Besides recycling what can we do that makes the biggest difference for a better world? Hint: Recycling is not on the list.

1. Have A One-Child Family

This one selfless act goes further to making the world a better place than all of the other things you can do combined. If everyone had one child families, population would drop to 1 billion in 100 years. One child also exponentially reduces consumption over time. Guys, after you have one child, get snipped. It’s easier for us than for your partner.

2. Live in a Remodel

Building a new home takes space from other species and consumes a ton of natural resources. Remodel if you have to, retrofit to be more energy-efficient. Live close in where you can bike to the market.

3. Live in Community

Find like-minded people. Think of it as hanging out with people you dig, your modern-day tribe. Share things that it does not make sense for everyone to own like a car or kitchen. Bill Mollison, co-founder of permaculture said, “Look for skills not money.” Look for people who know how to do things, organic farm, wildcraft, herbal medicine, natural building, rocket mass heaters, counsel, heal, art. Look for the real deal.

4. Local Raw Diet

Can you eat a quarter of your food within 50 miles? Cooking reduces nutrition and deforests the earth. Industrial agriculture is poisoning the soil, air and water. Everyone would at least be a vegetarian if they had to spend a week living in a stockyard or were put in a coral with a bull with nothing but a fork. Grains like barley can be eaten just by soaking. Your teeth are flat, think about it.

5. Do-Good Business

Dedicate your time to a business that helps improve the world. It can anything from family marriage counseling, teaching permaculture or producing a renewable good. Imagination is the limit. For example, we sell open pollinated seeds so people can grow their own food and save their seeds. www.restorationseeds.com.

Ideally, have a tribal business in your community. You become economically interdependent developing a modern do-good tribal business.

6. Learn the Old Wisdoms

Everything you know is meaningless. What we need to know is not taught in schools. Much is learned in life and on the streets but the important stuff are realizations.

Try this “Wisdom Test©”, Would it be true to you forefathers 10,000 years ago? What people forget is that for anything to be true it has to be evolutionarily proven to be beneficial to all beings for hundreds of thousands of years. For example, human’s live best in tribes or all species must build topsoil, not erode it.

7. Create Alternatives

The way modern society is organized is selfish. Start creating new social structures, economic relationships and celebrations of spirit. Create alternative politics without binding decisions honoring all species. If your ideas is a good one, people will start to walk away from the mess that is civilization. Make that your goal.

8. Live By Example

Walk your talk. Keep making it better each go round, improve, improve, improve. Avoid could, should, woulds, live your truth, be an example.

9. Teach Others

Pass on wisdom. The good stuff. Find a way to get out there and share what you have learned, write, podcast, teach or counsel. We have taught permaculture on the farm for seven years.

10. Be Energy Inefficient

Do you like this one! Get the fossil fuel era over as soon as possible. Cheap energy is destroying the world. Consumption and population is a result of cheap energy. You take away the energy and economic activity, resource consumption and population drop over time. We are going to dig up and burn ever recoverable fossil fuel so there is no stopping global warming to be honest. So go buy a Cadillac with wings.

Everything else is small potatoes. Do at least one from the list above and you will make a big difference.

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Thank you C for your inspiration.

Share these ideas person-to-person. Don’t just read these essays, post links on your social media to essays that resonate with you. Our speech is not free if dissenting messages are hidden by search engines, and mainstream media. You found these ideas, now share them with others!

Chuck Burr is author of Culturequake: The Restoration Revolution. Revised Fourth Edition. 10th Anniversary.