 It's only been a few months since our last news roundup but people seem to like that last one, so why don't we do it again? Let's dive into a few news stories and deepen our depth of field to see what the long-term implications are. How would these stories be covered in 50 years, when our infrastructure and way of life may be vastly different? This is the LowTech Podcast. Hello and welcome. I'm Scott Johnson from the Low Technology Institute, your host for podcast number 70 on May 5th, 2023, coming to you from the LowTech Recording booth. Thanks for joining us. Today we're looking back at some news stories and doing a little bit of project updating. And don't forget to follow us on Twitter, our handle is at low underscore check no, like us on Facebook, find us on Instagram, subscribe to us on YouTube and check out our website lowtechinstitute.org. There you can find both of our podcasts, as well as information about joining and supporting the Institute and its research. Also some podcast distributors put ads on podcasts, unless you hear me doing the ad, someone else is making money on that advertising. While all of our podcasts, videos and other information are given freely, they do take resources to make. If you're in a position to help support our work and be part of this community, please consider becoming a monthly supporter for as little as $3 a month through our Patreon page patreon.com slash lowtechinstitute. Another way to support us is to donate your used car. Anyone in the US can contact us and your used car will be picked up, sold and the proceeds come our way. If you're interested in helping us out, get in touch with us at info at lowtechinstitute.org. If you'd like to sponsor an episode directly, please get in touch with us through our website lowtechinstitute.org. We are constantly bombarded by news that feels like it's important. That's the job of the media, make everything seem relevant. But few things will make it into the history books. If we're looking at today's stories from the perspective of 50 years into the future, they may seem less explosive. And that, incidentally, leads me to our first story. Elon Musk's SpaceX today launched the first test flight of Starship, its 400 foot rocket meant to one day send people to the moon and eventually Mars. The most powerful rocket ever built blasted off from its launch base in Texas. We should have had separation by now. Obviously, this does not appear to be a nominal situation. Only to explode roughly four minutes into its flight, the rocket we should say was unmanned. Musk says the next launch attempt will be in a few months. A little over a week ago, SpaceX's new super heavy rocket exploded after a few minutes flight time. Of course, the team tried to put a good face on it saying that anything above the launch tower was icing on the cake, but it was a pretty public explosion. And most of the public is not used to iterative engineering testing. So often I get the question of whether or not space travel fits within a low tech future. And to quote Lovejoy on the Simpsons, short answer is yes with an if. Long answer is no with a but. Let's take the yes answer first. If we understand that we have limited resources, we can choose how to use them. If we revamp our lives in such a way that we're living within the energy supplied to us by the sun and renewable systems on the planet, and we have enough left over, and we decide collectively that space travel is something we want to pursue, we should have enough resources left over for space exploration. But there's a lot of ifs in that sentence. For the most part, I don't think that we will decide that space exploration is the best use of our resources. I know some people will come back and say we have made such great discoveries and quality of life improvements as side effects of the challenges of space travel, but there are other ways that we can challenge ourselves that do not involve the primary goal of colonizing other planets. So I think the realistic answer is actually no. Right now, the only way to get to space is to merge huge amounts of fuel, although I imagine it would be possible to make a hydrogen fueled rocket and hydrogen can be produced through electrolysis and would be a climate neutral fuel if done through, you know, solar panels or wind generation. But if we don't get behind major changes to our existing infrastructure on this planet, we're going to have other things to worry about then getting to Mars. Ironically, though, living on Mars would challenge people to create circular systems of energy, nutrients, and waste. Other than the infrastructure on the Mars base itself, the inhabitants would have to live within their energetic means. There is no fossil fuel on Mars to allow them to expand beyond their resources. We can look at this as a kind of a small scale version of our current world. We have used a large amount of energy to create the infrastructure we have, but now we have to live on what's available to us, not what we can dig out of the earth. And now let's head back to earth for our next story. Days of protests erupting in the streets of Paris, the unrest fueled by anger over the government's plan to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. Protesters tossed fireworks at police as they clashed for a third straight night. Hundreds have been arrested across the country since protests began in January. I don't need to go into a lot of social commentary on our current retirement system or really lack thereof in the United States compared to France or other peer countries. Over the last few months, the French have been increasingly upset about the increase of the retirement age, leading to street protests and strikes. And this gets to something that is a core and fundamental question for any industrialized society or pre-industrial society, and will remain a question in a post-industrial world. When should people be able to stop working? This is really an unreal question. Before industrialization, only about 10% of people had what was called a craft specialization or something that could be classified as a job apart from farming. 