Back to the Land! - A (truly) Green Policy Proposal (that might actually work)

Finding common ground for everyone, from liberals and mainstream environmentalists to green anarchists --- [Estimated reading time: 20 min.]

Part of our Food Jungle here at Feun Foo Permaculture & Rewilding

When discussing green anarchy, even among the different schools of thought it encompasses, there is often a real vacuum as to how to implement its conclusions on a broader scale and in a way that’s (at least somewhat) acceptable for the general public. So far, green anarchy is still a fringe ideology that, nonetheless, has some of the most unassailable arguments rooting for it, and has thus spawned a considerable growth in interest in recent years (also owing to the fact that it is now more obvious than ever that the current worldview, social organization, and the extractionist “civilized” way of life in general is not working). Green anarchy strives for the return to a “pre-civilized” way of life, with a subsistence mode other than agriculture and an egalitarian, small-scale social organization based on the tribe: the proven social organization that evolution came up with for us after three million years of human evolution. Translating any of this into action is difficult, especially if you don’t want trouble with the authorities over land ownership issues, trespassing charges, hunting permits and tax evasion.
I’m an anarcho-primitivist¹, henceforth shortened to ‘primitivist’, and I will use the terms ‘green anarchy’ and ‘primitivism’ interchangeably in the following. I’ve spent the last eight years trying to actualize primitivist ideals in the real world (albeit on a mere personal level), and my focus is on developing/rediscovering an alternative mode of subsistence, one that doesn’t deplete the land and is more resilient in the face of climate breakdown. My personal experiments, while turning out a success on the small scale, have so far fallen short of anything that has broader applicability. It’s not ideas that I lack, but a precedent, a concept, a strategy. Something that common folks can agree upon.
Until now, living a primitivist lifestyle required you to become some sort of dropout, and quite possibly forced you to relocate, as in my case, to a “less developed” country that doesn’t restrict self-sufficiency as much as most Western countries do. This has almost always meant some degree of isolation from the rest of society, which, while without doubt having certain benefits, also has downsides – after all, humans are social animals.

The questions now are: What more can we do? Can we build a world that looks more like what green anarchists imagine? Are there any policies we might want to support? Is there any common ground with proponents of other, less radical political ideologies?
Although, as green anarchists, we view ourselves as residing outside of the traditional ‘left-center-right’ political spectrum, a complete rejection of anything bearing the label ‘politics’ is surely counterproductive. Politics itself is not inherently irreconcilable with primitivism – only modern politics is – and, in fact, all human societies larger than two people necessitate politics of some kind. Among indigenous societies, political decisions are often made by the entire band (or by elected councils), based on consensus if possible. Therefore, an outright rejection of anything political is definitely not in line with primitivist thought. But what can we do about that? No political party is anywhere close to representing the ideals and goals we hold and pursue, and even among “regular” anarchists and leftists in general, green anarchists are ridiculed at best and physically assaulted at worst.
This is most unfortunate, since we primitivists are convinced that if you never stop questioning authority, you’ll sooner or later end up questioning the same things we criticize, namely agriculture and civilization. You could even argue that green anarchy is the only “true” form of anarchy, because it is the only anarchist theory that denounces all forms of hierarchy, even those inherent to agriculture, the division of labor, cities and civilizations (which all happen to be very closely related to one another, and which all happen to be universally viewed as something “good” by everyone else), but I’m not here to pick a fight, nor to write anarchist polemic.
The policy described in the following doesn’t even has to be framed as an “anarchist” proposal, but can just as easily be a side hustle for all sorts of bright greens, since it furthers the Green’s agenda and aids their goals, like reducing consumption, emissions and ecological footprint, ensuring local food security, and lessening the massive burden this culture imposes on the land that sustains it.

