So a re-routing seems to be the mission at the moment which all seems like going round in a big circle. So if we can't get our own private haven it's back to engaging more in public nature. The farm plan always involved being close to a major public natural coastal resource anyway (e.g. a farm next to Pagham Harbour or the Thames Estuary) so this was always to do with a private/public weighting.
Personally speaking I need to have regular access to coastal birding and mothing as the migration and vagrancy element of nature is what really fires me up and keeps my light going. I think that is vital as if I'm not fired up and excited by life I won't be any kind of use/inspiration/lead/soul to drain for the boys. So the new plan is for me to spend two days or so a week on the coast, first from my campervan and later when I can afford it maybe buy a small lodge or holiday home (the family can join me too that way). The benefit of me going alone now is Holly was not keen at all on the Thames Estuary (too industrial and gritty for her) but it's always been my dream to retire there so as one obstacle goes up another comes down. I'll then need at least one day in London working and then the other four days of the week I can be back here with Holly and the kids and work from home (I can also work on the road). Meanwhile where ever Holly decides to move to I'll do my best to make that new home as nature-centric as possible, I just hope she gets a decent garden!
I would have preferred the coastal haven family base so we could be together all the time but like I say it's not my choice to make alone. Seriously though I must be one of the few blokes on the planet who isn't allowed to settle down and gets forced into a selfish lifestyle by their partner! The madness is I was finally ready to settle down too and was quite enjoying the thought of not having to travel so much. Anyway natural forces know best so I'll go with it.
It's going to make my personal carbon negative/nature positive footprint objective more difficult too. I was hoping we could use a private farmstead/nature reserve to go to town on that. In order to address that issue now I was planning on concentrating on moving more investment into the Bulgaria project (get more for your money there too). One mature tree is supposed to capture 21kg of carbon a year (one tonne over a 100 year life span as they don't capture so much carbon in early years) and the average carbon footprint of a UK citizen is 10 tonne of carbon a year. So basically each human needs to own about 700 to 800 trees for more or less the duration of their life (80 year life span). Soils, peats, wetlands and marine environments can capture more carbon so an individual could own those resources too. Of course in addition to private ownership there is collective ownership too- e.g. by giving money to conservation NGOs, volunteering time to recording biodiversity for NGOs/research centres or investing in private natural capital companies or owning an NGO or natural capital company too (like we do).
I think we already own about 100 mature trees on the Bulgaria project so personally I would like to expand that to own 700 trees (seems a simple tangible target with established metrics). Then there's the carbon in the soil and grasses there too so that alone should mean I'm getting towards personal net zero. In addition there's all the trees and carbon sequestration resources we help to manage with Little Oak. While we can't add 100% of those resources to offset our personal footprints there must be some calculation to see what our share is of that e.g. there's tens of thousands of trees and wetlands etc planted at Beddington Farmlands alone (a resource we champion) and there must be tens of thousands across our gardens and green spaces we manage too. In addition there's the natural resources we own by investing in natural capital company shares and our 'shares' by supporting conservation NGOs too.
Anyway in the absence of these precise calculations at the moment the best approach seems to do absolutely everything we can to invest in as much carbon sequestration and natural capital as possible and to minimise our carbon consumption. That maximising investment while minimising consumption needs to be a well calculated trade off too (the reason why I've been a mild critic of the concept of low carbon birding in the past is that it simply concentrates on local carbon consumption reduction and not natural capital investment or wider collective natural capital ownership or re-designing global economic systems). Presumably I'm not far off being nature positive/carbon neutral but also I mustn't forget about the kids (while they are under 18 I guess I am also responsible for another 20 tonnes a year!). Ultimately the solution is simple- just do everything I can without burning out. Meanwhile fundamental capitalist billionaires of the world carry on with their plan to achieve sustainability by driving billions of people to extinction or fates worse than death and they survive an apocalypse that they engineer and control (not sure that's going to work out well for them or everyone helping them do that as it means destroying their own planetary communities that they need to survive too) so there's that slight concern to circumnavigate too- trying to do this against that global destructive force. Fun times!
So, that seems to be the general direction of travel at the moment- a more complex de-centralised strategy (aka 'I'm fucked') and seems like I'll have to wait for my private personal paradise- in the grave by the sounds of it.
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