Greenhouse and Organic Nursery

We are experiencing an increasingly uncertain world with the recent financial crisis and collapse of the world markets, the 2008 oil price shocks that sent energy and food costs to the stratosphere, the rapid decay of our ecosystem, and depleting fresh water supplies.  Many experts predict more oil shocks in the near future due to the statistics behind “Peak Oil” and the declining value of the US dollar.
According to environmentalists, human population growth has already far exceeded the natural carrying capacity of planet Earth, making us ever more dependent on fossil fuels for our modern civilization to function.

Although there are many reasons given for the recent global economic meltdown, $147 per barrel oil as a cause has been rarely discussed.  The entire world economy depends on oil, and this fuel of life went from $17 per barrel in 2001 to $147 in 2008.  This, in my opinion, was the primary cause of the global economic bankruptcy, not the 5% of bad mortgages in the US.

Organic Plant Nursery at Sustainable Community

The large multinational agriculture corporations must use heavy doses of fossil fuel based fertilizers and pesticides to grow crops on otherwise unfertile soil, while using massive diesel tractors to plant and harvest, only to transport the crops thousands of miles to big box stores.  No wonder the cost of rice doubled in 2008 along with oil.

It is also estimated that 70% of the world’s fresh water supply is used for irrigation and other agribusiness.  This system is highly unsustainable and is likely to experience further problems as oil and water become less available and more expensive.  The US and other parts of the world have made a conscious effort to increase focus on local food production to lesson the impact of future oil shocks.

Sustainable Living in Costa Rica

Costa Rica is well positioned to weather any storm caused by future increases in the price of oil.  Costa Rica produces over 95% of its electricity through renewable means like hydroelectric, geothermal, and wind power.  Costa Rica is considered a “BioGem” according to the Natural Resource Council, a place where 27% of the land mass is reserved (the world leader) and local food production is overflowing.  Ranked as the 5th most environmentally clean country by Yale University’s Environmental Performance Index (EPI), Costa Rica has committed to becoming the first carbon neutral country by 2021.

Costa Rica is fast becoming a highly desirable location for those seeking to live a sustainable lifestyle in comfort.  An intelligently designed new sustainable community is now fully-titled and available for purchase.  Enjoy healthy living with food, energy, and water security in this new permaculture community in San Mateo, Costa Rica.

Permaculture Community in Costa Rica

Located on the ultra-clean Rio Machuca in San Mateo, which is on the Western edge of the Central Valley between Atenas and Orotina.  The community is only 25 minutes to central Pacific beaches, 25 minutes to Atenas, and 15 minutes to the new highway.  San Mateo is a traditional small agriculture town with a nice central park and all basic services.

The community offers 42 titled lots for eco-home sites with extensive organic gardens, fruit & nut trees, aquaculture, plenty of fresh water, and alternative energy designs.  It’s a place where the “community” aspect is still important for people to live a healthy and sustainable lifestyle, celebrating food, music, the arts, and Costa Rican history, culture and traditions.

Aquaculture Tilapia and Clam Ponds

Food Security:  A greenhouse, nursery and organic gardens are built and fully operational with 100s of varieties of organic fruits, nuts, vegetables, herbs, medicinals, teas, which are planted and growing throughout the community; including mangos, oranges, papayas, bananas, plantains, cashews, almonds and much more.  In addition, fresh organic eggs and chicken meat are available, and an extensive aquaculture system with Tilapia and fresh water clams and shrimp is fully operational.  The center pavilion will have community food processing and storage facilities.

Waterfall to Aquaculture Ponds

Water Security:  A potable water well with two large water storage tanks is in place to supply drinking water to the home sites. The community is blessed to have multiple year-round fresh water streams and to border the Machuca River which has many waterfalls and swimming holes.   In addition, an ecological storm-water management pond system is in place, and home designs are planned with rainwater collection for dry-season irrigation.

Energy Security:  Homes will be built with solar power systems and propane for cooking.  The developer is also exploring the possibility of a small hydroelectric plant.

