Here’s some advice you don’t hear often:
Use all the energy, water, and food you desire.
No really. Do it.
However, there is one catch. In order to follow this advice, you will need to Produce it Yourself (PiY).
Produce it where you live. Grow the food. Generate the electricity. Harvest the water.
You’ll find this changes everything.
Very simply, I’ve found that the people who produce most (or at least some) of what they consume are very careful and considerate about using it. Translation: they are much less likely to squander, waste, and overindulge what they produce.
In contrast, most people in the industrial world get their food, energy, water, and products from a perceptual black box — they don’t know how things are produced and they don’t care. As a result, they are much more likely to squander and waste with abandon.
This black box also makes them vulnerable. They don’t have the skills or the resources to respond to a failure of the “black box” industrial process that supplies them.
How so? They haven’t invested in themselves, their homes, or their communities in a way that makes them productive. So when conditions change or disruptions inevitably occur, they fail.
Of course, I’ve found that you don’t have to produce everything yourself in order to benefit from this. Just some.
Once you do start producing for yourself and others, you’ll find out these important facts about life on this planet:
- it doesn’t take much space or much daily work to produce more than you need – which is much less than you think.
- it really doesn’t matter where you live as long as you have a bit of land and sun to work with.
- new techniques and technologies are making it easier, cheaper, and more accessible to produce locally by the day.
So, just start. You’ll be happy you did.
PS: I was in New York City for the earlier portion of this week at a conference about urban resilience put on by my friends at PopTech. It was a lot of fun and I got a chance to meet some amazing people. I also got a chance to chat with three whip smart Resilient Strategies subscribers (two were at the conference and one works at Google in NYC). Very cool.
PPS: Producing everything yourself is a lifestyle choice and not a resilient strategy. Extreme self-reliance makes you more vulnerable than resilient.