Because we seem to be trying to turn a planet that supports life into one that does not, I’m posting a question or topic here every week to see if together we can work out some nuts and bolts of how to survive.
Prior questions were:
Do You Stay or Do You Go? What Is Your Timeline?
What Skill Do You Need To Learn? How Will You Deal With Flooding?
What About Potable Water? Got Energy?
What Are Your Preparations For A Food Emergency?
Do You Have Enough Nutrients? What Are Your Plans For Fire?
What Will You Do About Medical Care? What Are Your Plans For Mental Health?
Do You Have Community? Will You Kill Invasive Species?
What Are You Doing About Information Access?
Will You Assist Migration? How Do You Dress For Extremes?
How Will You Get Around?
This week’s question is What’s Your Radius?
How far, for what?
How far do you need to travel? How far do you want to travel? And for what? The answers to these questions determine your radius.
For instance, if you live in a food desert, you might have to travel much farther for food than if you don’t. If you need an abortion, you may have to travel much farther for health care than if you don’t. If you can’t afford to live where you work, you may have to travel much farther for a paycheck than if you can.
Radii among Native Californians
Many Native groups in CA had places they lived most of the year, and then places they went to seasonally, often during summer, for hunting and harvesting food. Their seasonal travel radii could be as little as a few miles or as many as a hundred. They usually walked into a different ecosystem (coastal to marshland, for instance), and often the change included substantial elevation differences (such as Central Valley into the Sierras). There were many benefits to these seasonal movements.
Radii among some other indigeneous peoples
The Yanomami live south of the Orinoco River, in villages of 50-400 people, and practice shifting cultivation so as not to destroy the ecosystem reserves. Legally, they have access to almost 24 million acres of the Yanomami Indigeneous Territory. Realistically, though, the territroy is seen as a next frontier for corporate resource exploitation and destruction. As of 2014, at least 61,000 acres had been deforested. There are rumors of gold being discovered in the territory, leading to lots of illegal mining, road building, and deforestation.
The Sámi were fishers, herders, and mountain agriculturalists, though now the majority are urbanized; only about 10% of the current population are reindeer herders. Sámi access to their traditional lands has been substantially reduced by the nations claiming their territory (Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia) and engaging in all the usual forced assimilation/colonization measures. The Sámi herds were hit hard by Chernobyl fallout and reindeer continue to be very radioactive today. And climate change is hitting the arctic ecosystems faster and harder than ecosystems farther south. So, while the Sámi traditionally had large, regularly travelled radii, today their world is much more confined.
There is evidence the Ancestral Puebloans were involved in trade over vast distances, as far as the west and Gulf coasts. This vast range was not enough to prevent the abandonment of the region, most likely due to a megadrought.
The Mongols, horseriding herders, grew to an empire and then contracted into a country. 30% of the population is still nomadic or semi-nomadic.
Radii by income levels in U.S. now
The ability to go from one place to another, or to use but not damage an ecological area, is strongly linked to income and community (nhts.ornl.gov/...). Generally, the rich travel the most, over the most area, and produce the greatest amount of CO2 per person in their travels. Households in poverty spend a higher portion of their income on travel, have lower vehicle ownership rates (of all types of vehicles), and have a smaller travel radius (except in urban areas where the working poor have to travel farther distances because they cannot afford to live where they work).
Radii by low to no carbon cost
We don’t need to be pouring CO2 into the atmosphere to travel. Humans took over the world on foot. Bikes and sailboats have circled the globe. A solar-powered airplane flew around the world. Such travel is usually slower and is generally discouraged by political or corporate entities who claim ownership of territories.
So where do you have to go and how will you get there?