Givers

I listened to a podcast www.furledsails.com last night where they interviewed a couple Dave Zeiger and Anke Wagner their cruising experiences in Alaska. The couple spend 9/10 of the year at sea living on wild grown plants, fish, and seaweed they buy few grocery store products and have a food budget of only $1,000 per year. Their sailing craft was built out of plywood and coated in copper and biodegradable paints, when they die at sea everything about what they do will simply be consumed and reused by the earth.

In the book "Ishmael" they discuss the idea of takers and givers. If you haven't read the book I don't want to take anything away, just that you should read it. In the book it outlines the fact that Humans give nothing back after their life, their lifestyles consume at the burden of all other living things on the planet. At the end Humans don't even donate their flesh back to the earth, selfishly they burn their flesh or bury it in concrete boxes to 'Protect' it from the bugs and planetary recycling system. Take everything and give nothing back.

Animals, plants and all other species on the planet are there to protect their planet and provide through "Consumption Recycling" and or their own death to provide a balance that protects and ensure the future. In the end they leave this planet and donate their bones and flesh back to it to support the smallest of creatures which in turn ensure vibrant healthy soil for plants, which provide food for animals, which provide meat for carnivours, which in turn die and provide food for the earth.

Humans truly 'takers' of the planets resources giving nothing back. The perfect example of this is the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" which is a grouping of floating trash in two sections of the Pacific estimated to be larger than the continental United States is further decaying the fabric of our oceans. Unseen it's not even visible on Google Earth and receives little media attention. Maybe it's not even there.

Recently two men sailed on a pile of trash lashed together with the cockpit of a smal Cessna Airplane to Hawaii to bring further interest to the area but few noticed. Bloggers and other people have tried to shed light on it, but no one is offering any solutions. I have a solution.

I believe it's time for environmentalists to creat their own nation. Self serving, self governing and self aware. LIke the men in the raft an area of floating trash lashed together, topsoiled and turned into a small floating continent. Although it would continually spin at a very slow rate it would hardly move. The rolling of the nation would be unnoticed after some time and the mild weather of that region would provide a wonderfull area for sustainable crops. Certainly no exports or imports could be allowed because in order to be truly a giver the floating island should only support the basic necessities and that which it could not provide on it's own should not survive.

Population could not explode because food and fresh water would be limited. Electricity could only be used that could be generated by wind, sun or current but most of that may need to be used to generate water. All things must be gathered from itself. Excrement should be used to creat soil with shreaded plastic (possible), burials should be done in the created land. Fishing should be done to sustain only the population on the land, and shelters should be created from the trash basis. Government will be needed with a strong constitution not singling out Human life as the priority but the sustainability of the land as the priority. When we no longer value human life over that of the land our decisions will change.