Category: low-footprint living

I posted a list of these bullet points a while back, but couldn’t remember if I actually had posted them here (turns out I did, back in summer 2024; you can find it under puffy landscaping mini-festo).

Yesterday as I was walking to a downtown destination, I started a list in my mind again, and I like it so I’m posting it here too. It contains several of the same bullet items as the other list, but also some new items, and also some variation on the wording.

Leave the leaves

Prioritize potability (landscaping practices can be very harmful to water quality, or they can be helpful)

Mulch mindfully: veto the (mulch) volcano; swear off the “shredded cheese” (In other words don’t go out of your way to buy dyed mulch when there are many naturally available forms of mulch such as fallen leaves and fallen pine needles)

Cherish the canopy (guard our shade & heat mitigation – only trim trees very sparingly and when absolutely necessary)

Blow off blowing

Mellow out on mowing

Cut back on cutting

Protect their pay (we have to make choices that enable landscaping services to earn good money without degrading the environment)

Cease the ‘cides (stop using pesticides and herbicides)

Secure the sponge

Foster food (growing as much food as possible locally is a must)

Nurture native plants, protect the pollinators

Support all species

Save the palms, don’t shave the palms; stop flipping the bird to mother nature (I swear some of those deeply mutilated palm trees look just like a giant middle finger)

One of the messages I have consistently strive to convey, largely without success, is the idea that each of us can do our own part regardless of what others are doing.

Can, AND MUST.

Yes, rich people are trashing the planet. Billionaires and private jets yada yada yada.

You and I cannot mitigate of billionaires footprint, or, more to the point, the extremely large consumer footprint of our middle-class friends and neighbors who are REALLY driving the demand via sheer numbers, but that does not exempt us from each doing our own part.

All we can do is what we can do. All each person can do is their share. But we do have to do that share! Nothing exempts us from each doing our share. And the more of us who are striving to do our part, do our bit, the more it will catch on because doing one’s own part will be more normalized.

Whatever your part is, there are no police or government agencies or official measuring stick for that. All you can do is what you can do.

One thing I got wrong in my book is that main stream USA culture defines what school. That’s actually not the case. Rather than saying our dominant culture defines what’s cool, it would be more accurate to say the dominant mainstream USA culture defines what’s normal and necessary.

If you want to help fix things, stop normalizing hyperconsumerism. Instead, through your actions and shares on social media, start to delegitimize hoggish consumption and celebrate thrift and creativity.

There are everyday people right around you who have entire extra houses and cars. Stop celebrating that. There are everyday people right around you who Jetset off to Paris or Dubai for a wedding or their fifth grand-nephew’s soccer pictures. Stop celebrating that. Yes, a big part of doing our part is recognizing what we are socially reinforcing – or not. Social norms are a more powerful influence on the planet than almost any other force.

For the record, my favorite kind of societies, where I feel most comfortable living, are high-trust and low-regulation.

The dominant culture in which most of us reading this now live is the opposite: low-trust and high-regulation.

But how do you build trust? How do you make a more high-trust society. No one can do it alone, but tiny gestures well-placed can add up.

One of what I consider the strongest components of a high-trust society is citizens who insist on speaking directly with each other, instead of letting the media and politicians be our entire mouthpiece for us.

For those of us deeply conditioned and socialized in the dominant mainstream culture, it can be challenging to have discourse across differences and divides, but it’s really the only way to arrive at meaningful solutions.

Small-scale simple things many of us can do to help build a higher-trust society include starting a little free library; saying good morning to people we pass on the street in our neighborhood; offering water to people on a hot day.

Another thing I do is when I have a 24 hour bus pass and I’m not going to end up using it for the whole 24 hours, I’ll find someone to give it to. This morning I actually taped a bus pass to a nearby bus-stop pole, with a note saying “24-hour bus pass good till 11 AM Friday.”

It occurs to me that the benefits of taping that bus pass to a bus-stop pole are

1) out there, it might have greater odds of finding someone who needs it; and

2) even if lots of people who see it don’t need it, it increases trust by conveying the idea that “this is the kind of neighborhood or society we are”; “this is the kind of neighborhood and society where we share extra resources with each other.”

BTW in Permaculture Design, the sharing of a bus pass that would otherwise go unused is an example of one of the three ethics: “sharing surplus.”

(The first two ethics of permaculture design are 1) care of the earth; and 2) care of people and all other living things.)