Site Plan of Costa Rica Sustainable Community

The 42 residential lots average 2000M2 (1/2 acre) in size and there is also a titled and permitted 2 acre eco-hotel lot. Lot prices range from $80,000 – $130,000.  Turnkey off-the-grid green homes built to your design for $90/sf.

This is an excellent opportunity to retire to a sustainable paradise where residents will experience the ultimate freedom of living off-the-grid in harmony with nature.

FOR MORE INFO Email us at -  CRFirst@yahoo.com

During the recent financial crisis from October ‘08 — March ‘09, the world economy deflated.  The price of commodities fell, most notably oil, and the strength of the U.S. dollar soared.   “Cash was King” during these five months as quality assets became bargains, and valuations in the stock market finally got down to reasonable levels.

The U.S. passed huge stimulus legislation, the banks’ toxic assets were “written off,” and the Fed began to print money.  The cash Kings on the sidelines re-entered the stock market along with some stimulus money, causing the markets to climb 40% from their March lows.  Inventories of goods left over from the deflation are slowly being depleted, consumer confidence is returning, and the policy-makers are claiming that “green shoots” are sprouting up in the economy.

However, the fundamentals paint a vastly different picture.  The barely existent U.S. manufacturing base was further devastated by the bankruptcy of the car industry, and the entire economy is still bleeding jobs.  The gutted financial services industry, which represented 40% of the U.S. economy, is being propped up by a “surge” of monopoly money.

It is estimated that the U.S. national deficit will reach 100% of GDP ($13.5 trillion) very shortly.  This says nothing of the Goliath-sized unfunded liabilities like Social Security and Medicare, or the massive personal and corporate debt lingering.  It seems the only jobs created so far are at the Federal Reserve printing presses, and bond salesmen at the State Department. China now holds nearly $800 billion in Treasury notes and the interest paid by the U.S. has climbed from 2.75% to nearly 4% in the last few months.

It does not take an economist to see that the U.S. dollar bubble is doomed, and the signs of weakening have already begun.  The euro and Canadian dollar are trading at near record levels against the U.S. dollar, gold is approaching $1,000/ounce, and oil is around $70/barrel.  In an oil-based economy, we can expect severe price hikes in gasoline and food right when the majority of workers are already suffering and no longer have access to easy credit.

The Federal Reserve may be forced to raise interest rates while the economy is still declining.  This action, coupled with resistance from Treasury investors (China), may cause hyperinflation, or, at best, stagflation.  Either way, the U.S. dollar is traveling down a bumpy road, which may be leading to a cliff.  So, the economic “green shoots” may die before they flower because monopoly money makes a bad fertilizer when the soil has already been leeched to the level of desertification.

Cash is no longer King as the dollar continues to lose strength.  Oil has doubled from its recent lows, which will eventually translate into real world evidence of your declining purchasing power at the pump or the grocery store.  It is time to move your dollars into assets like desirable foreign real estate, commodities, and foreign currencies.

The U.S. dollar is still very strong in Costa Rica as its exchange rate with the colón traditionally lags behind world currency markets. Costa Rica represents an excellent place to move cash into solid assets like real estate.  Real estate in Costa Rica is not driven by job markets and bank financing like in North America, but by foreigners who desire a comfortable retirement home or a solid investment in a political and ecological paradise.  Canadians and Europeans now have very favorable exchange rates to further enhance this opportunity.

Costa Rica continues to win praise despite the negative global news.  Costa Rica has been recently named the 8th most stable country in the world by the Economist, and the 5th cleanest country in the world by Yale University’s Environmental Performance Index (EPI).  Foreign retirees and young professionals alike are finding stability and sustainability in Costa Rica during these tumultuous times.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/perry-garfinkel/how-green-is-my-costa-ric_b_206132.html

Perry Garfinkle

Back in the dark green ages of 1994, I helped launch the first national magazine dedicated to a then burgeoning travel trend called eco-tourism. Short-lived though it was, EcoTraveler focused on environmentally, ecologically and culturally sensitive travel, and I was proud to be a part of it.

Now that style of travel also goes by other names, such as “sustainable” and “ethical.”

