How to get men to care about the environment

Part of it is. I don't have a choice. I live in rolling hill country and own one of the rolls LOL. As the wall gets higher the garden expands back up the hillside. I have to do it in phases because I don't have a billion dollars at once for dump trucks, heavy equipment, and block/dirt putter downers. I have many spots but the big garden will be a terraforming monster when it is finally done. It is the only stretch of the property that gets full sun all day

 

The great thing about terraces is that they catch all the organic matter coming down the hill. My dad had some land on a hillside and we terraced that and the garden produced very well. The okra grew so tall we had to bend the stalks over to harvest.

 

How about this....take it or leave it. I don't really care enough to go to all the trouble to convince you of anything.

 

I'm not sure you've convinced yourself. You've quoted ~ 500,000 acres lost by 2040 and then some unsourced numbers with no calculations as to what they mean.

 

Take it or leave it. I don't care.

 

Which is it ?? The 0.05% or the unsourced numbers and unexplained meaning of them ??

 

Why don't you find something to refute my claims. This phone does not post links or videos well. Scientific American was one source. I ain't gonna go to the trouble just to satisfy your misdirection. You are not worth the trouble. I think you post just to be contrary.

 

Your own data refute your contention that there is a problem.

 

That is part of it. Besides being in the full sun, it is also where the water comes down from the top of the ridge which allows me to trap it into the garden. It washes out some but I haven't got the thing finished yet to where it will be level enough to hold the surface water back. Eventually once it is done I am going to have some drains in the corner the water migrates toward to feed it into a rainwater capture system. I am hoping having a water pool in front that I can use for irrigation will also extend my growing season a week on either end at least if I use a black liner that traps heat during the day that it will radiate out at night. We'll see. I may decide to heck with this food growing stuff and have the hood's biggest self-seeding wildflower bed. Who knows.

 

When I built terraces on dads ground I built the terrace kinda like a bowl. The back was lower than the wall side with a slight dip in the middle. I use no liners or weed fabric. But my season is over 200 days and I have plenty of time for the soil to warm. I use organic mulches like wood chips or pine straw. Once it is done I have very few problems with weeds. Right now I have no.drainage problems. We have no rain.

 

I have a front-back and side to side pitch to deal with that I am terracing into so the wall while level, will not have an even number of blocks along its front width. Since the clay will always push water to the backfill side I have a corner the water will always migrate toward. Once I go up a couple more levels, it will get noticeably worse. I am trying to go one row of blocks deeper a year. This winter I will do two rows so I can go ahead and start on the pond part.

The length of the growing season is not the only issue. I play around regularly with micro-climating. I am on a fringe zone so I like to be able to push both ways to get things that don't tolerate as much cold and things that don't tolerate as much heat to both survive. This water/terraced bed thing is a precursor to what will eventually be an Asian garden on another part of the property. I am testing the waters so to speak because I need plants that can survive -5° and 105° and am trial and erroring on creating a little extra passive heating for the plants that don't tolerate as much cold.

 

I love Asian gardens but I just don't have the skill to create one. I guess it is a lack of vision. I am also having trouble getting a mental picture of your planed garden. Do you have a stream or some other form of water?

 

When it rains, I have surface water collecting and running toward this particular spot. I have a stream at the bottom of the hill but that is not where I am ultimately going. Part of my property has a lot of surface water moving across it in heavy rains working its way to the ditch. I am going to pond it, pump water up the hill to the top of the ridge and do a serious of small water features connected by rills. Part of it will be planting areas, part of it ornamental and part of it permaculture. My house sits on the opposite side of the stream from the bulk of my land, so I will have my own little oasis and then the rest that I hope to share eventually with the public. My goal is to create an edible park, and then keel over dead before I have time to enjoy it

 

Actually it sounds kinda neat. I have been doing raised planters to make a walk around area with different plantings. I hope you accomplish your goal and live long enough to enjoy it. But these kind of projects are never really finished... are they. Right now I am sitting outside enjoying some long awaited rain. It has been so long I forgot what rain was like. I hope to get enough to plant some forage faddish in my pasture.

 

Yep you are never done until you are done for when you own property. It is really pragmatic for me. Our utilities slashed the hell out of water/sewage charges for businesses as payola and is now passing their "savings" onto residential consumers, especially on the sewage side which is based on your water consumption. By harvesting more water, I save money irrigating, and keeping it moving keeps the skeeters down. In addition, I would need and never get a permit to build one large irrigation pond, so by blending it in as several smaller "landscaping features" I am avoiding that whole pond permit thing. I am devious like that.

 

I never needed a permit to build my ponds. I just built them. I guess that is one advantage to living in the boonies. Mine are above ground and built from cinder block. I now have Koi, goldfish, and some natives in them.

 

My city requires a permit to do just about anything. It is how they churn fees, keep the inspections/zoning department funded, and micromanage the minute affairs of we heathen masses in the name of "safety"

 

I lived in a place like that once. And I had a nosey old woman that lived next to me and called the " authorities " all the time. I had to deal with the building commission, the zoning commission, the health department and several others. It was a pain just to add a bedroom on my house. I hated it.

 

I live in North East Washington in its most conservative county and they have an owner builder exception that worked great for me. If you build your own house on over 5 acres and it can't be seen from a public road you need no building permits at all, not even a septic permit. I put in my own cess pool built from old railroad ties,works great and cost me a hundred bucks

 

Where I live now I can pretty much do what I like. My problem now is getting the energy and the motivation to do it. It gets so hot and humid in the summer it a chore just to venture outside. Most outside work I do in the cool season.

 

...Just tax marijuana.

 

Well lets look at some basics here as to why ,as an American, this doesn't bother me I mean climate change as something to waste my time with.

1. The first world nations largely have low population growth as a group, the USA due to immigration and other factors is in that pretty good having a stable number of babies being born. But Japan for one example is hurting there. So its the poor nations pumping out all the babies that are straining global resources now.

2. The major nations this includes China and the USA won't give on our lifestyle we as a nation won't and China can't they go into an economic downturn things will turn nasty with their population, strains are already there.

3. Alternative technology is no where near ready to replace fossil fuel and nuclear power and so far coal and oil supplies are adequate for the foreseeable future. So there is no panic to go there but when there is then they will be worked on.

4. Are you going to get Americans out of cars? Or to stop eating meat (admitting making meat is inefficient farming but popular)?

5. The advanced nations are perfectly capable of adapting as needed to climate change the USA could in principle seal off Mexico and with Canada feed and take care of our people its the poor nations whom will feel the weight of climate change which will be a more gradual event. For example if things got serious we could have a policy of no longer allowing government support to protect risky coastal areas and instead incentivize people to just move to more elevated areas and abandon the coasts and other areas if done over a century or more. Poor nations won't be as fortunate. And even with climate change we can feed our own people and internalize industry if we had to Fortress America and could even include Mexico and seal off their Southern border with a wall making it from there up to Alaska with Canada as a single security zone. I suspect after a century we would be the top dog when China implodes and poor nations have a long die off of their excess population.

So as an American why should I care it seems poor nations want me to give up what modest good life I have for their problems, which isn't my problem, my nation is likely going to hold out well compared to many others.

 

You can choose not to care. Many people do.

 

You show men that conservation saves money. Saving money is intelligent. Nothing is more masculine than intelligence. Now men care.

 

Climate change is a national security concern.

As it turns out, the ability of the US and other rich nations to feed themselves or to move inland is not a solution.

http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2016/09/23/an-admiral-assesses-climate-change/