes that all of us should move back to subsidence farming. He believes that every single technological innovation in the last 500 years has done nothing but oppress the masses in some way. I try not to tell him that the last guy that thought like this was Pol Pot.
  • I know that buring wood creates lots of particulate matter and ashes and is really tough to burn as efficiently as you can fossil fuel products, especially for heat. But in terms of ongoing and sustainable development this comparison only becomes relevant when you can (1) come up with a way of growing fossil fuels (2) ensure that this production is carbon neutral.