But, first of all, let’s do away with a few annoying prejudices that we primitivists (and green anarchists in general) face regularly. Contrary to popular belief, we are not a bunch of ultraviolent eco-terrorists who want to letter-bomb tech executives and GMO lobbyists (although we’re also not particularly sad if that happens), and primitivism is as often motivated by a passionate love for Nature as it is by hate of the techno-industrial system/the dominant culture/civilization (and the catastrophic ecological devastation it leaves in its wake).
We don’t want to take away your medicine, your glasses, or your mobile phone – we are anarchists; hence we ardently oppose any program that forces people to do something they don’t want to do – we merely critique things we disagree with, and point out that a lifestyle based on the violent extraction and consumption of non-renewable resources will ultimately always end in collapse. In most indigenous societies, regular employment of coercion and force is almost unheard of (outside of cautionary tales discouraging such behavior), and anyone who arrogates the right to boss people around can be sure to be ignored, ridiculed, shamed, exiled, or even killed. This isn’t some ‘Noble Savage’ nonsense, but based on the actual findings of anthropology. It’s the reason why their societies didn’t devolve into tyrannies and ecological deserts.  

Furthermore, primitivism is most definitely not some 'white anti-supremacy' cult that wants to appropriate the next best indigenous culture and become just like them. In discussions with non-primitivists I've often heard remarks like "You know, in Indonesia there were headhunters!" – implying that if I say we should live more like hunter-gatherers, this must mean I want all people to become more of a headhunter as well. Obviously, I'm not advocating for anyone to become a headhunter. Headhunting sucks, for a whole panoply of reasons. What we primitivists advocate for is not the all-out embrace of every single cruel tradition² that forager societies around the world ever came up with, but merely to assess why those cultures managed to live sustainably – truly sustainably, since they inhabited the same bioregions for dozens of millennia without compromising their beauty, resilience and abundance – and why their lifestyle works not just for humans, but for all other species that share their habitat. We don’t want everyone to become a hunter-gatherer, we want people to understand why the hunter-gatherer lifestyle works better than the agricultural one. Headhunting is a localized cultural peculiarity that is utterly irrelevant to the overall success of foraging societies around the globe, headhunters or else.

Yet I don't judge the cultures who practice(d) headhunting as a part of a biocentric ancestral tradition that has allowed them to inhabit their patch of forest for millennia without destroying it. If they think it's a necessity of their lives, I'm the last who would go there and forbid them to continue this practice. Same goes for occasionally observed instances of cannibalism.³ Doing so would be a pretty colonialist thing to do, and although leftists and humanists usually pride themselves on their tolerance, in moments like this they unleash their inner Conquistador⁴. 

But back to the matter at hand.

One way to incorporate green anarchy into political and social choices would be to make it possible (and even attractive!) for individuals and communities to trace back the trajectory many human cultures have taken since the beginning of the Holocene: the transition from hunting/gathering/fishing/trapping/horticulture/herding⁵ to, ultimately, industrial agriculture⁶ - just backwards. This basically means “progressing” along different subsistence modes, each lower in environmental impact than the previous one, until you reach a lifestyle that works both for you and the ecosystem you inhabit in the long term. And if you try to convince people who hold the Myth of Progress sacred, tell them that this kind of “progress”, if implemented, also has fancy exponential graphs that describe its course: you can measure an exponential increase in wildlife population levels, tree cover, plant- and biodiversity in general, soil carbon, emissions saved, imports reduced, food systems resilience, water quality, self-sufficiency, etc.  
The benefits of a project like this should be obvious.

Instead of funding multimillionaires (or worse) to build ever more machines (“…but green ones!” they assure us, nodding fervently), why don't governments give money or other forms of support to people who actually do something, out there, in the real world? Compared to oxymoronic techno-fixes, sponsoring rewilding efforts or making plots of land available wouldn't be a remarkably large expense, especially since the people themselves would do most of the work. They need land, seedlings, tools, and (at best) a bit of pocket money to cover basic necessities for the first few years. Compared to building gigantic offshore wind parks (or the massive energy infrastructure so-called “renewables” would require), the capital needed for this kind of gradual rewilding is negligible and the return on investment is almost instant. It also “creates jobs” (if that’s a concern), as long as governments or organizations implement some sort of certification process and monitor all projects for compliance with previously agreed upon guidelines (more about possible guidelines below).

