the natural human need for shelter will provide a countervailing incentive for those tempted to move to already overburdened population centers. The positive effect of establishing secure and comfortable housing in rural areas is increasing steadily because many urban areas have reached a tipping point; small additions to the population can cause large disruptions in already strained available services. Thus, relief of housing shortages experienced by the rural poor achieves the double impact of reducing tensions in urban centers as well as the rural countryside. (1)

A rapid increase in available shelter of sufficient artistic quality to foster pride of place is a keystone solution to tensions which divert attention from the increasingly urgent problem of environmental collapse due to chemical pollution and global warming. Humanity has been subject to cycles of boom and bust experienced by other life forms and has now reached a point where a sustainable culture must be established to ensure further progress as well as specie survival (2). The techniques described here to employ the rural poor with the creation of modern shelter and sanitation are also suitable for many large, newly established urban areas which have proven ultimately unsatisfying and can be a source of disease and discord.

When the techniques are well known and material costs are a minor component given reality by extensive labor, it is entirely reasonable to propose a rapid increase in architecturally beautiful and functional shelter for the rural poor. Techniques for this type of structure are similar to smearing mud on sticks, known as mud and wattle, here-in, as space-age mud and wattle. Materials are organic fibers used to reinforce concrete mixed with acrylic. Concrete is most often used in large masses and is thus sometimes known as an environmentally unfriendly building material. In this case, the concrete is as thin as skin and replaces wood which has been harvested at an unsustainable rate. Structures made from, for example, bamboo, burlap, cement and acrylic are completely impermeable to water, do not decompose in sunlight, are not subject to rot or insect infestation, and are as easily repaired as fiberglass.

The human economy exists within the closed and finite limits of earth. This statement, though obvious, is a mathematical fundamental necessary to understanding the current predicament facing unsustainable cultures. Life on earth exists in a closed system which receives outside solar energy at a given rate. Human life utilizes low entropy resources and the solar budget to satisfy life?s necessities. By-products which are returned to the environment in the form of high entropy waste and pollution have clearly shown an increasing probability to be realized as toxic as scientific awareness progresses. Chemical burdens from these by-products can now be measured in living cells to single-digit parts per trillion. We do not know what all the chemical compositions of pollution baking in solar radiation are (3), but we do know that these now ubiquitous pollutants define the limitations of quantitative economic growth with confusing and often unpleasant health effects (2).

All present human cultures and economies are founded on the premise of continuous quantitative compound growth, forever, within the closed and finite planetary environment. There are many intelligent people who avoid the concept that continued growth of material wealth for a rapidly increasing population defines the actual problem, some go so far as to argue that the present economic system is reality and those who struggle to discern a path of social evolution without economic growth represents a failed belief system seeking to substitute everyone else?s reality with a fabrication that fits the failure. The short answer to this convoluted support for the actual failed reality - the one poisoning the planet - is that quantitative growth to infinity is an unsustainable mathematical impossibility. The ongoing search for an evolutionary vector defined by qualitative growth is a rational effort to discern a sustainable reality.

Anyone who does not feel frustration before the unbreachable limit presented by living in a culture attempting to grow faster and faster forever, quantitatively, either does not fully understand the paradox or chooses to ignore it and simply hope for the best. Fortunately there is an as yet largely untapped wellspring of surprising opportunity within the huge reserve of human imagination lying dormant in the rural poor. It is possible that, starting from dirt floors and little sanitation, a qualitative growth model for a sustainable human culture can develop and then reveal a hybrid economy capable of providing down to earth necessities, enjoyment of life's pleasures and the tools needed to reach the stars.

Reliance upon the poor and forgotten among humanity seems to be an odd idea. Everyone hopes the more advanced societies will find a way to stave off impending climatic and chemical disasters and, at the same time, learn to operate on a planet where the easiest to find resources have already been used. Yet even a cursory inspection of the industrialized economy stretching across central north America reveals millions in the southern area who air condition then reheat the air to dry clothes indoors, while the sun is blazing outside. Other millions in the northern tier of states heat winter cold and then refrigerate it to preserve their food. These millions upon millions are not stupid or evil destroyers of all life, they are simply trapped in a system of organization leading to disaster.

There are, or soon will be, as many rural poor as the entire human population at the beginning of the modern industrial and scientific era (1). The rural poor represent a huge second team ready to come onto the field and perhaps pull sustainability from the jaws of defeat.

No single entity has the resources or wisdom to provide secure and architecturally stimulating shelter for the rural poor of an entire planet. Initial steps to creating an expanding cycle of shelter for the rural poor are gathering sufficient funds and selecting a community with rural poor who might respond favorably. Associates of this proposal have trained many people in similar work and will go anywhere that is receptive and train people to build shelters and set up local businesses which support this effort by providing income to a core of trained supervisorial labor. The initial example will be used to record, refine and recruit further investment. Many artistic and accomplished builders have expressed keen interest in collaboration when this proposal has garnered full understanding and commitment from concerned organizations and individuals.

The key multiplier is from rural poor who will be establishing competitive enterprises while providing themselves with the comfort and security of decent shelter and sanitation. I believe the most probable organization will be loosely structured, beyond gender bias and empowered by all ages, a type of traditional village model with full cost recognition and civil liberties. Every journey begins with a first step, this one will require millions of the world?s rural poor to satisfy the need for housing among the entirety of the rural poor. Success in one community will in all probability spread rapidly worldwide. Everyone needs a secure home and a sustainable culture for full bloom of their children and grandchildren.

http://www.ferrocement.com

http://www.self-sheltering.org

1) ?... extreme poverty in the least developed 49 countries has doubled in the last 30 years... if current trends persist, the number living on less than $1/day will rise from the current figure of 370 million to 420 million by 2015.?
Robert L. Nadeau, Wealth of Nature, p. 16

2) Survival of species and economic limits due to health effects... Ana Soto, professor of cellular biology at Tufts University School of Medicine, referring to estrogen like components leaching from plastic and other products into food and the environment. "We have no choice," Soto says. "If reproduction is being affected, survival of the species is compromised. Sooner or later we have to regulate it. And what constitutes proof? In the 1950's a woman's lifetime risk of breast cancer was 1 in 22; today it is 1 in 7. A threefold increase cannot be genetic, it is most likely environmental, and many of us believe it is due to endocrine disrupters." Discover Magazine Better Planet Special Issue (1st qtr 2008) p. 51

3) Solar radiation and pollution... "Deborah Rice, an award-winning toxicologist, was removed from a group of experts researching a widely-used flame retardant... at the Environmental Protection Agency... after industry lobbyists complained that she was biased... Scientists had initially thought that the deca compound was not accumulating in people and animals as the other PBDEs were. But it appears that deca turns into other brominated substances when exposed to sunlight, and now many scientists say it, too, is building up in the environment worldwide. Deca has similar effects on animals? developing brains as the banned PBDEs." Marla Cone, Los Angeles Times, February 29, 2008