green-notebooks
178 posts
Latest Posts by green-notebooks
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-22/food-plant-solutions-malnutrition-farming-edible-plants/12580732
https://fms.cmsvr.com/fmi/webd/Food_Plants_World
This guy is my new hero. I LOVE learning about native food plants that just grow everywhere without human help.
The database is a little clunky to use (especially on a phone), but still loads of excellent information.
what if we did large-scale mutual aid. like what if everyone in a community contributed, idk, like, a percentage of their annual income into some kind of a mutual aid fund. they could appoint community leaders to allocate funding for community needs like health and other social services, rental aid, transportation to get to work and other places, maybe even for building community spaces that would be free to use. has anyone thought of this
its been p common knowledge for decades that light pollution can be massively reduced by just putting shades on streetlamps, and that doing that would save energy, help wildlife, and let us see the stars better, but are society says if u wanna change any minor little tiny thing u gotta dedicate ur whole life to campaigning for it and this is a good ways down the list of priorities for most ppl, so instead i gotta walk past newly-installed streetlamps that are just dumb glass globes that use half their electricity to blast half their light directly into the sky where it does only bad things for no reason and think "we should overthrow the government"
I was talking to my dad about renewable energy and he was like “the only problem with solar farms is they take up so much space.”
And it made me think about a city and how much sun exposure all the rooftops in a city get and…why not just make the city it’s own solar farm by putting solar panels on every rooftop?
The vegan to ecofascist pipeline
The reason "We (USamericans) should reduce our personal consumption of resources to save the planet!" won't change anything, is that there is no "we."
The average American does X amount of unnecessary shopping, but collapsing the wide range of wealth inequality into an average creates a vague call to action that sufficiently motivates 0 people.
Poor people feel guilty about buying stuff already. Even essential stuff. They have very little ability to adjust the amount they consume, and any adjustments that are possible would be almost negligible.
The moderately affluent and up vastly overestimate the impact of small adjustments to their lifestyle, and think of denying themselves any indulgence as extreme frugality. This is often the group that uses the "we" pronoun in the statement "We should consume less."
Most of the USA's carbon emissions come from heating and cooling and from cars. Since homelessness is treated as a crime, houses are not made sustainably or constructed smaller than a certain size, and it is virtually impossible to work or obtain basic needs without a car, there is a very solid and nearly impenetrable bottom to the scale of individual consumption.
So much consumption is near 100% impossible to opt out of, which means of course that the money that goes to it is never really yours, it just happens to pass through you on its way to its true destination.
This is obscured by the fact that the more privileged can ride a cushioned elevator below that bottom, play for as long as it takes for them to feel good about themselves, and take the elevator back up, and then write an article saying "See! I lived on 3 cents a day/lived in a 100sqft house/didn't use electricity for a week, and here's what I learned!"
Sure, you tried living a frugal life for a while. But you never doubted that the elevator would be there to take you back when you were tired of playing. You never felt the Fear. That's why you learned nothing.
Learning about edible plants (and eating them) has given me a lot of insight into the problems with the USAmerican food system
It's incredible how a supermarket gives you the sense of being surrounded by immense variety, but it's just the visual noise of advertising. In reality almost everything around you is just corn, wheat, soy, and milk, repackaged and recombined and concealed and re-flavored using additives, over and over and over again.
I am super against light pollution, and have been for decades
but I am also super annoyed by the way it's framed as "without light pollution you can see how beautiful the night sky is" way more prominently than it's framed as "hey, did you ever stop to think of how much energy/resources/money are literally wasted by having so much light shine up into the sky?"
so people get the idea that light pollution can only be remedied by eliminating all night-time light, which would make being outside at night very inconvenient, instead of by making night-time light shine only on the ground where, y'know, the people who need it are
Just imagine a world full of beautiful stained glass windows which also generate electricity…
[Oxford Photovoltaics]
Tons more at the source!
“Between 1992–2003, $14.4 billion was spent in total in the 109 countries studied…That investment resulted in a 29 percent-per-country average decrease in the rate of biodiversity decline…”
This is one of the first large-scale studies to show that investment in conservation really does work. The study also examined how conservation dollars could be spent most effectively in different locations to slow biodiversity loss.
it's weird how people will be like "but we need Suburban Lawn so kids can play outside!" as if basically every kid isn't bored to tears by being confined to a yard that's nothing but flat grass.
like have you talked to a kid, have you spent time with kids, do you remember BEING a kid? "playing outside" isn't about Throwing Ball 1000 times it's about squishing mud, using sticks as swords and guns, making potions from plants, catching bugs, climbing trees, and building forts from brush and branches.
A highly manicured lawn has nothing to offer the senses and brain of a developing child. If there are no "weeds," what are they supposed to gather to make into potions?? I'm not even joking, what do you, a child, DO in a yard without wildflowers and mud and dead branches. I feel like my brain wouldn't have developed correctly if my outdoor space growing up wasn't full of chicory and asters and dandelions.
At least video games offer some dim imitation of a variety of stimuli
Wake up kids, new extreme paint dropped
I’m trying to write a personal diary about my gardening activities.
TIL the “fresh is best” culture led consumers to wrongly see frozen produce as lower quality. It turns out frozen fruit & veg are equally nutritious. The freezing process slows nutrient loss which occurs after harvesting. Researchers found no real nutritional differences overall.
via reddit.com
Taking down a tree in 30 seconds | source
A group of about 100 people rallied outside the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg on Saturday to call on the federal government to make a major pivot away from fossil fuels.
The Liberal government has pledged to move the country toward a post-carbon economy, and organizers of Saturday’s rally want to see a plan to make that happen.
Instead, governments are putting the responsibility for solving the climate crisis on the backs of individuals, said one attendee.
“The evidence that climate change is caused by humans and is causing extreme weather events and other catastrophic results is not deniable, so we need to take action because this is a crisis,” said Melanie Dennis Unrau, a volunteer with the Manitoba Energy Justice Coalition.
Continue Reading.
Tagging: @politicsofcanada
My mentor: I wanna do a wall garden, because it doesnt take up too much space
Me, already vibrating from the dopamine and adrenaline: Let's talk about espaliers
Wait for it…
Wait for it…
Wait for it…
Missed it by………..ONE POINT FOUR PERCENT (1.4%)
Direct air carbon capture is the most egregious bullshit green capitalism has tried to come up with and the fact that anyone who's taken a middle school science class falls for it is astonishing to me
Like, let's just imagine we can build magic carbon capture machines that are made of children's wishes and run on pixie dust and are 100% efficient. It pulls off the scheme carbon capture companies are going after - taking carbon out of the air and turning it into fuel, which is then burned, releasing the carbon back into the air. Even this impossible version of the technology is, at best, carbon neutral
But in the real world, carbon capture needs to use materials, energy, and infrastructure that actually exists, which means that it will always, unavoidably be carbon positive. Unless it breaks the laws of thermodynamics, it can literally never be a solution to the problem
And no matter what kinds of excuses you come up with, no matter how eloquently you argue for different forms of carbon capture and how good you make them sound, none of it fucking matters because we don't need to invent carbon capture. The best way to sequester carbon is to utilize the systems that are doing that already, by restoring ecosystems, restoring soil, and composting. We simply cannot ever be more efficient than nature
But nobody profits off of dirt or prairies, so they've gotta sell you machines that do it instead
People on here should know about the mutual aid app! It’s really growing in the Chicago area (created by some college students from the suburbs), and it’s also being used in ABQ, parts of Colorado, and in the Navajo Nation! Sign up folks in your area and start growing your network!