90% of people were farmers and it wasn't that grandma and grandpa would just stop farming when they reached a certain age. In the pre-industrial world, everybody contributed somehow to the household. Children helped with farm and domestic tasks. Young adults and parents were the most productive workers in both on and off farm jobs. But then as people aged, they aged quickly because of their physical labor of their work and pre-industrial medical knowledge wasn't so great. So grandparents may not have been as directly productive and in the field or home, but they contributed with what is called aloe parenting in anthropology. That is, they were partial parents for grandchildren, freeing the adults to be more productive. Humans are actually one of the only animals who survive past reproductive age, and it's thought that grandparenting was the reason for this. In addition to freeing up parents, grandparents can pass on important knowledge that humans need for interacting with their environment and society. So before industrialization, there was no such thing as retirement age. People were taken on a case-by-case basis and allowed to contribute what they could, but also to rest when they couldn't. It was only when we transitioned to the industrial jobs that a set age was established for retirement. Although a one-size-fits-all retirement age is useful on some level, it fails to take into account the variety of jobs done today. Very vigorous and physical jobs require an earlier retirement age or at least transition to a supervisory role in later years of employment, whereas knowledge sector and other less physical jobs can often be competently carried out well past retirement age. So how does that inform our view of the future? I think we'll revert to a more individualistic work trajectory. Family members who are able to contribute in some way will do so, and the family will decide when it is time for somebody to take it easier than they want to. Hopefully, we'll have transitioned to systems that are more self-sustaining and locally derived, which make retirement savings less of an issue. Instead of a 401k, people might invest in their infrastructure so that their, for example, household electricity is paid for by its own generation, or investing in heating and cooling systems that require much less energy, this is all a way of saving for the future. Everybody deserves a life that has some downtime for rest and relaxation. One of the biggest changes has to be social, or we start to appreciate the importance of time off and retirement throughout life, not just working ourselves to the bone with the promise of a future time of leisure. I think younger generations have a different view of work than those older than me who could potentially have gotten a job out of high school or college and stayed with it their entire career. But those younger than me changed jobs and even fields much more often. This may help us transition to emphasizing working to live rather than living to work. Speaking of retirement... President Biden has arrived in Poland tonight, after making an unannounced visit to Kyiv just days ahead of the one-year anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The administration says it informed Moscow before Biden arrived. This marks the first visit by a U.S. president to Ukraine in 14 years. With the support of the... Things have been at a bit of a standstill in Ukraine, hearing about cities taken or liberated, but no large movements on either side. But that may change as the muddy spring season ends and a drier summer sets in. President Biden visited Ukraine a little while back to show solidarity with Zelensky and the besieged country. This is a story that's going to continue to develop. One of the effects of this continued conflict is reducing dependence on Russian oil and gas, although Russia continues to supply India and China with large amounts of fossil fuels. Much of Europe has cut ties. The German press talks non-stop about liquid natural gas imports to bridge them over into the renewable energy future. And even Russia's sales to India and China are not bringing in the same amount of money as they are having to discount their product due to Western sanctions. The world is beginning to divide into two halves, somewhat reminiscent of the Cold War. A second effect is the rising cost of food. And the U.S. food costs are going up largely due to fuel and labor costs. In the global south, cheap Russian and Ukrainian wheat have been less available, causing increasing prices as well. All of this is to say that when we, as a society, depend on far-flung, distant places for things we absolutely need to live, we are more vulnerable to disruption. Even though in the short term, we save