I know for a fact that there are legions of disillusioned young people who, fed up with the stressful city life, would love to really do something to mitigate the effects of climate breakdown and help create a truly sustainable society.

As a recent article in the German newspaper ‘Die Zeit’ [paywall] reported, Wales (of all countries!) takes the lead in terms of actually permitting people to heal Nature and live a life in balance with one’s environment and in tune with the seasons. And while Wales might easily be the country I least suspected to take the lead (after the US and China, of course)⁷, I am genuinely impressed by their One Planet Development proposal (and the extremely promising first few cases). Wales was the first country to declare a “climate emergency” in 2019, and in the time since, their parliament has stated the goal of reaching “net zero” in 2035, not 2050. And while I personally would like to see us reaching net zero next month, 2035 doesn’t even seem that unrealistic for a small country. Even before declaring climate emergency, Wales passed legislation that legally binds public institutions to factor in the effects their decisions and actions might have on future generations, which can even be seen as a first careful step towards an ethic akin to the Haudenosaunee’s Seventh Generation Principle⁸.
Either way, Wales seems committed to reduce its ecological footprint drastically. How that works in practice is surprising and inspiring; their One Planet Development (OPD) plan is a blueprint for all other countries. It encompasses guidelines and requirements for environmentally-friendly housing projects that have special privileges and are government-supported.

The Watkinson’s house (© Emli Bendixen, Zeit Online)

The article in Die Zeit features an interview with a family of four, Charis, Matthew, and their two young kids, who live in a National Park – a primitivist’s dream! According to OPD guidelines (published in 2010) this is perfectly legal – as long as you abide by the stringent rules. You have to be able to produce most of your food yourself, houses must be built and heated in a climate-neutral fashion, and you have to create habitat for birds, bees, and other wildlife. In short, “residents of One Planet Developments have to live quite differently (much more sustainably) than is the norm in the 21st century,” as their manual reads.

One of the reasons why I think (at least partly) opening National Parks to human habitation is the most important aspect of the OPD is that it doesn’t perpetuate the perceived separation of ‘the human world’ and ‘the natural world’ that other so-called “Nature conservation” NGOs like WWF aim for. Quite the contrary, humans can be functioning members of an ecosystem, and can even benefit the environment – some have gone as far as to call humans living a natural life a “keystone species.” This is no surprise to the remaining few indigenous cultures that are still allowed to practice their ancestral way of life, and the rising number of indigenous cultures currently in the process of reclaiming and reviving their traditions (who would be happy to get their ancestral lands back). As much as 80 percent of global terrestrial biodiversity is found on lands managed by indigenous people, which is unsurprising, since – unlike the members of the dominant culture – they don’t try to exterminate everything that doesn’t directly provide a benefit for them.

Some OPDs focus on agroforestry, others on water storage or recycling, but each project has to abide by the same rules.

OPDs need to provide evidence for:

1. Affordable housing for various sizes of household;

2. Buildings that are at least Zero Carbon throughout their entire life-cycle;

3. An initial ecological footprint of <2.4 global hectare/person and clear potential to move towards 1.88 gha;

4. Carbon analysis;

5. Close-to-zero waste;

6. 100% renewable energy;

7. Land-based enterprises to satisfy around 65% of the minimum needs of the occupants;

8. Rainwater harvesting, both for fresh water drinking and for other purposes;

9. Greywater and Blackwater ecological treatment with nutrient recovery;

10. Provision to protect against extreme weather events such as flooding or drought;

11. Low or zero carbon transport plan;

12. An increase in biodiversity caused by the planting of more native species;

13. Assessment of impact on the local community;

14. Encouragement of the use of [local] language and culture.

It took a whopping three years for Charis and Matthew Watkinson to get approval for their project, since they also had to draw up a business plan as a part of their proposal. In the end, they decided to raise free range chicken, let them forage in the forest, and sell the eggs. The couple needed to plan everything, starting with how they will produce electricity – solar in summer, wind in winter.