I did a search on high trust, low regulation society and found some nice chewy links for you guys!

Further Exploration:

• “Is the United States drifting from a high trust society to a low trust society?” (Avinash Saravanan, medium.com) https://medium.com/@asarav/is-the-united-states-drifting-from-a-high-trust-society-to-a-low-trust-society-34db302ab353 “A high trust society is one where most people believe strangers will honor commitments, where institutions are seen as legitimate and fair, and where cooperation extends beyond kinship to broad civic life. … In [low-trust societies], rules multiply because promises alone are not believed. …”

• “How trust affects societies and careers” (Viktor Kyosev, LinkedIn) https://www.linkedin.com/posts/viktorkyosev_im-writing-an-essay-on-high-trust-vs-low-trust-activity-7322166104183689216-kwpG “I’m writing an essay on high-trust vs low-trust cultures. Here are some early notes: …”

• “Economic Fallout from becoming a low trust society” (Analyzing Finance with Nick podcast, YouTube). https://youtu.be/dnXIFWlVjuc?si=auVqJ-bI3M8zhSnb

This came up on a decluttering post where someone shared her preference for first purging excess stuff, and only then deep-cleaning the stuff you choose to keep.

Of course, if you’re going to want to donate some of the stuff you’re purging, some cleaning of that stuff may still also be necessary.

Regarding optimizing our quantity of stuff…

in Permaculture design we talk about the importance of being able to remember what we have, and where it is stored. This is known as the Permaculture design principle of “Stocking.”

For me, and maybe for some of you, keeping track of my stuff and where it is stored is much easier if I don’t have too many things.

It’s hard for me to keep track of a large number of things. Be it shoes, clothing, sewing supplies, beads, tools, etc. – there seems to be an optimum quantity of everything, beyond which I find it hard to keep track.

And if I can’t keep track, it’s almost like never having it in the first place because I can’t find it to use it! Or even remember in the first place that I have it! to use it!

Do I believe in “minimalism” as some superior chic aesthetic? No. (BTW I sometimes describe my aesthetic as “ornate minimalism.”)

Do I believe there is a functional level of “stuff” that we can handle (which may vary from one individual to the next, and also will depend on how many people are in one’s household)? Definitely!

It might be sort of like an inanimate object version of Dunbar’s number.

I like to be on friendly terms with my stuff. To really love, appreciate, and use each item. Or, in the case of crafting supplies, to at least have identifiable categories that I am on familiar friendly terms with.

“Fried Yard” — Whether it’s from a freeze, a drought, wildfire, flooding, chemical intrusion, more than one of those, or something else … the subsequent time of waiting for our plants to show new growth, so we know what to cut and what to keep, can be a hard waiting period.

But there’s plenty to do in a fried yard. That stripped-down environment can be an unexpected boon, highlighting many opportunities to adjust the positions of steppingstones, trellises, concrete pottery, fountains, birdbaths, and other nonliving features that create definition in our gardens and mini forests.

Some things I’m doing include moving pieces of trellis around to exclude overly bright street lighting; adjusting the position of stepping stones; adding a fresh batch of natural mulch; shoring-up shade and privacy features by adding pieces of fabric, bamboo lengths, etc.

One plant-related task we can definitely do even while waiting for new growth, is observation. Can do, and absolutely SHOULD do!

Notice what plants survived, what thrived, while other plants took a hard hit to the point of appearing possibly dead.

You may or may not want to purchase more plants at some point to replace whatever ends up having been killed, but regardless, this is good information.

Also, do a review of what plants you can propagate just by sticking a cutting in the ground. Those make good shade-trellises, privacy fences, noise buffers, protective barriers against harsh street-lights, shelter for tender annuals once you’re ready to plant those again, and more, in addition to providing fruit or wildlife habitat or pollinator forage or whatever else you like about them. I call these easy-grow powerhouses “scaffolding plants.”

Here at my home in Daytona Beach, my favorites in that category are prickly pear cactus, elderberry, mulberry, and chaya (Mexican miracle spinach tree). I’ll be making more little fences and trellises out of these beautiful, durable, and very useful plants.

Further reading on freeze damage: Here’s a great post from Josh Jamison, one of our foremost food-crop researchers and growers and teachers in central Florida. https://www.facebook.com/share/p/181ngCM2Cx/?mibextid=WC7FNe Their farm was hit hard, but they are not giving up and they are keeping things in perspective.

