What is wrong with this equation?  GROWTH = SUSTAINABILITY 

The official program for recovering from the Great Recession of 2009 involves the restoration of a growth economy.  This is in spite of the fact that the recession was caused by the rising cost of energy as well as the profligate debt spending of both the American consumer and government.  The old common-sense lesson that we must live within our means has escaped too many of us.

The mission of this web site is to catalyze the founding of a self-sufficient community.  The human race is clearly at an unprecedented turning point in history.  In a matter of a few lifetimes the developed world has shattered the mode of life we called “civilized.”  We have in a very short historical period moved from an agrarian life that reached its apex in America and transformed ourselves into a mechanical order that reduces people from creative producer to passive consumer, that batters the senses with a constant bombardment of commercial “evangelism,” and that spawns destructive wars and weapons of mass destruction.  Americans have steadily lost confidence in government, their elected leadership and the so-called “free-market” system.

By definition, a self-sufficient (in a more limited sense, "sustainable") economy is one that insures future generations will not be deprived of the resources they need to maintain an equitable standard of life.  We don’t know what future generations will stipulate as sustainable but we are certain that it will be far less than we have today.  Competition for and diminishing stocks of non-renewable resources drives both scarcity and rising cost.  The bottom line is that sustainability is not a future condition.  It has to be pursued now, and achieved soon, by you and me.

At what scale would we have any real chance of building a truly sustainable economy?  It is unlikely, I believe, that anyone will make much progress changing the world but what about a square mile of it?  A square mile is also, suggestively, called a township.  The US covers 3.8 million square miles and contains 308 million people.  That is less than 100 people per square mile.  We arguably have enough land to meet our food, fiber, fuel and resource needs.  In brief, we will suggest something of a business approach to creating a self-sufficient village, a small and sustainable community.  Our mission is to learn how to convert the potential of our land and labor into a sustainable reality.  Our profit is the amount of improvement we achieve in sustainability and real quality of life.

From various sources we have outlined 21 basic human needs.  Self-sufficiency is achieved when as many of these needs as possible are realized within the local community.  This is an ideal.  In reality it will take a great deal of effort, passion, cooperative enterprise, and steely will to transition out of our current global consumption model into sustainability on a community level.  We do not reference time.  We do not have the luxury of time.

Taken on too large a scale this is mission impossible.  Taken one small step at a time, beginning with the Mead Minimum, real progress can be made towards self-sufficiency.