Today, their large flock of 80 chickens provides plenty of organic eggs that successfully serve as a source of income. The Watkinson’s grow potatoes, rhubarb, chard, onions, spinach, nasturtium and other crops in a system that favors self-seeding varieties to create a self-sustaining food system which requires a minimum of work (which is pretty much what we are working on as well). They have to plant more than 65 percent of their food to fulfill the requirements of the OPD.

Still, each potato has to be weighted and all data collected. Every single battery they use must be accounted for, its use justified. That is cumbersome, but part of the arrangement. If the Watkinson’s keep up the meticulous recording of every input for five years, they can stay.

Of course, you can’t (yet) avoid buying at least some things from the outside world; as long as you’re still somewhat a part of this society, you’ll need some groceries, money, maybe even a bank account, a mobile phone or a laptop, and gasoline for your vehicle. Same for the Watkinson family: “We still depend on supermarkets,” says Matthew in the interview – they buy mostly rice, coffee, and pasta (which are, coincidentally, also the number three external inputs we buy or trade for here at Feun Foo⁹). For expenses like these they use the profits from selling surplus eggs, teaching courses, and the occasional side job.

Approved types of OPDs on various scales

So far, there are only 37 OPDs in Wales. Why only so few? Abiding by their guidelines is not too difficult, the few OPD that already exist have been a full success (altogether planting more than 50,000 trees and ten kilometers of hedges in the last ten years), and most members vastly surpass the goals they set for themselves. What repels potential applicants are high land prices and the difficult bureaucratic requirements of the admission process. OPDs are unfortunately still a middle-class thing, since you need capital for an initial investment and the necessary experience to overcome administrative barriers by filling out kilometers of forms and providing stacks of other documents. The logical next step would be a democratization of the process, to make it available to those that would really need a change of scenery: those that struggle harder to make ends meet and who are more fed up with life in modern society.
Matthew himself says that the thing that annoys him most is the constant need for the family to prove that they protect the environment. “Why don’t the people who pollute the environment have to justify why they do it?” he asks.

There are certainly many ways to deformalize the entire process (especially for people without bureaucratic experience [like me], who would at least need help with the document-dominated part of the process), yet a healthy amount of supervision is necessary to ensure nobody abuses the privileges of living next to or inside a National Park. I’m sure even anarchists understand that you have to abide by the Law of the Land if you want to be a functioning part of it, and a well-trained council could easily assess who qualifies and who doesn’t. Clear rules need to be in place to avoid overgrazing, overhunting, overfishing, and overharvesting of resources like timber – but that’s exactly the kind of laws that indigenous societies all over the globe already use for self-governance. Hunting taboos, spiritual connections to certain plants and animals that come with the responsibility to aid and protect them, and the principle of the “honorable harvest” are notable examples of such self-imposed regulations.

Land prices are another serious problem, especially in “developed” countries, but not one that can’t be solved by implementing more radical policies that, incidentally, also serve to further combat climate breakdown. If you want to concede a carbon-neutral life to lower-income families as well, you will have to supply them with land.

But where should that land come from? Who is going to gift those willing rewilders with a plot of land for themselves? Well, there is definitely no shortage of arable land! For failing to comply with stricter sustainability guidelines we also desperately need to implement (for instance, if the soil carbon content is not being increased sufficiently, or pesticide residues are too high), governments could forcibly expropriate large, industrial agricultural businesses that already have more than enough land to cultivate it in a sustainable fashion.¹⁰ They’re not going to like it, and they will try whatever is in their power to prevent this from happening, but if we are serious about finally taking action, they will have to bow to the majority. We won't mitigate climate change with monocultures that stretch as far as the eye can see.