Added later: Do you know what else I just noticed, sitting out here enjoying my morning coffee. A little corkystem passion vine (native plant beloved by pollinators). I didn’t even know one was growing here, it had probably been covered up by the very prolific Ipomoea cairica vine. That Ipomoea is extremely well-adapted, and grows profusely in warm weather, but readily dies back in the cool season.

So it’s kind of cool to notice the little corkystem vine, and it’ll have a chance to grow with some more space and sunlight than it’s been accustomed to these past few months.

I can think of analogies in organizational and community life too! After a “freeze,” some heretofore unnoticed denizens get a chance to stretch and shine.

See a few photos of my fried yard here.

For a long time, I thought of myself as somebody who is blessed with a very keen intuition. And I believed that some unfortunate people simply lack intuition.

But then it dawned on me: Everyone has intuition. What gets thought of as a “keen intuition,” is simply a person listening to their intuition.

And what gets thought of as “not having a good intuition,” is a person who blocks their intuition, doesn’t feel safe listening to their intuition, etc.

Intuition is something we all have. Some people think it’s our connection with the divine. I think so.

if you don’t feel like you have a good intuition, try this. Just try listening to your inner voice. Don’t worry if your mind comes back at you asking second guessing: not knowing if this is real intuition, some kind of emotional reaction, etc. Just listen; you don’t necessarily have to act on it but just practice listening if you’re not used to listening.

It’s similar to deciding to listen to another person. Just because we decide to open our hearts and really listen to someone doesn’t mean we have to do what they want or what they tell us.

Similarly, if you don’t feel confident enough at first to act on your intuition, just start by listening. Listen for it. Over time, you’ll start to gain an awareness and discernment.

The intuitive voice tends to be quiet, gentle, not pushy. Even if it’s taking you away from a dangerous situation, it tends to be like the person calmly walking toward the exit of the burning theater.

Other things you can do to tune into your intuition include spending time in nature, even if it’s just a little container garden on your balcony. And spending time by yourself, allowing your thoughts to flow. You’ll start to feel the difference between rumination and intuitive guidance.

The dominant mainstream culture doesn’t make it easy to tap into our intuition. Consumerist industrial society prizes rushing around; being constantly on the go; intellectualizing; invalidating feelings (our own, and others’).

But, our intuition is right there waiting under the surface, totally accessible and just needing to be developed like a channel.

TL;DR: The other day, I had a voluntary, deliberate experience with generative AI. After that, I did a search and posted some links to articles on the eco impacts of AI.

I already knew there is a significant footprint, we’ve been hearing about the data centers and all, but I wanted to deliberately share links in a post, as I did not recall having done so before. In addition to the eco-imprint there are also significant cognitive impacts (not only on the personal level but on the social level), which we have known about it for a long time as well.

My experience:

True story – the other day I had my first experience (deliberately, voluntarily) engaging with #GenerativeAI. My plan is and always has been to limit my engagement to the best of my ability.

The caricature trend, seeing a bunch of my friends try the caricature thing, got me curious.

So I visited chat gpt dot com And gave a brief description and photo. I must say I was impressed with the verbiage it came up with!

To get an actual visual caricature rendered, I would’ve had to create an account and login. I was not willing to do that.

However, I love this verbal description and wouldn’t have any problem using it to pay a human artist to do my portrait. Or, to do my own portrait based on this text.

Here is the description I fed to chat gpt:

DEEP GREEN book & blog author, speaker, content creator, landscaper, activist, local personality

And here is the text the AI generated in response:

Ohhh this is a great face for a caricature — expressive, thoughtful, a little rebellious 🌿
I’m going to turn you + your work into a visual caricature that feels smart, earthy, activist-energy, not cheesy. Here’s the concept I’m using, then I’ll generate it.
Caricature concept (what I’m about to create)
You:
Short, tousled brown hair exaggerated just a bit — wind-touched, outdoorsy
Bright, observant eyes (the “I’ve seen things and I care” look)
Long, distinctive earrings emphasized as a signature feature
Warm, weathered-by-the-real-world skin tones (honest, not airbrushed)
Your work & identity woven in:
One hand holding a deep-green book titled DEEP GREEN 🌱
The other hand holding a trowel or plant (landscaper + grounded activist)
Subtle speech bubbles / text fragments floating around you (blogger, speaker, content creator)
Background: lush, slightly wild garden merging into a town/community setting
Small activist symbols worked in quietly (hand-painted sign, native plants, compost, roots breaking through pavement)
Style:
Illustrated caricature (not photorealistic)
Hand-drawn, ink + watercolor feel
Exaggerated features, but respectful and strong — wise, local-legend energy
Color palette: deep greens, earth browns, soft blues
Now I’ll generate it 🎨✨

