John Mortensen

How do you build an "Organic Life," and what does that mean? To me, it means living a life where I do not contribute to overpopulation, overbuilding, pollution, global warming, and making a planet where my children and grandchildren can no longer survive. It is not just organic food, farming, clothing, or materials and those premisses but everything we do and how we live. I want to be organic in all areas of my life. Getting back to a life of living symbiotically with the planet and not trying to tame it like we did the old West. Is it too late for that? I don't know, but I can do my part, and that process for me started quite a few years ago. How Do You Start A Life You Have Never Lived Before, And Where Do You Begin? Christmas in Las Vegas Nevada 2016 My beginning was after having Stage IV Oropharyngeal Cancer (throat cancer) in late 2015-2016 and my third divorce. I was living in Las Vegas, Nevada, in the middle of the desert, where I was born and raised. I was always living a physically healthy life with diet and exercise, but I was not living an emotionally healthy life with way to much stress from working in a business. So after getting cancer I started on the Paleo Diet lifestyle to elevate the level of my nutrition, and attempt to heal my body. I also had never liked living in the desert because it was always way too hot for me personally. No one from Las Vegas ever believes the 6:00 pm nightly news weather report because your car thermometer is telling you the truth. 113 in my vehicle today does not equal 98 degrees on the local evening news. We always thought they were making it up for the tourists? Because I am a project manager and a "science geek" and spend all of my free time studying things like NASA's Grace Satellite's and Paleoclimatology as a hobby, everything I read and studied on the subject for the last 20 years told me something was wrong with how we supply water to the city. Even though I was a third-generation Nevadan and very proud of that, I had been researching other places to live someday for years and rode my motorcycle to many of them, or went on fishing trips to these places when I had vacations. Snowpack In The Mountains Supplies Our Water Water in the Middle of the Desert Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. A friend of mine, Tim Deters, and I had gone in July 2016 to an SIOR, Southern Nevada Monthly Luncheon called "Water Supplies, Future Resources and the General State of our Water Utilities." John Entsminger, General Manager of the Las Vegas Valley Water District and Southern Nevada Water Authority, was the presenter. This occurred the year after the Sierra Nevada Mountain snowpack of 2015 was 10% of its average snowpack. During the question and answer period, I was second to last, and I asked Mr. Enstminger what would happen if we had a snowpack in the Colorado Rockies like we just had in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in 2015? He said all bets would be off. Meaning that all of the cities, farms, and ranches that were fed downstream of the Rocky Mountains by the Colorado River would be in "Dire Straits" compared to anything ever experienced in recent history. Life-Changing Decision Indian residents use hoses to collect drinking water from a tanker truck during a hot summer day in the low-income neighborhood of Sanjay camp in New Delhi India. Image Credit AFP This was one of the many additional confirmations of what I already knew. With the state of the worlds overpopulation, water use, food production, etc.. and that we were on an unsustainable path. You can't just endlessly drain the rivers and the groundwater aquifers all over the world to support human growth and expansion and never expect it to run out. Just ask India about 0 Water Day in 2019. never So a decision was made for me in late 2016 that I could not live my life like I was living anymore. The Chemo Therapy and Radiation I had gone through during cancer treatment has taken a terrible toll on my mind and body. The Cisplatin Chemo Therapy drug that they gave me kills your brain Synapse on contact, something my Chemo Therapy Oncologist did not mention, by the way, or I would have gone with the offered immune therapy treatment instead. Life Decisions Made For You I was not capable of doing the job I was doing before because of the Chemo Brain side effects, and the vice president of the company asked me to leave. He would run the company better without me. Well, that was uplifting!! Hard work didn't matter because no matter how hard I worked after the great recession, it was never enough. The good news after the Great Recession was that we were still in business, and the bad news after the Great Recession was we were still in business with a lot of debt. Start Over From Zero Amazing Glaciers in the Alaska Range So after living my whole life in one place, Las Vegas, Nevada (minus one year in Reno and Juneau, Alaska) and losing the ability to do what I was doing, which is very demeaning by the way. I decided it did not matter if I lived five more minutes or five more years; I would rather be in a place that I love then live like I was living. Some of the fun facts you get with cancer treatment are the survival rate for Head and Neck Cancer, and they are excellent motivators for life planning!! So since I have always loved the outdoors, and for me, that was hunting and fishing my whole life, I thought I would go back to Alaska and try to find a job, and live subsistence. I thought I would go back to Alaska and try to find a job. What difference did it make if I was going to die anyway, right? How Do You Become Part Of The Solution Instead Of Part Of The Problem? Backyard vegetable garden in wooden raised beds or boxes That is the question I ask myself every day and have a burning desire to answer and initiate a new life and to write about it. Can we work, live, and survive without everything we have become accustomed too? You have to admit that life is pretty easy