We here at Feun Foo always say that every family who owns more land than the members of the family can cultivate sustainably (meaning without the use of heavy machinery, fertilizers and other agrochemicals) needs to be expropriated.¹¹

With those mandatory “land grants” taken from large agricultural corporations (who also like to adorn their quarterly reports with unsubstantial calls for more “sustainability” and baseless commitments to “fight climate change”) and other large-scale land owners, plots of land can be allocated to aspiring rewilders, preferably in bite-sized chunks of not more than a few hectares (depending on the bioregion, of course, plots for MIRG¹² or other regenerative grazing techniques should be a bit larger), and located in close proximity to one another (a few minutes by foot or less). 

If more trials are as successful as the first few dozen OPDs in Wales, this could be a game changer for anyone who wants to “quit civilization”, go back to Nature, and live the life we humans were made for. So far, the Welsh government doesn’t provide any notable incentives for people to start their own OPD – except from leaving them alone, which is already worth a lot! – but it wouldn’t be inconceivable that cash handouts covering the first few years might be integrated into this scheme, especially for people from lower-income backgrounds, to make it a more attractive option.

The most interesting thing is this: given that you have the necessary skills, you could (in theory) successfully apply as a hunter-gatherer, since you wouldn’t violate any of the conditions for OPDs listed above. Nomadism could make things a bit complicated, but not impossible. The less modern technology you use, the better your preconditions under this scheme.

For my wife and me, this is good news in many ways. Since it represents a break with the neo-colonialist and anthropocentric practice of expelling indigenous people from their ancestral lands in the name of “conservation” (as happening here in Thailand with the Karen and other hill people, in India with various indigenous forest-dwelling cultures, and in Tanzania with the Maasai), it is a first step to reunite all of us, Nature’s lost children, with our Great Mother Earth. Not only will the various indigenous cultures of Southeast Asia now have a legal precedent from a “developed” country attesting to the fact that humans can indeed successfully inhabit and even restore natural areas. But maybe the remaining Chong, the indigenous culture whose traditional lands we inhabit, might have a chance to finally win tribal land titles as well – the Chong are currently, as so often with displaced and dispossessed indigenous cultures, the most marginalized members of society and own very little land (if any).

The dense bamboo thicket right next to our garden, just waiting to be restored to former glory

And, on a more personal note, there is yet another potential benefit: we are in the long and arduous process of writing a proposal for a small-scale reforestation project in the Rattan Vine Mountain Nature Reserve adjacent to our Food Jungle. The problem is: it’s already a Nature Reserve, although a devastating forest fire almost twenty years ago drastically and permanently reduced biodiversity on the hillside where our garden is located, and it’s now mostly an almost impenetrable thicket of running bamboo. Previously, the little stream in the ravine next to our land carried water year-round, but since the fire it runs dry for months every year. There is less food for the elephants, monkeys, hornbills, squirrels, porcupines, and all the countless other animals who, like us, call this piece of Earth their home. We could easily help, cut down a cluster of bamboo or two per week and plant seedlings of native forest trees in their stead, but we are prohibited from doing so by law.
Forest restoration projects easily get approved if you reforest your own land – but we already did that. Now that the trees are maturing and the rains come daily, we have more time for things other than subsistence gardening (like writing this article, or our reforestation proposal), and we would like to give back more to the land that feeds us. We could use Welsh OPDs as a reference for the claim that mindful human intervention can, even in protected areas, be profoundly beneficial towards the entire ecosystem as well.

But don’t get me wrong. This is not the silver bullet that stops climate breakdown. There is no such thing. Massive climatic shifts are already in motion, several thresholds have been passed, and it’s just a matter of time until others are crossed as well. A warming of several degrees centigrade is now inevitable, even if we stopped all emissions today. What’s left for us to do is to adapt and mitigate. With projects like OPDs, we do both.

