Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Saving the World by burying the Greens.

In medieval Europe many cathedrals and churches were built with money from people that paid for crypt spaces and burial spaces in the building or its grounds.

What's the equivalent today? For many nature is sacred so lets give them their eco-cathedrals.

Why have grave plot in the big city costing many thousands of dollars if you could have a hectare plot in the wilderness? Grave plots are getting very expensive. Even getting a hole in a memorial wall for grannies ashes is very costly. However land in the country side is very cheap particularly if its non arable land. Even arable land in the country is only a few hundred dollars a hectare at most. A green funeral plan could be created where an hectare, half hectare or quarter acre plot is purchased in an ecologically useful location. A grave plot or two are set out and the rest restored to wilderness.

Wilderness can be created by skilled landscapers, botanists, entomologists and zoologists. It need not be fenced but it may be wise to fence out feral animals: introduced predators like the cats, foxes in Australia, possums, goats and pigs in Oceania. Trees are planted if necessary and bird boxes, artificial nesting sites created. Hollow logs are created and deployed. Ponds may be added to encourage frogs and water the fauna. Ideally the memorial nature parks should be located to create fauna corridors and buffer zones around fragile areas.
Some consideration is needed on the provision of fire brakes, fire shelters, road crossings for both ground fauna, aquatic fauna and arboreal animals.

Only part of the money is spent on immediate costs land purchase, landscaping and the burial. The rest becomes a memorial trust invested carefully with some investment in gold and some compounded. This grows the fund, the gold protects against a crash, it provides the economy with a long term investor to match some long term borrowers.
The interest is used in two ways:

Firstly, If the funeral is not immediate they pay for the funeral its self. Funeral costs should be kept under half the interest funds if possible.

Secondly, It is used to fund on going long term management of the this and the other memorial nature parks. Care must be given to remove invasive weeds, non indigenous plants and feral predators and browsers. The principal should not be spent if possible.

When the buyer of the plot dies they are buried in the burial plot. Early purchase means the ecosystem becomes a wonderful back drop for an out door ceremony. To be viable the total cost, including the seed money for the trust, should be less than the urban burial plot.

Some consideration is need in the design phase of the burial location to the effects of the burial itself on the ecosystem. The impact and space required for crowds, vehicles and access for a backhoe. Because there is an inflation protected memorial fund covering long term maintenance of the ecosystem the nature park is guaranteed. It is not dependent on the whims of government or the threat of budget cuts. It must also be protected from land, capital gains and inheritance taxes.It will eventually end up very overgrown but that's the idea.

There is another benefit. Today hundreds of people are trained in environmental science but the major employer in that sector is government. Industry positions are rare. With budgets being tightened and governments going broke and winding up with their bonds reduced to junk status. This pitches those that genuinely want to save species and the environment against those advocating small government, capitalism and property rights. In a time of fiscal collapse this raises the spectre of ecological collapse and drives some to very dangerous political positions.
These memorial projects provide a new employment opportunity for these same people trained in environmental science, botany, zoology, etc turning them into the 21st century equivalent of cathedral architects. In some cases it will be their first introduction to capitalism and private sector employment.    

I'm not the only person thinking about this strategy. In the US there's already an organisation.  http://www.greenburialcouncil.org/
I don't want to become an undertaker so others are free to take it up. There are some legislative changes needed to burial laws, zoning and the tax protections but these are almost cost free to governments and create a new industry.

Tuesday, July 06, 2010

Is Obama a socialist or an islamist?

His parents appear to have been hard line Marxists and atheists at the time of his birth. I don't think there was ever a birth certificate, they avoided it because the draft is based on birth date. They did not think the USA would be still around in the 1980's. Even when his father moved them to Indonesia it was never to an area that had a hard line Islamic culture. They appear to be nominal in all things but Marxism. After the 1980's they may have even become disillusioned with that but Barack Obama's beliefs would have been locked in. The Christian life we also see is more his wife's doing. And the church he went to was much less of a church as it was a communist cell.
Obama is a very mixed up kid with the same Marxist/ Islamic hybrid that rose to power in the middle east after world war two. Hard line Islam killed it off in Afghanistan, Egypt, Southern Lebanon and Gaza after the Soviet Union went broke.

Barack Obama's world view is the same on that informs all on the left.
1. All conflict is caused by capitalist exploitation. (end exploitation and everyone will love us; even murderous would be dictators.)
2. The entrepreneur has no true function and can thus be robbed, taxed, exiled or shot freely with no consequences.
3. Government can anticipate and deal with the economic factors of risk, innovation and peoples time preference. (Generally the don't grasp time preference at all.)
4. There will always be someone else to tax or borrow from to pay the governments bills. (However today our Pension funds are the only rich capitalist pig remaining unbutchered.)
5. Individual actions such as sex and drugs have no consequence beyond the direct parties to the act.
6. All human activity destroys nature and no human activity (particularly private activity) can restore it.
7. Government activity can restore nature, etc, by just locking humans out of ecosystems.
8. The defence of liberty at home means isolationism, pulling the troops back to the USA. (This fails to realise that liberty is an idea that can live in the hearts of non Americans and forgets that without the French Navy in 1777-1783 Washington and the other revolutionaries would be in an unmarked grave today.
Who are Afghanistan's Sons of Liberty?)
9. All gods and religions are false and therefore irrelevant.
10. You can teach people to be sharing, caring, socialistic, atheistic, and obedient citizens without creating amoral, greedy, lazy, and down right dangerous Social Darwinists or Post Modern Pagans.

Unfortunately some or all of these ideas are held by many on all sides of politics, even conservatives.

Yes he panders to several islamist fronts at home and abroad but he panders to everything and everyone that he thinks will respond positive to his being 'polite'. He does not see the true danger of Islam because what he saw as a child was relatively moderate Sufi Islam in Indonesia and Kenya.
He grew up playing with a kitten; now he's in the Lions den!