A letter-writer in the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram recently chastised “Green fanatics” with all of the usual arguments, including the idea that those investing in alternative energy now are wasting their money. Here is my reply:

“Green fanatics wrong” (Voice of the People, Saturday, Feb. 27) is a wonderful example of using accurate data to reach a questionable conclusion. Jeff Nicol is right about the current high initial cost of wind and solar power, and other facts, but he ignores a lot of relevant information that’s essential to making a wise decision.

The efficiency of solar cells has increased more than fourfold in just the last five years. Even so, as of now, only 14 percent of the photons that strike a photovoltaic cell are converted to electricity. If Moore’s Law (which states that the number of transistors on a chip doubles about every two years) has any application whatsoever to alternative energy — and it certainly does — the potential for solar power is enormous.

One reason Moore’s Law works is because early adaptors made use of microprocessor chips even when they weren’t “affordable.”

The first pocket calculators became available in 1972 (Hewlet-Packard’s HP-35). The price was $395 — more than $2,000 in today’s money.

Now we take pocket calculators for granted, and most kids (for me, that’s anyone under 50) have never seen nor used a 35-pound hand-cranked desk calculator, much less a slide rule. Even more astounding, today you can get a multi-functional Casio SL200-TE for under $10!

And please note, Mr. Nicol: it’s solar-powered.

Yes, as he points out, we do need fossil fuels — nonrenewable resources — to develop and produce new products. “Nonrenewable” means we will eventually and inevitably run out of them. It will be impossible to develop new and sustainable technologies using the last drop of oil or pound of coal, which is why we must act now.

Mr. Nicol calls for more common sense in the world. I wholeheartedly agree. However, I would add the caution that a little knowledge can be dangerous. Mr. Nicol, who “did a little research on the Internet recently,” has a different perspective than I do. My first wind and solar installations were more than 35 years ago, and I recently spent six months researching and writing The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Self-Sufficient Living, which involves many aspects of sustainability — food, water, clothing, shelter and transportation, as well as energy and more.

In other words, to answer Mr. Nicol’s rhetorical question, I’m one of many Green fanatics who knows exactly what he’s supporting. As for “pushing” our agenda on others, as he puts it, consider this:

We’re investing in the nascent technology the skeptics consider uneconomical. As with the electronic calculator, this supports innovation, mass production, and lower costs that will eventually affect even the naysayers. So I don’t see us pushing them. We’re dragging them, kicking and screaming, into a sustainable future.

— Jd Belanger

Jobs continue to be big news: more specifically, the lack of them.

The unemployment rate manages to hover around 10%, but only because more than 660,000 people have given up even looking for work. Since the Great Recession began officially in 2007, more than 8,600,000 jobs have been lost, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The really bad news, according to economists, is that about a quarter of those jobs are gone forever. Many companies have found ways to make money without the expense of wages and benefits, and they won’t be rehiring even if or when the recession ends.

And of course, the really really bad news is that unless or until enough people have enough money to buy all the stuff and junk that props up the conventional establishment economy, there can be no “recovery.” Consumers account for about 70% of that economy, so it’s a vicious circle.

So the idiots in Washington are going to “create” jobs? And the idiots who elect them expect and demand that creation? Anyone who has ever met a payroll knows darn well that jobs aren’t created out of thin air, and certainly not by politicians. Don’t get me started on that.

I could switch my rant from jobs to food: people are eating out less and downscaling when they do, they’re buying more low-cost groceries like pasta and beans, food pantries across the country are seeing record numbers of new “clients,” there is growing interest in eating locally-grown and organic foods, and on and on. But to keep this short, let’s just add a few more ideas, then connect the dots and see what the picture looks like.

Item: During World War II, more than 45% of America’s vegetables were grown in backyard Victory Gardens.

Item: Way back in the 1930s, when Frank Lloyd Wright designed Broad Acre City (and used the term “homesteader” to describe the city’s inhabitants who had the time and skills to be part-time farmers, part-time mechanics [workers] and part-time intellectuals), gardens and root cellars were central to his thinking. He believed every man deserved an acre of his own land, where he could “never be unemployed or a slave to anyone.”

Item: Most sellers of vegetable seeds are reporting record sales, for the second year in a row.

Item: A city feller asked a homesteader what time he went to work. “Shucks,” came the answer, “I don’t go to work: I just get up and I’m surrounded by it!”