for most of us, nowadays. I am sitting in my motel room in Anchorage, Alaska, contemplating these questions. I came here for more cancer surgery, this time for Basal Cell Carcinoma on my forehead. (Wear your sunscreen, kids)!! This motel room is cheap in the motel room world but luxurious by the world's standards. Beautiful carpet, television, room service, nice bathtub, and clean water; just about everything you could want. It is easy to become accustomed to luxury in the West. It has been our goal to make it so. Everything in this room has been shipped here and manufactured in a factory or facility from somewhere else. The food we eat had to be trucked here from somewhere. The clothes you're wearing or what I just bought on Amazon this morning are being flown to us for our satisfaction. Manufactured somewhere on the planet, processed, flown, trucked, or shipped to where we are. The Five Stages of Grief for Our Stuff Apparently, we need to go through the Five Stages of Grief to get rid of our stuff or possessions and wean us off of our magical lifestyle. But who cares? I care, and you have to start somewhere. Can I make a difference with my small contribution to the global picture? I think so and am counting on it. All of the things we have acquired or as I like to call it "Stuff," are really not that important when you get to go through the training exercise of confronting your mortality. Receiving the gift of this kind of growth experience compels a unique kind of soul-searching. One might ask oneself if I am only going to live six more months, what is important, and what do I want to do in those six months? You will get some clarity trust me. Is Recycling for Snobs? Hawksbill turtle in the ocean with a plastic bag / garbage around its neck I recycle and believe in it, and what does it have to do with my life change? Well, should we just keep ignoring what happens to our garbage? Where does it go, and why is it a problem? In the United States, we ship much of our garbage to other countries so we can make it their problem. It is a business. When I lived in Las Vegas, Nevada, and would recycle not only because I think it is essential, but the local garbage company made it easy. They provided a single stream recycling service and a trash can, eliminating the need for sorting at home. They sorted it for you at a processing plant. When I moved to a small town in Alaska, in early 2017, I learned how much effort recycling can require. They also have a recycling program, but iit s not at all the same. You have to separate the recycling your self and deliver it to the recycling location at the local dump. Certain plastics are not accepted. They do not have trash pick up in all areas there because it is a small town and in rural Alaska. They will not accept certain plastics either. Overall they do a good job and are trying to get better. Unfortunately, most developing places in the world are not recycling their trash. According to www.planetaid.org Recycling Rates By CountryFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaThe following table gives the percentages of material that is recycled, incinerated, incinerated to produce energy and landfilled.[1]CountryRecycling and compostingIncineration with energy recoveryIncineration without energy recoveryLandfillGermany6522130South Korea5924116Austria583504Slovenia581036Belgium554311Taiwan55no datano datano dataSwitzerland514900Netherlands504811Sweden505001Luxembourg4835no data17Iceland455149Denmark445402United Kingdom4321034Australia411no data58Italy4121038Ireland4018042Norway395702France3833128United States3512no data54Finland3342025Estonia300070Spain3010060Poland296263Hungary269no data65Portugal2624050Canada24no data472Czech Republic2419056Malaysia210no data79Greece19no datano data81Israel19no datano data81Japan197161Slovakia1111071Russia7no datano datano dataMexico5no datano data95Chile10099Turkey1no data099New Zealandno datano datano data100Wikipedia Recycling Rates By Country Does It Help If You Move? I am currently working and living in Nome, Alaska. I thought when I came here, it would be different, and there would not be as much trash and litter because of how remote the location is. I was sadly mistaken, and there is a tremendous amount of litter in this area. People here just drop a soda or beer can right on the ground next to the road or next to a pristine river or by the ocean. It is incredibly difficult for me to see. They do not currently recycle waste in Nome, Alaska, but some people are discussing it. There is a solicitation notice and request fo a proposal for a Regional Recycling Center Feasibility Study, and they are attempting to look at the viability of it. No World Oversite For Trash Disposal Recently there was an article in the local Nome Nugget Newspaper named "Foreign Plastic Continues To Wash Up On Region's Beaches". It is about trash washing up on the shores of the ocean along the Bearing Sea from Asia and Russia. You can tell where it is from by the labeling on the plastic bottles and containers. There is no world oversite on the disposal of trash and waste. If a fishing fleet or maritime industry trash boat captain decides to dump their whole load of garbage in the middle of the ocean when nobody is around, there is nothing anyone can do about it. How Do You Stop Using Plastic, Manufactured Goods, Or Factory Farming How do you stop using manufactured goods, plastic or paper towels, steak, or chicken from the grocery store? How do you quit contributing to the process of killing our planet and ourselves in the process? How do you eat clean? Imagine how surprising it was. I started the Paleo Diet after I got cancer to heal and then began to consider becoming a vegetarian after a lifetime of hunting, fishing and being a meat-eater. Wow I thought, the Paleo Diet isn't even enough. Organic Meat, wild-caught fish, wild game. I am asking myself, you mean that's not enough? Quit buying? How do you start a life you have never lived before? Your