At one point of my life I was very interested in living outside the city, somewhere in the nature. It would be much easier for me to do that since my job doesn't require specific location, as long as I have internet access.
But...as much as I love eco friendly houses, I'm agaisnt building a house made of trees since it's a guaranteed way to destroy all the trees that managed to survive.
I'm more interested in houses made of clay etc.
That's more common and it has huge resources.
Although, I'm now exploring with Paulownia trees. If they are what they say it would be great thing for the whole world.
If it really grows in 8-10 years to full size, strong but light weight, straight growth...There would be a lot of potential in furniture world, houses, etc.
I'm now planning to partner up with someone with same interest, buy a small piece of land (which in my country is not expensive, less than $1k) plant like 100 Paulownia trees and see how it goes.
If it works it would also be a great income stream. Norway is paying about $450 per tree and more. Plus honey production in the meanwhile...
Back in the day I used to build log homes. We viewed it as a way to preserve the trees we used. The reason for this is that Canada has significant amounts of timber... So much so that one of our main problems here is forests following their natural cycle and burning to the ground. Every year we face this threat to our beautiful forests. Another threat is the wood beetle. It's wiping out vast areas of timber. These trees die standing and further increase the risk of wildfires. Whenever I drive through the Canadian Rockies (about once or twice a year) to Vancouver and Vancouver Island I am not only greeted by the amazing beauty... I, unfortunately, see the devastation of these fires. Entire mountain sides void of their forests. Smoldering charcoal and half burned stands of trees everywhere. It's really sad to see.
So yeah... our population isn't bent on destroying the forest like some places in the world are... We view cutting down selective trees as management of this precious natural resource. We do have some clear cutting here in Canada but these companies are required to replace the trees they cut down. Every summer people head to the mountains to plant trees. It's a pretty good living actually although you have got to be pretty tough to do a job like this.
I absolutely LOVE trees... I guess that's why the New Pioneer logo is a tree! I think trees are magnificent and when you look at how a tree grows there are so many things to learn about life and sustainability from them.
By the way... I think your idea of planting Paulownia trees is an interesting one! $1K is very cheap land! Is that the per. acre price? With land that's cheap many things are possible. And honey is always a good thing! Can never get enough of that! :D
Those regulations that Canada has are great. I really support that.
Unfortunately most of the countries don't have that (we had them until 30 years ago, but since than they are almost gone)
There's a lot of land standing unused where I live, because many people have left searching for a better life. That's why there is a lot of cheap land.
For example, in smaller towns, it's easy to buy a solid house for $5-10k with 5-10 ares of backyard (1 are is 100m2)
For the land, it's not that hard to find and buy ~10 ares for $1k (not talking about farming land, but about land for trees etc.)
Since Paulownia needs 2meters distance between each tree, it won't require a lot of land to plant 100 trees, or even a 1000
For 1000 trees, it's 20-25 ares (50x50 m2)
8 to 10 years is not a lot and with 1000 trees profit would be at least 250k just from furniture companies, but there are few other ways to earn since 2nd year:
-Honey production (bees love that trees)
-Pellet production from branches
-Leaf is sold to farmers to feed cows
-etc.
Profit will be returned in 2nd year and from 3rd it's 100% profit.
But I'm still planning this venture and trying to find someone to join me in this.
I think it's the sort of idea that your country may need @lanmis.
Have you heard about the tragedy of the commons? Basically this is an economic observation that indicates ownership is what prompts and incentivizes people to care for rather than exploit the land. They found that land, starting off beautiful and cared for, rapidly deteriorated when it was held as public land.
Over grazing and many other negative practices took place when someone didn't own a particular piece of land. Once this negative practice takes place it is infectious in it's effects to the surrounding property and it's value. It's really an ideology / mind set / attitude towards the land that creates this road block to true prosperity for the people.
So yeah! If you do this you could be a significant catalyst in your country for good! It's always amazing to me how if you take care of the land the land takes care of you.
I believe that all true wealth comes from 2 places. The earth you stand on and the ideas you plant and water in your mind.
"The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now." -Chinese Proverb
Unfortunately, thanks to communism and what came after it, people in this region (not just my country, but whole region) became stupid.
Everyone looks for himself and don't care about anyone else...including nature.
If you ask some random people, they'll all tell you they love nature, trees, taking care of Earth and so on, but in reality it's something totally different.
For example, May 1st this year, some young people went to a national park to celebrate and cut down whole tree for a small barbecue. And no one stopped them, even though there was hundreds of other people around.
Some people here love communism and wish to return it, but it actually had terrible effect on us.
By the way (I found out this few weeks ago) that we had Lions walking around trough Europe earlier before, but we (the people) decided they are in our way, don't benefit us and decided to kill all of them?
Today we don't have a single European lion, what we can see in a zoo are African lions.
That's really to bad. I hope that your people will be able to learn from their mistakes just like I hope us Canadian's are able to learn from ours.
I can't believe those people cut down that tree in the national park for their camp fire... That sets such a precedent for other people (and the watching eyes of the youth). If everyone did that what beauty would be left? Would anyone even want to go camping in a national park?
Do you really think the lack of values and deeper insight is due to the ideology of communism or is it basic human carelessness?
Individually I have hope for humanity but I often feel that, collectively, society is such a let down. I think that this idea of raising people up at the expense of the environment is a mindset brought about directly by the problems we have within the money systems we use.
I think that they often incentivize the wrong behavior. It's to easier to maintain the current way that our society operates while making innovation even harder than it already is. When people don't feel they can win they often resort to taking short sighted short cuts of all kinds... If you have an entire society thinking this way then you REALLY have problems.
The problem is not in the ideology of communism, the problem was in too much freedom.
Everyone could do what ever they wanted to do, without getting punished for it.
For example, you could build a house on a public land, without any question or permissions.
You could enter into someone's apartment change the locks and live there for years and years without any problems.
CEO's were stealing with 3 hands from the companies they were responsible for and everyone knew that.
And dozens examples more.
Hard to believe but too much freedom can be a bad thing for people. Someone has to set some rules and pointers in order to keep the things going in the good direction
This is fascinating to me because I haven't thought to much about the consequences of too much freedom.
Your right about this you know... "Freedom to" needs to be in balance. It seems to me that this world balances precariously between the pros and the cons. By that I mean that so much of what people fight about is not so much about right and wrong but more about pros and cons.
The hardest part is when something has both positive and negative yields. That’s when things should be weighed out carefully. Is this a net positive to society and the environment or is this a net negative and yielding compounding bad outcomes to society and the environment. Usually something that is good for one section of society is less than good for another part of society or environment.
So I guess I have a question for you @lanmis.
So many people only think about “Freedom to”. They don’t even realize there is another aspect to this topic. What about, “Freedom from”? Since we are talking about too much freedom… Perhaps with your experience in Serbia you have some unique insight into this side of the equation.
Could it be that freedom balances on a scale between “freedom to” and “freedom from”? If so… I wonder where are current society is on that scale?