Little House on a Small Planet

Peak Moment 119: Builder and author Shay Salomon finds that the happiest home builders are often the ones with the smallest houses. They're less costly to build and maintain, more likely to be finished, use fewer resources and help people simplify their lives. One version of "smaller" is to share a house, which can ease our loneliness while building our social network. Co-founder of the Small House Society, Shay notes that scaling down can enable a ratcheting up of our whole lifestyle, as we revalue quality over quantity. Declaring "Enough", she says, is the most ecological thing one can do. [ http://www.littlehouseonasmallplanet.com ]

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• housing
• small
• houses
• sustainability
• enough

[mphello]

My family have been pro-animal rights vegans since 1980. All patriotic freedom-loving Americans are vegan. You don't know what loss of freedom is until you put yourself into a factory farm for the rest of your life like the cows and pigs and chickens suffer. Since 1980 my siblings and I have fought human breeding and fought for tough laws mandating vasectomies for males.

The next step is to give up our cars and buy electric-assist trikes.

[peakmoment]

@mphello, I totally support abolition of factory farming and cheer on your fight to reduce human breeding -- especially in males. You go!! But humans weren't designed to be vegan. Our food-growing nutrient cycles need animals to help feed the soil as well as to feed humans. Take a look at Joel Salatin's work at Polyface farms: using animals (chickens, rabbits, pigs, cows) to fertilize the pasture, rotating them, and building soil.

[mphello]

@peakmoment I never said humans are designed to be vegan, but we're not designed to be omnivores, either. We're not "designed" for anything. No creature is. They'll just consume whatever is most convenient for them.

[peakmoment]

@mphello, I'm the one who said "designed", not you. Better word could be "co-evolved." By which I mean humans have evolved to be omnivores. In The Vegetarian Myth, Lierre Keith reproduce s a table from The Stone Age Diet (Voegtlin) comparing humans, dogs and sheep - teeth, jaw, stomach, gall bladder, digestive activity, feeding habits, guts. The table results show that humans are built to eat meat. Doesn't mean we don't also eat anything else -- but we don't digest cellulose (grass).

[valhala56]

Wow, what a great idea, I thought about converting my dads 1960's Fallout shelter he built into an underground dwelling. I thought it would be excellant to install solar panels on the ground\roof and the ground installation would be great in the winter. No need for alumiumn siding or painting the exterior or worry about them pesky terminites lol.

[michaelispan]

Thank you so very much. Rose and I love our little house.

[deepbeeps]

We purchased 2 acres on a hilltop today. Half is woods, the other half, open hillside. As soon as the deed is filed, I will begin construction of our 400 square foot (20X20) house. When construction is completed, I plan to install some solar panels and a wind generator in the open area of the property. This is our retirment plan....and our plan to make our "foot print" much smaller. I hope more and more people will join us!

[mphello]

@TheJourneyfortruth No. Who is "they" who were telling us exagerrated claims of sea level rise by this time?

Do you mean peer-reviewed journals in the fields of climatology and oceanography?

And not just some pop-tv scientist giving armchair pronouncements from his livingroom?

Even a person's a past credentials don't trump a formal scientific or mathematical proof that says otherwise.

A topologist who claims Fermat's Last Theorem is false and cites their status as a mathematician is a fool.

[mphello]

@mphello Seriously, I'm not asking rhetorically. I want to know why.

[mphello]

@peakmoment If non-human animal waste can be used to fertilize pastures, why can't human waste?

Why is there a hygiene issue with human waste?

[mphello]

@carveawoodeneye Yuppies are not hippies. Yuppies were the 1980s Ronald Reagan-loving Wall Street stock traders.

How was gandhi "racist"? Naive and stupid, thinking non-violence will solve anything.

Yes - my friends and family hate octomom-braindead breeding and breeders.

I'll have to watch this whole video to see if they actually say big houses make people "lonely".

Indeed, that would be bullshit.

[mphello]

Do the global-warming deniers think that we will run out of coal and oil so soon that we will avoid damage from GW? Is THAT why they don't believe it?

If we run out of coal and oil in 3 years like the GW-deniers say we will, then we absolutely HAVE to change our lifestyles NOW, by law, on penalty of prison, to avoid mass starvation.