so, vice has gone to shit, recently. but, i've posted frequently about this for many years, and it goes back to a debate i had with occupy activists, who wanted to grow "organic farms" in toxic refuse sites from ottawa's lost days of industrial overproduction. i'm not going to bother and have blocked them from the recs, but i'll just leave this note here before i walk off.

here's something you probably don't know - almost all city parks are built on toxic waste sites. that's why they're parks. you're looking at prime real estate, quite frequently. but, the laws said they couldn't build houses or apartments or really anything there because there used to be a paint plant or a chemicals factory or something else there, before it was shut down however many generations ago. that's a general rule that holds for almost all city parks in almost all cities.

for that reason, urban soil is almost universally toxic and outdoor urban farming is actually a really dumb idea. if you're going to grow food outdoors, it needs to be grown in isolated areas that don't have a history of mercury or lead contamination, amongst other things. you might be shocked by what you find if you actually look into it...

environmental degradation is not some thing in the distant future, it's the reality we've been living through since the 60s, at least, meaning most of us have lived essentially our entire lives in ruined ecosystems and barely habitable ecologies. we don't realize how bad it is. we think it's an exaggeration, it's "not true here", it's some far off thing - no. it's real, and it's the life we've all lived through.

if you survive everything else, and you make it to a certain age, you will die of cancer; you've lived your whole life in a filthy, carcinogenic wasteland. even if you don't know it...

i'm not going to fact check the precise claims made in the video, although i'd invite somebody else to.

what i'll say is this, and i'll say it clearly: 

- if what you want is to escape to some bullshit thoreauvian fantasy where you live outside of society in a small, isolated community and fuck the world anyways then these small-scale permaculture settlements can offer you some escape. the pre-requisite, though, is that you need to be rich. 

- if you want to actually feed tens of billions of people, hydroponics is the only feasible solution.

the first option is a feasible escape plan for the elite, if the world is doomed, anyways. but, it will lead to mass starvation if it is ever adopted.

rather, it is the second option that mass movements on the left should be concerning themselves with, not the first - if you actually want to save the world, rather than find some way to escape the collapse.