Time to start building real resiliency. The missing link tends to be the community scale / neighborhood scale / district scale of infrastructure. When I was studying and interning in New Mexico some years back, I met a guy who was involved in promoting a project for district heating with biomass. The biomass was locally gathered deadwood.
* The above is a comment I made in regard to a fellow permaculture activist’s post (it was not public or I would’ve shared it). But basically he was commenting on various infrastructure outages that have happened over the years. From pipeline spills to telecomms cables breaking and what have you.
People in permie circles often offer “off-grid living” as a solution to this infrastructure vulnerability, as well as to the rising cost of water and energy bills, but that’s a hyperindividualistic solution and leaves many people behind, as well as chewing up a lot of land and resources.
As I have pointed out in my book and on this blog, the most ethical and economical way I have found to be sort of de facto off-grid (-ish) without leaving people behind, is to live in an existing dwelling that’s connected to infrastructure, but minimize my own use of water, electric etc. Also I don’t cable service; just use basic phone cellular data plan to get online.
Photo: Beautiful little oak tree tucked away in an empty lot in my neighborhood. It’s a whole community in and under that tree, largely unseen and unnoticed by humans.