While we and many friends struggle to afford housing, water and nutrient dense food, rental prices have increased 74% in nine years; the cost of buying a new house has increased 82%. AirB&Bs and second homeowners now border our rental house.

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After 15 years of renting a four-room house and learning, from tending its flower and vegetable gardens, that home is about connection to land, my husband and I need a new home. Our landlords plan to move back here.

Forty years ago, a mentor told me, before you look for a house, find your neighborhood.

When "All politics is local" no longer holds true, what is a neighborhood? Most gatherings happen online; and "all politics" have gone online and turned federal.

My husband and I would love to live near food-growers who aim to live within our watershed's offerings of fuel and water. We'd welcome neighbors who consider nature our teacher. We don't want to live near a data center, a battery energy storage system (BESS), solar PVs or wind turbines, cell sites or smart meters. We'd like to keep our landline.

While we and many friends struggle to afford housing, water and nutrient dense food, rental prices have increased 74% in nine years; the cost of buying a new house has increased 82%. AirB&Bs and second homeowners now border our rental house.

Federally, The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) just rescinded the 2024 Conservation and Landscape Health Rule. For the USA's 245 million acres of BLM-managed public land, including 13.5 million acres in New Mexico, this reversal will prioritize mining, drilling, grazing and recreation over conservation. It goes into effects June 11, 2026.

When you lose your land, British climate journalist Rachel Donald says, you lose your mind.

In New Mexico, where my husband and I have lived for about 40 years, we're inundated with projects that take from the Earth faster than it can replenish and waste faster than the Earth can replenish the waste. Recently, Santa Fe County Commissioners have permitted the 700-acre Rancho Viejo solar/battery facility. Doña Ana County Commissioners have permitted Project Jupiter, a 1400-acre, $165 billion data center campus. Near Socorro, Green Data proposes building a $165 billion, 10,000-acre "green" AI-training data center that will rely heavily on solar PVs and battery storage. Gamma Resources seeks an exploratory permit to drill uranium in the Carson National Forest. The Los Alamos National Lab might double its production of plutonium pits (nuclear weapons), per year. The private equity firm Blackstone aims to buy PNM, the state's largest utility; and the state's regulatory staff just recommended approval of selling NM Gas Company to Bernhard Capital Partners, another private equity firm.

If an affordable neighborhood with legal protections for nature and public health still exists on Planet Earth, I don't know about it.

So-- what is home now, and how do we who aim to orient by nature proceed?

I DO NOT UNDERSTAND

In 2017, in his inaugural speech, China's leader Xi Jingping called for "an ecological civilization" that ensures "harmony between human and nature." He said that his administration would "encourage simple, moderate, green and low-carbon ways of life and oppose extravagance and excessive consumption." Xi Jingping promised to "take tough steps to stop and punish all activities that damage the environment."

Then, as China's president, he invested heavily in solar PVs, industrial wind turbines, EVs"and A.I.

I do not understand how anyone can call solar PVs, wind turbines, batteries or EVs "clean." Look at electronics (anything with a computer, including vehicles, appliances, TVs, smartphones, solar panels and batteries) from their cradles-to-graves! Look at the infrastructure they require! Manufacturing electronics involves a power grid, extractions, refining, fossil fuels, water, toxins and intercontinental shipping. Electronics do not biodegrade. Plus, they pose major fire hazards-- and emit toxins when they catch fire. And then, about 80% of solar components are manufactured in China using slave labor.

Indeed, all electronics and anything online (including this substack) require immeasurable amounts of electricity, water and extractions; (one smartphone starts with more than 125 substances, each with an international supply chain); workers who labor in hot factories (104 degrees Fahrenheit/40 degrees Celsius) at barely sustainable wages; access networks that guzzle energy and data centers that guzzle energy and water.

How does all of this relate to land and homes and neighborhoods? Composting kitchen scraps and growing a wee bit of food connect me to land and water and give me inclusion in the web of life. When corporations take land, water and forests-- the public commons-- to build technologies, profits, data centers and energy systems, we mortals get confused. We start thinking we need money and technology to survive. We think food comes from grocery stores. We think community is online. We lose our homes and neighborhoods.

So then, as we look for home, what's constructive use of our attention?

SURVIVAL LESSONS

First, we need to admit we've got a problem.

The Strait of Hormuz's closure might well be the crisis that gives us no choice but to admit we've got problems. We depend on international supply chains that we cannot control.

Then, we need to learn to grow food.

Recently, I watched John D. Liu's 2007 film, Lessons of the Loess Plateau. It shows how degradation of an ancient Chinese civilization's ecosystem led to dried up soil, plant loss and people dying from starvation. Then, in 2005, each household was granted land ownership. With education, people over 35,000 square kilometers (13,500 square miles) restored their watershed, healed their damaged ecosystem and grew much of their own food"in ten years.

In 2017, Lui founded Ecosystem Restoration Communities: a global movement that's currently active on six different continents. "By 2030, we're aiming for 100 projects and 3,1 million hectares of land."

OTHER NEWS

In London last week, Jake Hurfurt observed two protests: one for "Unite the Kingdom," an anti-migrant, anti-Islam movement. The other supported Palestine by marking Nakba Day. (The Nakba, The Catastrophe, names the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict that led to the creation of Israel and the forced expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes.) In both London protests, people were chilled by the surveillance, including live facial recognition alongside drones, helicopters, police dogs, horses and armored vehicles. In UK, Hurfurt observes, the right to free speech often depends on where you live, not on the law.

AT&T has filed suit against California officials: it seeks a court order declaring that it does not have to continue offering traditional copper wire phone service to new customers.

The U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services released a surgeon general's report warning against the harms of excessive screen use for children and teens. The report gives parents, schools and communities practical tools to protect children and adolescents from growing harms of excessive screen exposures.

See Honor the Earth's toolkit for opposing data centers.

Pope Leo XIV will drop His A.I. Encyclical on Memorial Day with Anthropic onstage.

Given that the last oil tanker from the Strait of Hormuz has delivered, petroleum geologist Art Berman expects that by July, U.S. Americans will understand that we're in crisis, undeniably. In his conversation with Nate Hagens, Berman maps what goes into delivering gas and diesel and liquid natural gas (drilling, refining, ship insurance, delivery-- and why, even if our war with Iran ends today, energy prices will rise. In turn, higher prices will impact our civilization's four oil-dependent pillars: steel, cement, plastic and ammonia (for fertilizer). The opportunity is to live with a lot less oil.

Last, I'm reminded of Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925, founder of Waldorf Schools and biodynamic agriculture). After wires installed behind walls allowed people to access light and power by the flick of a switch, he predicted that eventually, because of electrification, people would no longer need to think. He also believed that the world would divide between two kinds of people: those who believe that what is actually evil is good-- and those who must love them.

Authors Website: http://www.ourweb.tech

Authors Bio:

Katie Singer writes about nature and technology in Letters to Greta. She spoke about the Internet's footprint in 2018, at the United Nations' Forum on Science, Technology & Innovation, and, in 2019, on a panel with the climatologist Dr. James Hansen. Her most recent book is An Electronic Silent Spring. www.DearGreta.com and www.ElectronicSilentSpring.com.