Is anyone else considering switching to a life of militant environmentalism

[Saveourearthuk]

Me and DH are absolutely petrified and can no longer in any good conscience collide in the selfish shitshow that is modern life destroying the plannet. We are thinking of in the next few years
-selling most/all of our possessions
-selling the house
-moving to a small shack in the woods
-we would forrage for food and drink from a well
-we would use no modern technology and essentially shun the outside world.
While this might seem radical we are willing to bravely make this sacrifice to save our glorious planet. Is anyone else considering this?

I love all the environmentalists telling us to give up our cars, stop flying, stop eating meat, live in the woods etc etc.
In the meantime, they're posting on MN using their mobile phones or iPads or PC's that were presumably made in China and transported thousands of miles etc etc.
Yet they don't see the irony.

To be fair the OP hasnt been back so maybe theyve given up their tech already....before finding out whether it was an unreasonable suggestion....?

@Antsinyourpanta

To be fair the OP hasnt been back so maybe theyve given up their tech already....before finding out whether it was an unreasonable suggestion....?

😀

@Audit I do understand that of course which is why I don’t eat meat/fish, only buy clothes I plan on keeping for a long time, drive an EV etc etc. But I still feel like what I do is small when realistically we don’t have time for simple ground up supply-chain pressure. We need governments to take initiative now.

I don’t think foraging is a safe or realistic long term solution OP. Do you know anything about foraging? Especially in winter?

Eating only locally produced food would be better.

It can be done OP. But you'd need a few million in the bank to begin with.

Buying the woodland is not cheap.
Building an environmentally friendly house that has zero impact is not cheap and almost impossible.
Laying roads to the cabin in the woods is not cheap. So on and so on.

By the time you've got the land, cut the trees to build with, cut the trees to make a road, flattened land for farming, sorted irrigation, got a path to a water source, disturbed the natural habitat and built on the land, you'll have to live another 50 years without breathing, peeing, eating or farting just to offset the environmental damage you've both caused to the woodland to set up the environmentally friendly cabin.
Good luck though.

Your shack will be burnt to the ground by forest fires, caused by climate change, and your well will no doubt be polluted by runoff from a slurry pit.

Op is blatantly taking the piss. It wouldn't be a brave decision it would just be a pointless load of virtue signaling. Nothing will change until governments and major fossil fuel industry players make meaningful changes and the way that we measure our economic success stops being defined by year on year growth. The whole of the U.K. could piss off in the woods and forage for food and it would just fuck over the eco-system and over crowd the woods!

@MuscleTherapy

Yeah, I give you 3 months.

Months?! I'd say days!

@User112

Hello OP, my husband and I have the same thoughts. However, we have 3 kids to think about. So we are trying to achieve some kind of balance. It’s hard, we feel SO GUILTY when we put out rubbish bins.

Shouldn’t you feel more guilt about the three kids?

Erm… why do you need a shack when you already live under a bridge?

I find it amusing that you're turning to the internet, either from a phone or a laptop, in order to ask this question.

Perhaps you should try this for a month at a time. Maybe in the winter. There are plenty of absolutely fucking mental hellhole retreats that offer this sort of experience. See how you feel after a month in a forest shack, grubbing for roots and fungus, smashing the ice on your water source every morning in December. It'll be a good test for you and you'll find out pretty quickly whether you want to compromise on your morals and just be diligent about your carbon footprint in your modern convenient house or whether you really want to step back 1,000 years.

I'm more interested in what food you think will be growing for you to forage?

Read The Way Home by Mark Boyle. He bought some land in rural Ireland, lives completely off grid (ie not even having solar panels or a wind turbine) completely without technology. He does go into the nuances of what he means by “technology” in the book. So he doesn’t have a mobile phone, social media, electricity, gas, running water, but he does avail himself of the Irish postal service. He was featured on one of the Ben Fogle episodes of people living in the wild, aired around Feb 2021 if you want to have a look.

An eco village would be a better starting point wouldn’t it? Findhorn in Scotland is one. Not sure if it’s that one, but Ruby Wax went to live in one of these places for a bit.

No I’m not considering joining you. I love central heating too much.

Nope. You'd make no impact apart from easing your conscience. Put your energy into affecting real change.

Until Jeff Bezos et al take some action and responsibility, never mind China and Middle East, you moving into a hut is going to have zero impact, apart from disturbing the natural habitat with your foraging and hut building.

Rhubarb? All the serious folk cover their privates with nettles. It's a symbolic reminder of the eternal suffering we inflict on the Earth.

@HelgaDownUnder

Rhubarb? All the serious folk cover their privates with nettles. It's a symbolic reminder of the eternal suffering we inflict on the Earth.

Nettles make my nether regions tingle. Rhubarb all the way

Clearly a piss take thread.

Sad really when we all need to be making changes wherever we can.

@DontDoThatGeorge

What impact do you think this will have?

If its just about making you and DP feel better you'd be better off finding a job that pays you to make a difference somehow.

Tbh this sounds a bit selfish. Like it's not your problem. You go hide in the woods and let us deal with the mess, the sick, the elderly, the homeless, the kids...

I agree with this.

Massive changes need to be made. But this isn't the way to do it, for all the points raised by previous posters.

Nope.

That sort of lifestyle might just about be tolerable on a warm day in August. And a bloody nightmare on a rainy day in January.

And also, what are you ever going to forage from October - June? It takes a few years to build up a farming cycle that creates truly self-sustainable living.

Is this a reverse? Are you actually the Earth?

you'll be like Armstrong & Miller's "Wild cooking with Flint and Rory": telling the world your plans about roasting a dead badger but deciding that instead of eating roadkill you'd rather just fuck off to Sainsbury's🤣

Thing is OP if you are off grid you won't have social media to tell everyone else how superior you are !

For anyone who is interested in 'doing their bit', there are some helpful tips by other posters on this thread .