telling me if I quit buying feedlot cattle steaks and chicken from corporate factory farms, that isn't enough? What does it take? How do you press the reset button on your life? What if you come to the conclusion that you just can't do this anymore? If you've been in business all your life, drive a gasoline-powered vehicle, fly on commercial airplanes, go to the local grocery store, consuming electricity, and just live life without considering the bigger picture. Sounds impossible, right? Global Population Growth To 8 Billion Aerial view of Over Populated New York skyscraper buildings I have been watching our global population growth for the last 30 years after I became aware of it. It also came with the epiphany; "How can you continue economic and human growth on a finite planet"? It took all of history almost to get to 1 billion people in around the year 1800 on planet earth. In the last hundred years or so, we have added nearly 7 billion more people. It doesn't take a genius to do the math on that one as it is like a train rushing headlong into our lives. We should hit 8 billion people by 2023. Every 12 years, we are adding a billion people, and that is not a typographical error. By 2030 we will have over 81/2 billion people on planet earth, and that is not some way off future time. It is less than 10 years. Even as the global population's growth rate drops, there will be with the latest world population projections that the world population will reach 10 billion persons in the approximate year of 2057. That is a lot of people and their dogs and cats. Can you see it in the city and the countryside, when you travel, or even on vacation? People and houses everywhere. Unsustainable. The bigger question is, how do we get a consensus and stop, or will we just keep doing what we are doing? Global Climate Condition Is Not A Political Issue; It Is A Human Issue I have been researching the global climate condition for years; it is not a political issue; it is a human issue. Sometimes we can't see the forest for the trees or something as important as this. I have been a Republican, an Independent, and now I am Non-partisan for many years. I believe in a strong economy and a clean planet without fossil fuels and plastic-filled oceans with no fish. More important to me is my children and grandchildren and the life they will have in the future. Lab-Grown Meat VS Vegetarianism Two lab grown meat samples in scientist hands. Feedlot Cattle Steaks do not sound very positive or appetizing, do they? They are not and if you look at the previous link article by Big Picture Beef, a company that is focused on helping farmers produce grass-fed beef humanely in the Northeastern United States. Lab-Grown Meat sounds even worse if you ask me. It seems like humans will do whatever they can if it will make money, and it does not matter how unnatural it is. Wikipedia calls Lab-Grown Meat "Cultured Meat," as it definitions title from its contributors. I am sure this name was created by some advertising guru to make Lab Meat sound palatable. I mean, who wants to eat something with the word laboratory in it? We will see how Lab-Grown Meat progresses, but personally, I would much rather eat a vegetable burger than a lab meat burger, not only from a sustainability aspect but from an ethical aspect as well. "American philosopher Carlo Alvaro argues that the question of the morality of eating in vitro meat has been discussed only in terms of convenience. Alvaro proposes a virtue-oriented approach that may reveal aspects of the issue not yet explored, such as the suggestion that the obstinacy (stubbornness) of wanting to produce lab-grown Meat stems from unvirtuous motives, i.e., "lack of temperance and misunderstanding of the role of food in human flourishing." Gen Z is not ready to eat lab-grown Meat – they find it disgusting Steps Toward Being A Vegetarian Vegetarian meal with Brown Rice, Kale, Mushrooms, and Extra Firm Tofu As I said earlier in this article, I have been a hunter and a fisherman all of my life. I moved to Alaska to start living a subsistence lifestyle. I love Meat and always have. I was a true, carnivore caveman. I now believe meat production is unsustainable in the future for many reasons that I will write about in future articles. It is also disgusting the way animals and nature are treated by factory farms, and I am not a "Vegan" but a human being. As I am reevaluating every aspect of my life, I have started towards becoming an Organic Vegetarian for the reason and that meat production is unsustainable. It sounds difficult, and it is, but I have started, and it is ok. Becoming a vegetarian is a learning process. In my most recent visit to Anchorage, I tried a few vegetarian restaurants to learn what to eat and was very pleasantly surprised. Some of my favorites dishes were the Fried Cauliflower Bites, Vegan Bibimbap, and the Gluten-Free Vegetarian Pizza at the Rustic Goat Restaurant. They also have a Veggie Burger called Beyond Meat at Carls Junior, that you can get wrapped in lettuce for a gluten-free option. Yes, very, very far from a sustainable lifestyle, but "Baby Steps" to start with. I have given away all of my organic beef, and am eating through the rest of my wild game and fish. There is no turning back!! What We Will Write About At Organic Life Builder Fresh grown and picked organic potatoes This is what we will write about. The life transition and process to an Organic Life that is symbiotic with nature. To transition from being a part of the problem to part of the solution. This is what we will do; this is what we will be. To start, you have to start somewhere. I have come to the conclusion that in order to walk the walk that I believe in. It is necessary to go to extraordinary steps to show my children that this lifestyle change is important enough to take a stand and do something about it. The world is dying, and as small as it may be to do my part in helping and changing that. This is what I will do.