We adapt by drastically reducing our reliance both on the increasingly volatile global economy and on industrial agriculture, the latter of which will be particularly strongly affected by climate breakdown in the near future. Food supply is localized, and our dependence on (relatively weak) annual grain crops is reduced as we diversify our food sources and include more tree crops. Local food systems resilience is enhanced by creating nodes of refuge, for people, livestock, food crops and seeds, and by providing a functioning example for the surrounding community. Since OPDs are required to prepare for (and protect themselves against) extreme weather events, they are less likely to be severely affected by such increasingly common incidents.

We mitigate through rewilding the land, increasing its potential to store carbon (both in the soil and in vegetation), and by creating refuge and habitat for wildlife that can’t possibly survive in agricultural areas or the few patches of forest that are left. Wildlife needs safe spaces, migration corridors, and food sources. OPDs and similar projects (like our Food Jungle) provide all those things.
The cumulative effects of such endeavors implemented on a large enough scale should not be underestimated, especially since each person shifting to a land-based lifestyle is also one high-impact consumer less. Carefully tended wildgardens and food forests have a massive untapped potential to sequester carbon and restore biodiversity. Studies have shown that annual carbon sequestration rates of homegardens and multistrata food forests are two to four times as high as those of natural forests, so on a large enough scale, projects like this can have some impact, especially when combined with other radical policies to curb emissions, extraction and consumption.

Excerpt from The Carbon Farming Solution: A Global Toolkit of Perennial Crops and Regenerative Agriculture Practices for Climate Change Mitigation and Food Security by Eric Toensmeier (2016)

At the risk of stating the obvious: I am not a politician, nor do I know anybody who is. As a consequence, I have no idea how to pitch this concept to people who wield at least some political influence. If you know anyone who’s a politician, send her/him this article (maybe with a personal note stating that it’s relevant although it contains scary words like “anarchy”) or, even better, talk to her/him. It would be amazing if this plan would become a widespread strategy to reduce the environmental footprint of its adherents. Mainstream environmental organizations and “green” political parties won’t have to take any big risks supporting such policies, and even conservatives would have little to complain about, especially when comparing this policy to, say, higher carbon or property taxes.¹³ Politicians will have to resist (or at least ignore) lobbying efforts by large landowners, but it’s not like governments have never restrained corporations before. It’s their job, and a lack of regulations is part of the reason we’re in this mess right now. And while green anarchists don’t believe that reforms will "save the planet", such reforms surely won’t do any harm if they enable people to actively heal the land and reduce their dependence on the system. The reason why civilization’s appeal is so powerful today is simply because there are no viable alternatives – it has worked hard to nip such alternatives in the bud – and OPDs could change that.
To hear the government of a Western country talk about a “symbiotic relationship between people and land” that creates “opportunities to conserve and enhance the biodiversity, cultural heritage and landscape of the site” does fill me with a tiny bit of hope that sanity can prevail over the madness the dominant culture displays, and that we can (re)discover that the thing we’ve been looking for all this time is actually exactly what we gave up for the false promises of “Progress”: a deep and intimate connection to the land.

Part of the upper half of our land, which was a bamboo monoculture just four years ago (there are still stands of giant bamboo on both sides) and has been rewilded since (click here to see how it looked like four years ago)

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Edit: To clarify, I’d like to point out that OPDs are not limited to National Parks in Wales, but also include the right to erect homes on agricultural land, which is otherwise rather difficult in many Western countries - talk about “limiting self-sufficiency”! I haven’t made that clear enough in the above. Furthermore, the definition of what constitutes a National Park in the UK is slightly different than what National Parks are in, say, the United States or Thailand. In the UK, there are already people living in National Parks, mostly on properties that were built before the area was designated as protected. Such areas are not completely off-limits, but come with extra requirements for conservation. Thanks to Sven for pointing it out!

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1. For the subtle differences between the various tendencies within green anarchy read this remarkable essay here.