But 15 years ago, ecotourism was a radical idea. Even those of us who came from and subscribed to the John Muir approach — “take only pictures, leave only footprints” — had to admit we expended tons of fossil fuel to fly to remote and pristine corners of the planet, and stayed at hotels that washed their laundry using soaps containing ingredients I didn’t even want to know about, discharging waste waters into places I also didn’t want to know.

The country that set the bar on what ecotravel meant and how to walk the eco-talk was Costa Rica. One reason was that the country had a lot at stake. It’s a living zoological museum, a geographic terrarium. While the country represents only about 0.1 percent of the world’s land mass, it contains 5 percent of the world’s biodiversity — it’s home sweet home to more than 500,000 species, among the top 20 countries with the highest biodiversity in the world. Now more than 25 percent of Costa Rica is composed of protected forests and reserves. There are 32 national parks, 8 biological reserves, 13 forest reserves, and 51 wildlife refuges.

As I said, it has a lot at stake, as in $take: In 2000, Costa Rica earned about $1.25 billion from ecotourism, and it is estimated that 70 percent of the country’s tourists visit natural protected areas.

In February The New York Times sent me to Costa Rica to write a story about real estate developments in the northwest corner of the country that’s nicknamed the Gold Coast.

That 60-mile stretch of the Guanacaste Province had been the target of rampant brand-name hotel and residential development that, in the estimation of several peopIe I interviewed, threatened the very nature of what made Costa Rica appealing. Luckily the economic downturn may have inadvertently been an environmental saving grace. Jim Preskitt — senior vice president of Peninsula Papagayo, a 2,300-acre luxury development anchored by a Four Seasons Hotel with its own collection of homes and lots for sale, the destination club Exclusive Resorts and a 180-slip marina that opened in December — underscored that idea, pointing to a hillside across Culebra Bay from his executive offices. The forested hill dropped into the white-sand beaches of villages named Panama, Hermosa and Coco.

“That hill would have been dotted with a Rosewood, a Miraval and a One & Only hotel. But all those projects are stalled,” he said. “Though we welcome the competition and the regional buzz, this slowdown may be nature’s way of saying, ‘Protect what you have.’” From where he stood, literally and figuratively, it struck me as a bold and courageous thing to say.

While overall the country still scores high green points Ethical Traveler, an organization dedicated to educate travelers about the social and environmental impacts of travel, recently recognized Costa Rica as one of the top 10 ethical destinations for 2008 — I found that all that glitters is not necessarily green. For example, one of the country’s most famous beaches, Tamarindo, featured in the 1994 film Endless Summer 2, the sequel to 1966′s landmark “Endless Summer,” last year had been stripped if its Ecological Blue Flag, a distinction granted by Costa Rica’s water and sewage utility to beaches with excellent or very high sanitation and cleanliness. It was one of eight beaches that lost such certification. Tamarindo has since regained the blue flag.

Next week I return to Costa Rica, partly because I fell in love with the country, partly because I fell in love with its gentle people (and am falling for one particular sweet Tica, as the locals are called). Back in February, while I interviewed real estate developers and realtors, I jealously watched tourists leave for zip-line tours over canopied rainforests, nature hikes, spas and beach experiences. This time my Tica friend Veronica and I will indulge in some of that cool stuff, while I offer a green report card on Costa Rica, honest and personal reportage on how well this Central American country lives up to its claim as eco-tourism capital of the world.

If you have been to Costa Rica, you will understand why this is critical. If you have not been, but are simply a concerned custodian of the planet, you will also understand. In either case, I welcome you to join me here at HuffPo, with your comments and own experiences — in Costa Rica, or anywhere that flies its eco flag. Pack your bags, bring your camera. We will leave only foot — and blog — prints behind.

ASSOCIATED PRESS – ACAPULCO, Mexico – It was a shootout straight from Hollywood in the former playground of its biggest stars: Masked and heavily armed Mexican soldiers battled outlaws holed up in a hillside mansion in a four-hour shootout that had tourists cowering in hotels nearby.

Roughly 3,000 shots flew, and 50 grenades exploded during the raucous gunbattle late Saturday that killed 16 gunmen and two soldiers. Nine other people were wounded, including three bystanders.

