Re: Conservation psychology - What's it gonna take?

We have a tiny victorian terrace with excellent southern exposure. We spent £4000 on a conservatory which heats the house and gave us a extra room, allows us to start our planting much earlier, and was recently figured to have raised the value of the house by £5000.
If I had $5000 to spend here is my list of priorities;

Increase the passive solar capacity of your house and maximise it's efficiency. If you have any part of your house that faces S, SE or SW build a conservatory there, self build if possible. Build vestibules, increase thermal mass, insulate, make thermal blankets for windows, etc.

Plant the biggest garden you can with composting and rainwater harvesting.

Self build a small stand alone (not grid tie), portable, battery based PV system and work hard to rely on it for as much of your power needs as possible. 200 to 600W should do, this will stimulate much larger changes in consumption behaviour than grid tie and will thus save more money on electricity and in avoidance of the purchase of extra devices. Since it is portable you will be able to take it with you when you build your straw bale home and you will be used to living at that scale by then.

Self build a small, again portable, stand alone (independent of your current hot water system) solar hot water system with integrated shower. Same principle applies as above.

Stop eating ruminant meat and dairy products.

Turn your home into a demonstration home for all of the above, get your neighbors on board, start a community building scheme; food growing and trading, energy production, car sharing, efficiency assistance.

I would bet you could do most of the above for under $5000.
I don't know you but think of how much you would spend on devices and household features that produce very little if any payback and yet you justify those don't you, as do we all; televisions and thousand other unnecessary devices, lawns and lawnmowers, a new car, foreign vacations, etc. Now think of the money spent on energy to use and produce them. Eliminate them from your life and budget and it begins to add up pretty quickly. Think of the $5k as an investment in your future, much like an advanced degree, by getting started on the path to energy/food self sufficiency the dividends will be enormous down the road, financial, quality of life and environmental.