This too could go on and on, if I weren’t so weary of the idiots. I’m weary because I can’t see any signs that even in the current awakening — or what should by all means be an awakening — at least some people are becoming aware that the world does not need more cars (and roads, parking lots, petroleum, emissions, etc.), and the highly-paid workers who make those cars and provide all the support services; the world does not need any more resource-wasting McMansions (and therefore the carpenters, plumbers, electricians and certainly not the bankers involved in building them); the world doesn’t need 75% of the crap that is designed, manufactured, transported, sold, used lightly if at all, and trashed — all at the expense of the fragile environment and finite resources of Spaceship Earth. The “happiness” derived from such trash is as artificial as the economic system that creates it: demands it.

In other words, I don’t believe the world needs more “jobs,” in the traditional sense of the economic establishment. What the world needs is a lot more homesteaders.

But try to convince people of that, even in times like these: What a job!

I have found a point of agreement with Osama bin Laden.

The Al Qaeda leader just released another of his periodic tapes lashing out at the United States. But this time, instead of religion, the topic was global warming.

He’s against it. He said Western industrialized nations are responsible, and challenged the world to boycott American and other products to bring the wheels of the American economy to a halt.

According to the Associated Press, he blamed industrial nations for the floods, desertification and hunger spreading around the planet, saying, “Speaking about climate change is not an intellectual luxury, the phenomenon is actual fact.” His message was “to the whole world about those responsible for climate change and its repercussions, intentionally or unintentionally, and about the action we must take.

“I know this has great consequences and grave ramifications, but it is the only means to liberate humanity from slavery and dependence on America.”

I agree, although with a different slant. For more than 40 years I’ve been writing about “the… means to liberate humanity from slavery and dependence on,” not America, but the global  Industrial and Economic Establishment. Humanity could be liberated through what we call homesteading. That means boycotting industrial products, not to destroy an enemy, but to save the planet.

In those 40 years the potential disasters have taken many forms, from agricultural crises to stock market crashes to Y2K and Climate Change. The Establishment has always managed to muddle through, somehow, so far. But it weakens with every new blow. (It’s difficult to explain this in a few words to anyone who hasn’t been watching closely, but there are many ways to get up to speed… including reading The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Self-Sufficient Living.)

To both Bin Laden and me, the means isn’t all that important. Global warming just happens to be a handy, and very likely, current suspect, in a long list of possibilities. What really concerns both of us is what happens next. Not the means to the end, but the end.

In my case, the ideal would be to save the world — civilization, humanity, the planet itself — through reasoned logic and gentle persuasion. That’s why I have always tried to portray homesteading and simple living as a very pleasant, sensible way to live, as opposed to mindless materialism and the waste of life and resources involved in our current (and quite recent) culture of accumulation. If that doesn’t work (and it’s not working), the simple fact is that constant growth on a finite planet—the Spaceship Earth analogy — is impossible. (Stein’s Law: If something cannot continue, it will end.) The result can only be disastrous, whereas the sane, reasoned, homestead approach would allow a “soft landing,” so to speak.

With every new jolt that rattles the established system, that soft landing seems less and less likely. And yet, just try to imagine the vast difference between being dragged, kicking and screaming, into the devastated world Bin Laden and others envision, and actively managing that transition based on homesteading principles.

What would happen if Americans produced 40%-50% of their fruits and vegetables in their own yards, as they did with Victory Gardens during World War II? What if even just the 20% of Americans who are unemployed (yes, the true unemployment rate is 20%) engaged in a few homestead-type activities, such as food production?

And what would happen if virtually every American over the age of 16 didn’t feel entitled to 3,000 pounds of resource-wasting pollution-emitting automotive power? Yes, those who provide cars and their vast web of support facilities — gas stations, insurance, traffic cops and road maintenance workers, to name but a few — would be affected, and the economy would be devastated. But what would that do to mitigate climate change? And how would that be any worse, or different, from how those of us who are over 70 lived when we were young? Or from how the Amish, and in fact, most people in the world, still live today?

In a book I could (and did!) go on and on — about how the average house today is more than twice as big as the average house of my youth (and uses way more resources), how we use much more water and energy than we did then; how almost everybody has more clothing than any rational being could possibly require, and more stuff and junk of every kind and description (all requiring energy, in some form).

Today’s extravagance can be contrasted not only with the America of 70 years ago, but with most of the world today — including not only the Amish, but also many serious homesteaders. It could easily be shown — at least to rational people — that living simply and sustainably is not only no great hardship: it can actually be more healthful, stress-free, rewarding and fun!

That hasn’t worked out. The clock, a time bomb, is ticking. What could have been a glorious new age of sensible sustainable living will sink into a morass of deprivation and terror.

Osama bin Laden and I agree on the likely scenario. If it plays out on the course we’re now taking, he will be very happy. Not me. I know how it could have been avoided.