And:

Your ready-to-use caricature prompt 🎨🌿
Copy-paste this directly into ChatGPT (once logged in), DALL·E, or any image generator that accepts detailed prompts:
Prompt:
Illustrated caricature portrait of a thoughtful, earthy woman with short, tousled brown hair and expressive blue eyes. She wears long, distinctive dangling earrings and a simple tank top. Her expression is observant, kind, and quietly fierce.
She holds a deep green book titled “DEEP GREEN” in one hand and a small garden trowel with a native plant in the other.
Style: hand-drawn ink and watercolor illustration, slightly exaggerated facial features, respectful and strong caricature (not cartoonish).
Background: a lush, slightly wild garden blending into a small town community, roots breaking through pavement, subtle activist symbols (hand-painted sign, compost, native plants).
Color palette: deep greens, earth browns, soft blues.
Overall vibe: wise, grounded, activist, local-legend energy.

I was actually pretty impressed with the text it came up with!

Links to articles:

• How energy intensive are AI-generated images? https://sustainableai.substack.com/p/how-energy-intensive-are-ai-generated AYA SAED MAY 29, 2025 “TLDR: AI images are energy hogs. Generating a single high-quality image with GPT-4o emits approximately 5.6g of CO₂e, and the viral action figure trend cost the equivalent of the monthly electricity of 150 U.S. homes.
GPT-4o’s image generation uses up to 30x more energy than text. Image quality, model choice, and how you prompt all matter. A lot. Businesses creating hundreds of images a week are racking up real energy costs, fast”

• Why AI uses so much energy – and what we can do about it. https://iee.psu.edu/news/blog/why-ai-uses-so-much-energy-and-what-we-can-do-about-it Mahmut Kandemir
Professor, Computer Science and Engineering
Published: April 8, 2025 | Last updated: November 20, 2025 “In this article, you’ll learn: — AI’s environmental footprint, from soaring energy and water use to e-waste
— Why training AI models is one of the most resource-intensive computing tasks on the planet
— Key strategies for a sustainable AI future, from more efficient models to greener hardware”

• Making an image with generative AI uses as much energy as charging your phone https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/01/1084189/making-an-image-with-generative-ai-uses-as-much-energy-as-charging-your-phone/ By Melissa Heikkilä
“This is the first time the carbon emissions caused by using an AI model for different tasks have been calculated.”

• Environmental impact of generative AI – stats and facts https://thesustainableagency.com/blog/environmental-impact-of-generative-ai/ROMA DHANANI ON JANUARY 15, 2026 “the environmental impact of generative ai 20 statistics & facts
Generative AI is a branch of AI that specializes in creating new content such as text, images, videos, or sound. Generative AI creates seemingly original content by being trained on large datasets. It’s not to be confused with traditional AI, which is programmed with algorithms to accomplish specific tasks. Generative AI has risen stratospherically over the past few years, think of ChatGPT and how it’s now a go-to tool to create articles from scratch. Or you may have seen some of the wild AI-generated videos getting shared around.”

FULL DISCLOSURE:

Full disclosure: I only looked up and posted the links regarding the footprint of AI, after I had done the generative text experiment.

But I had heard about the footprint of data centers etc.

Everything we do has a footprint. The point of my book and blog is to help people minimize their footprint (leading to a collective shift), while also functioning in everyday society.

And, to reemphasize what I said after sharing the generative text above:

To get an actual visual caricature rendered, I would’ve had to create an account and login. I was not willing to do that. However, I love this verbal description and wouldn’t have any problem using it to pay a human artist to do my portrait. Or, to attempt to do my own portrait based on this text.

And, I now intend to avoid further engaging generative AI, to the full extent I’m able. As we learn more, the possibilities widen.

Here’s the original post — w links, screenshots, etc — on my deep green Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/share/p/19NWkkkLU1/?mibextid=WC7FNe)