Sustainable Future, or Sustainable Past

We all wonder how could we possibly move forward sustainably on a planet we are told is on the brink of collapse. Are you familiar with the idea of the “smart city”? Are you curious what a “smart/digital citizen” is? Is it strange to see a cartoon building that is advertised to be “smart farm/agriculture”?

I think us citizens are smart enough. And I think we’ve tried that whole factory farming thing, where they load animals to capacity in a closed building on a concrete floor where an automated squeegee cleans away their “sludge” and they are pumped with antibiotics to not become ill… We also have hydroponic growing where they use petrol-chemicals to keep the roots wet with artificial fertility. Do you really need to be fully connected to everything, including your refrigerator? This seems like the only one getting smart would be the AI collecting the data of all of the earths people so corporations can profit better.

Why would the answer to sustainability be completely alienated from the natural world? We need to encourage renewable resources that are produced from the earth, this way we in turn create a culture of regeneration thanks to the knowledge of our dependence on what we produce from the earth. New entrepreneurs growing hemp, cotton, flax and using these locally produced textiles for fashion and utility. Seed savers and animal husbandry, heirloom and heritage breeds of plants and animals returning to diversify our diets. Tech people can help farmers analyze data and dial in soil tests and logistics. New advances in tools and machines for smaller scale production models. Restaurants fully supported by local producers. Marginal lands conserved and utilized for grazing or terraced permaculture forests. Plant based oils are already able to be used in converted diesel engines, why not refine these systems?

Would you rather live in some mirror walled city like “The Line”, or would you rather look out your window to gardens, farms, and edible forest trails? Is it more sustainable to build a lab with a perfectly sterile environment to grow cloned meat in a dish, or does it make more sense to use some land to grow carbon sinking grasses that feed animals which provide the food we evolved eating? Imagine not hearing lawn mowers every weekend because thee lawns have been replaced with gardens.

I see them shutting down 3,000 farms in the Netherlands to curtail nitrogen while at the same time making it harder for farmers to get nitrogen to fertilize their fields. Maybe we need nitrogen? And maybe we need farms and farmers. I just wonder, when is our little vegetable farm going to be seen to be under regulated and therefor not fit for consumption? When will they decide to buy out the farmlands to put up these smart cities?

We need to decide now, which direction we are going to choose to save the planet. Can we trust those who have been subsidizing the crisis the whole time to collaborate with the big business who have been profiting from the perpetual exploitation of the environment and communities?

No. We already are Smart Citizens. We are the ones who produce. Our ancestors are the ones who have sustained our history. We can work together to create beautiful and diverse living food systems to live in. Can you imagine the resources consumed to retrofit a whole city, or rebuild a whole city? We must scale it back, scale it down, and use the natural world to balance and inform our influence.

I say, take those smart cities to Mars and let us keep Earth.