The Science of Sustainiblity

To be able to really make a sustainable life work you have to be able to understand the fundamental principles that make it possible.  There are so many things that go into creating a sustainable and environmentally friendly life that it is impossible to keep everything you might need to know in your head.

That is where books, articles, websites and blogs come into play.  With all the resources at our disposal to collect and compile knowledge we can like never before build our own personal libraries.  Now knowledge is no longer the privilege of a chosen few but is available to everyone who can read and comprehend.

So to build a modern, sustainable life you have to become a scientist capable of understanding  the basic underpinnings of what a sustainable life is.

You will need to learn what will provide you with the basics of food, water, and shelter.  But you will  also want to go beyond that and provide the comforts of hot water, electricity and maybe a computer for yourself and your family.

To do that you will need to learn things about raising animals, growing crops, capturing and purifying  water and living a life that you have never given a thought to before.  Its a daunting task that I am doing myself and I try to share my successes and my failures with the world.  I have learned much along the way through trial and error, experiments and careful research but I have much yet to learn.

What I have found useful over the years was my drive to understand the basic fundamentals of how things work.  It pushed me to learn how soil works on a physical, chemical and biological level.  How the delicate balance of nitrogen to carbon can fuel microbes into breaking down compost in a month.  By understanding the basics I could apply the techniques right away without tedious failed experiments.

To make that method available to you I am planing on writing a series of posts on what I will call the Science of Sustainability.  They will cover broad topics of soil, plants, energy, water, and other aspects of sustainability.  They will provide a basic framework of understanding of how things work so that you can easily begin to build a sustainable life.

The posts will be placed simultaneously here and in my Sustainable Living How To Guides section of the blog.