More than a dozen Mexican tourists were evacuated from a neighboring hotel strip frozen in the 1950s, when Elizabeth Taylor held one of her many weddings in Acapulco and John Wayne and “Tarzan” star Johnny Weissmuller threw lavish parties at Los Flamingos Hotel less than 100 yards (meters) from where gunfire broke out.

Cindy Pelaquin and Michelle Johnson, both of Boston, were watching the famous Acapulco cliff divers less than a mile away. They saw the military roadblocks but heard nothing.

“We were just lucky I suppose,” said Johnson, a Boston nurse.

One neighbor said it sounded like fireworks. But a Mexican tourist, whose group had just arrived from the Mexico City area, immediately recognized the sound of gunshots and dove under a hotel bed.

The battle erupted after soldiers received a tip that a group of armed men were gathered at a gated house in a seedy section of Acapulco where working-class homes bleed into 1950s mansions. One hotel across from the street from the shootout offers three-hour stays for 30 pesos, roughly $2.25.

Several gunmen tried to flee but crashed their car into a military Hummer that was blocking the gate. At one point, more armed men with grenades arrived to reinforce the men in the house, but they died in the shooting, said an army colonel, who led the operation and spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

Inside, soldiers found four men bound and shirtless who claimed they were Guerrero state police officers and were being held hostage. They confiscated 47 guns, grenades and ammunition, as well as several cars, including a Mercedes Benz.

Military officials said they are still investigating who the gunmen are. But given the weapons stash, large home and late-model cars, it looked like the normal trappings for drug cartels. No drugs were found.

Guerrero state, where Acapulco is located, has long suffered from drug violence from cartels fighting for turf.

The Beltran Leyva cartel, in particular, has a strong presence in Acapulco. Last month, soldiers arrested a suspected cartel lieutenant as he stepped off a private plane in the northern city of Monterrey on his way back from Acapulco, where he said he’d met with cartel leader Arturo Beltran Leyva at a baptism party.

The premier resort town for America’s rich and famous in the ’50s and ’60s, Acapulco suffered a decline as traffic and urban sprawl took over the palm-swept ambiance. It was reborn in the 1980s as a popular resort for Mexicans, and the working class now flock to the old hotel zone, where they can buy a two-night stay and transportation for as little as $50.

U.S. tourists also have returned during the past several years following construction of the new “Diamond Zone” strip of five-star hotels — on the other side of town from Saturday’s violence. Acapulco now ranks with Cancun as one of Mexico’s most-visited resort cities.

While tourism is usually low this time of year, the start of the hurricane season in the Pacific, numbers are worse than usual after a swine-flu outbreak in late April that pushed hotel occupancy in Mexico to half its normal rate and prompted the cancellation of many flights and cruise ship visits.

Hotel Los Flamingos, a pink building perched on a cliff where waiters climb trees to pull down coconuts for drinks, had few guests and only two rooms with foreign visitors, according to hotel workers who insisted they had not heard the shooting the night before.

Tourism is Mexico’s third-largest source of legal foreign income, after oil and remittances.

“At the resorts they basically tell you not to venture out,” Johnson said.

“It’s pretty shocking. It’s really sad. This a huge problem,” added Pelaquin, an insurance analyst whose friends already thought her trip to Mexico was risky because of swine flu. “Mexicans grow the drugs and send them to the U.S. where Americans buy them so we can’t blame it just on this country.”

Five people inside the house were detained, the Defense Department said in a statement.

Those including the four who claimed to be police hostages. Soldiers did not know the hostages were inside when the shootout began, and the colonel said their claims to be police would be investigated.

“We found them like this, handcuffed, and they say they were kidnapped. So if they were kidnapped, as they say, then we rescued them,” said the colonel, who gave reporters a tour of the house in a ski mask to protect his identity.

President Felipe Calderon has deployed more than 45,000 soldiers across Mexico to battle drug violence. More than 10,800 people have died since the offensive began in December 2006.

Although foreign tourists very rarely get caught in the violence, shootouts and kidnappings have become more frequent in resort areas such as Acapulco and Cancun. In 2007, a couple from Canada was wounded when someone fired into a hotel lobby in Acapulco.

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