2. As you see, we are under no illusion that primitive life is somehow “perfect”, or that the indigenous are exceptionally “noble” in any way. They are, first and foremost, humans, just like us – with all the flaws, quirks and imperfections this entails. We don’t “romanticize” indigenous societies, at least not any more than modern people romanticize industrial civilization. Yes, we focus on the positive aspects of life before (or outside of) civilization, but every primitivist I know of is well aware that it’s not all fun and games. Life is not supposed to be completely pain-free and easy at all times for anyone, whether animal or plant.

3. Ritualistic cannibalism, like practiced among the Gebusi of Papua New Guinea falls into the same category as headhunting: if you don’t like it, don’t do it. The most common form of cannibalism observed among hunter-gatherers is endocannibalism, which means that the remains of deceased loved ones and friends are ingested, often accompanied by elaborate rituals, so that the deceased may become, quite literally, a part of their friends and families – that they might live on in the bodies of the members of their community. This form of “cannibalism” is a relatively harmless spiritual belief that manifests itself in many different ways; one of the better-known examples is the Yanomami tradition to mix the ashes of their cremated dead into a kind of fermented banana soup they then eat. Again, please note that eating your dead relatives is not a requirement to become a hunter-gatherer. Most societies don’t practice any form of cannibalism.

4. This is something that often happened when non-state people suddenly found themselves under state control. Traditional warfare in Papua New-Guinea was officially “outlawed,” as was tribal warfare in the Amazon. Apparently, the dominant culture is the only one allowed to wage war with relative impunity. As I've pointed out elsewhere, tribal warfare is usually found among hunter-gatherer-horticulturalists and is thus a direct response to the population pressure a more sedentary lifestyle with regular surpluses induces.

5. Some green anarchists oppose the domestication of nonhumans (animals or plants) in general, so they might disagree with including horticulture and pastoralism. I don’t care.

6. Yes, I’ve read (and critiqued) The Dawn of Everything. I am well aware that this transition has historically not always been a straight arrow, and that there were many cultures that adopted farming only to give it up again decades or even centuries later (two obvious examples are the Native American cultures of the Great Plains after the introduction of horses, or the inhabitants of Classical Maya civilization after its collapse).

7. Esgusodwch fi, I don’t have anything against Wales! I just can’t remember the last time I consciously thought about this country. (That’s not a serial typo, by the way, but apparently just how you write their language.)

8. The principle states that the decisions we make today should result in a world as least as beautiful and abundant as ours seven generations into the future.

9. Number four is dry cow shit.

10. Admittedly, land previously used for industrial agriculture is far from optimal. It will take longer to be self-sufficient than if you live next to (or in) a National Park, where the soil is still good. Yet it’s not impossible, and success can be achieved with permacultural (and other regenerative) methods over a period no longer than a few years. For four years (2014-2018) I worked on a small permaculture project in the South of Thailand that rewilded an oil palm monoculture – possibly the worst starting point – and the land started producing considerable seasonal surpluses after a mere five years after its founding in 2012 (even less if the owner would have built bamboo huts instead of adobe houses in the beginning). Currently we are rewilding what used to be a conventional fruit orchard and giant bamboo monoculture (50-50). After four years of intense effort, soil fertility is increasing, and we produce most of the food we eat ourselves (the main exception is still rice) – in rainy season we are almost entirely self-sufficient already.

11. Not all at once, mind you, but as a slow but steady transition to a self-sufficient, low-impact lifestyle for everyone that desires such a life.

12. Management-intensive rotational grazing (MIRG) is a method of livestock rearing that seeks to imitate the natural movements of herbivore herds over grasslands, resulting in higher forage production capacity of the land, faster recovery rates after grazing, deeper root systems (and thus better water retention capability and increased carbon sequestration rate), lower weed infestations, and both healthier animals and healthier land - proving again that if the land is in good health, its inhabitants will be healthy, too.

13. Which are desperately needed as well, don’t get me wrong! I just say that conservatives would complain a lot more about such tax hikes. If we don’t implement carbon and property taxes upwards of 90 percent (with a strong initial focus on the richest 10 percent and the 500 largest corporations), we won’t stand a chance.