Some of our closest friends have remarked upon how our new (to them at least) calling is similar to what we’d be like if we’d have just found Jesus. Namely that we’re quite vocal about it and that we can’t help ourselves from trying to educate others.

This really made us stop and think for a moment. Do we really want to alienate our friends or others that we come into contact with? Ackers & Bealers fully paid up members of the knit your own yoghurt brigade?

After some navel gazing we boiled it down to three questions:

1. Are we taking on faith this belief that we should be acting now to massively reduce our carbon footprint and to prepare ourselves and our kids for a world 10-50 years hence that will have hugely reduced energy availability with regular energy shocks and (continuing) resource wars?
2. Would we in this sort of world want to still be relying on all our food coming from supermarkets with just-in-time supply chains stretching across the globe?
3. Should we be keeping our opinions to ourselves and letting people come to their own conclusions in their own time, possibly when it’s too late?

The answer to 1)  & 2) is easy, Nope.

Our personal tipping point came after a couple of years of research into our future lifestyle. We read up voraciously on small holdings, energy decline, climate change, home schooling etc and published most of the home related stuff through Cathie’s old blog. At some point we came to the realisation that whatever we decided to do next with our lives would involve trying very hard to live a low-impact lifestyle. To re-tool and to provide as much food and energy for ourselves as was possible.

The best bit is that it doesn’t matter if we are wrong. If the deniers are right and that the current warming has nothing to do with man-made intervention then what difference does it make that we as a family produce less carbon? If a magic new energy source comes along that can replace oil and gas so that the global economy can continue to be predicated on continual growth then what does it matter if we eat things we’ve grown our bought locally? Will our kids really suffer if they don’t watch telly and instead have a farm to roam around in with their own personal wood to play in?

Question 3) was more difficult as we’re both social people and would hate for people to avoid us because of our views. This blog for instance we’ve not really publicised yet. Partly because the design isn’t finished so we’ve got this default theme but also because we’re conscious of not ramming things down people’s throats so wanted to ease ourselves into it. We don’t want to alienate people but we do feel that it might be useful to others to log our progress.

Watching The Age of Stupid has made us decide to be more militant, though. It brought together everything we’ve learned and reminded us that we have a duty to do what we can to change history.

So, we’re still us: Atheist, open-minded and definitely not wearing sandals with socks. However we do have a fire in our belly and we might talk about things you don’t want to hear. Hopefully you’re cool with that.