money purchasing cheaper goods and products from far away, in the long run we can be hung out to dry when local sources of the same material or product are no longer available because they've gone out of business. By transitioning to a more local economy, we are less likely to experience disruptions due to far away wars and other disruptions. No society or in pre-industrial history was able to reliably depend on the long-distance transport of staple goods. The only one that tried was Rome, and they famously had bread riots when shipments from Egypt did not arrive predictably. Speaking of empire... We're just four days away from the coronation of King Charles, and today we're learning more about the King's work in sustainability. He even helped build and design a town focused on the issue. Foreign correspondent James Longman is in Poundbury, England with more on the King's efforts to create a more eco-friendly place to live. So Poundbury is a town of about 5,000 people designed by then Prince Charles. The goals were walkable, sustainable, and human-scaled cities. Charles had chosen to emphasize sustainability and environmentalism, and this is great, and to be encouraged. And I'm not going to get into the pros and cons of a monarchy, but we can consider the now King Charles to be a person with great social and financial capital, so when he pushes in a direction it makes a difference. But then we have others, be they rulers of nations or prominent industry leaders who do not emphasize a real push to sustainable solutions for long-term living unless there is a short-term economic incentive to do so. Why is Charles different? It's long-term thinking. Unlike a CEO or politician who has to be constantly worried about shareholders or voters throwing him or her out of office on their rear end, Charles has job security, and while I do not support hereditary or non-democratically elected rulers, it's helpful for a leader to know that he or she can make good long-term decisions that do not provide immediate payoff. Politicians often worry about being made responsible for high oil prices, for example, and therefore make deals with morally questionable partners in order to keep costs down for their constituents. And while this has a short-term positive effect, it is a terrible way to run a country you expect to exist for the future, not to mention a continuing contribution to climate change. We are supposed to come together to elect government officials to do the things that we know are necessary but are not always the easiest to do through private industry or individual effort. But because business and government have become so intertwined, it's hard for the society's elected officials to do things in the long-term interests of the community. So those are just a few of the stories that caught our attention in early 2023, and now we're going to move on to talk a little bit about what we have going on around the institute. So we have been doing what I've been calling the DIY CSA. So CSA means Community Supported Agriculture, and if you have ever been to a farmer's market, sometimes you'll see a sign at different sellers saying, ask us about our CSA. And essentially what a CSA is like, it's a subscription service where each week you can go to the farm or a pickup location and get a box of produce, and that produce is whatever is in season, growing well, and available that week. It's less predictable, but you often help out the farmers, especially paying them upfront for the subscription that helps them with a cash influx at the most difficult time of year, which is spring when you have to do the most work, hire the most excess labor, you don't have much to sell. So it's a really useful model for the farmers. That's why it's Community Supported Agriculture. Then you get your box, you take it home, and you have different things to learn to cook with, and it varies throughout the season. It's kind of a fun model. It's like a reverse of one of those Blue Apron or one of those meal subscription services where they send you all the prepped stuff, whatever you want, whenever you want. This is here, here's a box of produce, go and enjoy, and you get stuff you wouldn't normally buy, and it expands kind of your cooking and culinary horizons. It's a lot of fun. And so usually you pay for your CSA subscription. In our version, what I'm calling the DIY CSA is really technically just called a Workshare CSA. So instead of paying your share, you come and provide labor. And so each week we have about five or six participants doing about a total of 10 shares coming in and working in the low-tech garden this year. And so they'll do a total of 10 hours of work each week. So that means an hour per person or an hour per share. And then they take home a box of produce. Right now we don't have a lot of produce, so it's been a lot of stuff from last year, applesauce, honey, squash, and things like that. So we are getting rid of our surplus that remains from last year in anticipation of things like the first things you eat are leaves, and then it's fruits, and then it's roots. That's kind of how it moves through the season. And so we already have a lot of lettuce in the ground. We are getting a lot of beds prepped. It's kind of a not in this bit of a churn of getting all the beds prepped, the compost spread out, the mulch. But people have been enthusiastic as is easier in the spring when we've all been cooped up in the