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Jeff McFadden
@JeffAndDonkeys
I am kin to all life. The faster you go, the more you miss. Living slow with donkeys in full public view, YouTube link below.
A mile from pavement.YouTube.com/c/jeffthedonke…Joined March 2013

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How to do it. For new readers. The objective: create a low energy economy without causing mass suffering or mass death. Create an economy which can operate on nearly zero CO2 emissions and regenerate a working and improving global ecosystem, without requiring sudden add'l deaths.
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3. It took as much total energy to move it as it would have taken at 35 mph in one afternoon, but since the energy was transferred into the courthouse over the course of many days, the rate of energy flow was slower, with less power applied at any specific time.
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2. A team of mules. And block and tackle. His mules could walk all day, and the courthouse would move a couple feet. He moved it to the edge of town and installed it on land he owned there. Took a few weeks. Him and two mules. You can get a lot done if you don't hurry.
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Speed and energy. I often point out that speed is energy, and that jobs can be done at lower speeds with lower levels of energy. When the current courthouse in Richmond was built, they sold its predecessor building to a local businessman. He moved the building away with a team.
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23. And pay a living wage for doing it. All, without exception, real world chances to improve the overall carbon imbalance, are in using less fuel today, and halting ecosystem degradation today. Not in building *anything.* Quit building highways. Everywhere, forever.
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22. Why is it that we'd pay sixty to a hundred grand a year to put up solar panels and wind turbines, and not even have a paid position to enhance the bird habitat along rural fencerows? The government created those jobs and that money out of thin air. It could create any job,
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21. We could create millions and millions of good paying jobs by retiring high speed high energy machines and replacing them with well paid humans. And every new job would come with reduced emissions, reduced fossil fuel used. In the real world, in the present moment, for free.
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20. The country roads reading water meters via radio signal - they could do it with a trotting horse. If it took a couple extra people because the scale of a day's trot was a few percent smaller than burning petroleum, that would officially be a Good Thing. Jobs created.
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19. energy to employ the people we made redundant in the previous step. This is like the left foot racing the right foot. Nobody ever wins. To employ more people, gainfully, at no increase in fossil fuel use, retire tractors. Retire pickup trucks. The guys drive up and down
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18. Rural mail routes ought to be horse powered. Standardbred trotting horse and a buggy they could pretty much go as fast as they do now. The closer together the residences the better they'd work. We add all this energy to make people unnecessary, and then we have to add more
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17. There are pilot programs dotted here and there around the world, mostly Europe, where they're gathering the trash with horse wagons. Pilot those here. They. Actually. Run. On. Current. Atmospheric. Carbon. I drive teams in traffic. It's entirely doable.
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16. The current system - the one under which Joe Biden and the Democrats created all those jobs - that's how we got in this mess with ecosystem collapse and all. Doing more of it isn't working. There are charts. Fossil fuel use is going up. We use it doing what we're doing.
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15. There is a possible path where developed societies could, within a decade or so, drastically reduce our energy demand, our material throughput - use less of everything, starting now, and actually reaching very low emissions numbers. We don't burn that much heating our homes.
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14. To make and move things worldwide at today's tons of matter and joules of energy requires very hot fires in steel mills, cement plants, glass plants, fiberglass plants, and crystal production. There is no picture where electric cars exist in a zero fossil fuel system.
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13. There is no evidence-based or fact-based claim of a continued high speed culture like today which does not continue to burn large amounts of fossil fuels. It doesn't matter where the electricity comes from, electricity can't do all the work. That's the fact.
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12. Employ American workers to plant and restore ecosystems to the greatest extent possible instead of employing them to mine, bulldoze, and pave them. We know absolutely for certain, no dispute, that photosynthesis-based ecosystems withdraw and use atmospheric carbon. Do that.
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11. Park every county road district tractor and do all that work with human beings, horses, donkeys, oxen. Pay as much for it as you'd pay for wind turbine installers. The government chooses the work. We have lots of work to do that doesn't take fuel.
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10. back to the train, got a rock... What we get is what the government chose as make-work. This entire continent is covered with trash plastic, land and water. Waste tires in every creek. Instead of building highways, beautify America. Pay as much money for it as for highways.
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9. When Roosevelt's employees channelized the Missouri River they had a policy: one man, one rock. They delivered the rocks along the river in paddle wheelers or on trains, parked, and an army of men walked to the train, got a rock, walked to the river, put it on the bank, walked
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8. Work which benefits the whole of society - that's OK. It's just that since we've decided we can't do work without fossil fuels, the whole system falls apart in a smoking heap of ashes, mine tailings, and excess energy in everything, which we misidentify as climate change.
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7. powered stuff you could make a case it's a good thing. In our bizarre culture you have to have this stuff called money to be able to get food, water, lodging, clothing, comfort, transportation - pretty much everything. So a scheme to sneak money into people's pockets for doing
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6. This is how Democrats create jobs. They legislate a coast-to-coast, Canada to Mexico, bulldozing and paving project. Interstate Highways. They dam up huge rivers. They shoot rockets at the moon. People get hired to do all the work. If it wasn't high speed high energy fossil
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5. of the new jobs are taxpayer funded. The new jobs essentially rise out of two major bills, the infrastructure bill and the "Inflation reduction" act where all the allegedly For The Climate stuff is. Roughly $800 billion in the two bills, and all of it to build stuff.
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4. that's absolutely not on the table. What if we wanted to create millions of new jobs without increasing fossil fuel demand? Impossible? It's impossible within our current measuring system, but it's possible in the real world. First we need to acknowledge that basically all
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3. Are the emissions we're about to spend money to create. Don't spend that money, poof! Hey Presto, humongous reduction in emissions as compared to the other path. It doesn't require mining, manufacturing, shipping, installing - just, don't do it. Huge benefits. So, of course,
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It's clear that virtually all of the conversation about climate change is totally abstract and is not intended to have any bearing on our actions as a society. There is no possible justification for new highways if there is a climate emergency. The cheapest emissions to reduce
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Joe Biden boasts most days about all the jobs he has created. He boasts most days about building highways in all 50 states. All the jobs are fossil fuel powered. The highway project is a world-class high level fossil fuel and CO2 emission project, guaranteed to fragment habitats.
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The judge passed up a golden opportunity to simply have the child cut in half.
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A Virginia Court has ordered a nursing mother of a 5 month old to stop breastfeeding and "to make every effort to place the child on a feeding schedule and use a bottle" in order to better accommodate the divorcing father's custody demands. 😳
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What, exactly, is Global Industrial Civilization? Sure, it's hospitals and ice cream and puppies. But it's mostly just: Oil, CAFOs, Industrial Ag, Plastic, Nuclear weapons & waste, mass murder, genocide. It's just a recipe for #Overshoot. Oh, there's the buzzer. Time to eat up!
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There was a time when everything that was needed to exist could be sourced locally. Now it's near impossible to exist without a global supply chain ( the cargo cult) powered by fuels which ultimately are an existential threat.
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I was talking to Henry about that. I'll just take the new animal up there in the trailer and have Henry fit her harness, once and done. I should have the buggy ready before then, and... I really want to do my Richmond business by buggy. Park the car and leave it for KC trips.
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8. I'm looking to buy myself a long-legged mammoth jenny or gelding broke to ride, and train her/him to drive. Not this one - he's sold - but this bloodline. From the same breeder. Ain't he handsome? Look at those ears.
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