winter. It's just exciting to be outside and the weather has been, oh, okay, good, not great. And so we have a variety of people signed up for the DIY CSA from, you know, a family to a couple of different individuals, friends, neighbors, and the like. So a real diversity of people. And the best part, from my opinion, is my neighbor is a master gardener, and she has been helping us with a technical aspect and been a real great help in the organization of, you know, various people trying to keep everything straight, which what beds have been planted, what beds need to be prepped, things like that. So we haven't gotten into heavy weeding season, but that's coming. So far, experiment is going well. And I'm hoping that it'll be a success. We're planting out potatoes and a lot of our winter crops already. So it's, it's fun to be thinking about the future already. The other thing that has been keeping me from podcasting, you may have realized that we missed our last episode. And I apologize for that, but we hope to be back to regular programming now. But we've had a bit of upheaval in the building process, in that we figured out a way to do a smaller building, and we'll be building a small office instead of a larger house and workshop that was kind of two halves of different things that may not have worked well together. So we're having a smaller build, which will be great because it'll be more manageable for our team. And so this has been a slight setback because we have to redo a lot of the plans and drawings and things like that before getting underway with the build. So it's a bit of a setback, a couple of weeks setback in the beginning, but the build should be shorter. So in the long term, it will pay off or at least come out equal. So what have we been doing? We're still felling trees. We have most of the trees down now. This weekend, our class will be out and we will go over how to properly fell trees in a quasi-safe way. I'm never going to say felt trees safely because it is inherently dangerous. And the minute you think you're safe is when it's the most dangerous because you stop paying attention. So we'll be felling trees and then we'll be going and milling them with our Sawyer Klaus, who's one of my neighbors a little ways off. And so we're going to go over how do you get these logs into the most efficient use and get the most timber and wood out of these logs. We have had another setback, unfortunately. I had spoken with one of our neighbors who farms and was very generously going to offer to drop off as much stone as we could use on the back of our property for the foundation. And then when I went to check in with him in April, he said, oh, I'm really sorry, we're just too busy. I don't have time to pick stone this year. We're only going to pick the biggest stones that are too big for you to move around anyway. So sorry about that. So instead of having been picking stones for the entire month of March, depositing them, I had been doing other things. And so now we are well behind our stone collection. So that's going to be an issue coming up. So it's been two steps forward, one step back, a sort of progress here, but we are slowly making our way forward. And we have been touting our classes throughout the summer. And I think we're going to change those from a full class where it's everything's prepped, everything's focused on the students learning, you know, teachers on hand really focused on 100% on the students. What we're going to do is we're going to change it to more of a work and learn. So people with their own timber framing, chisels and equipment, we have a limited number to share. But for the most part, people coming out should have some of their own equipment and interest in doing this. And I will demonstrate some skills, and then they will practice them. And I will come give them feedback, but it's going to be less 100% devoted to the students. So it's going to be more of a work and learn a bit more of a learn by doing sort of situation. And we will obviously reduce the price. So if you are interested in learning some timber framing, but we're daunted by a class, this might be a good opportunity for you. So be in touch lowtechinstitute.org for more information on that. So that's it for this week. The low tech podcast is put out by the Low Technology Institute. The show is hosted and co produced by me Scott Johnson and co produced and edited by Hina Suzuki. This episode was recorded in the low tech recording room. Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, YouTube and elsewhere. We hope you enjoyed this free podcast. And if you'd like to join the community and help support the work we do, please consider going to patreon.com slash lowtechinstitute and signing up. Thank you to our forester and land steward level members, Sam Braun, Marilyn Skirpon and the Hamvises for their support. The Low Technology Institute is a 501c3 research organization supported by members grants and underwriting. You can find out more information about the Low Technology Institute membership and underwriting at lowtechinstitute.org. Find us on social media and reach me directly, Scott at lowtechinstitute.org. Our intro music was Mathematician. Off the album, Will You Miss Me by Holizena. The song is in the public domain and this podcast is under the Creative Commons attribution and share like license. And you're free to use and share it as long as you give us credit. Thanks and take care.