Permaculture is an ecological design process that integrates landscape and people to provide their food, energy, water, shelter and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way.
The concept brings together whole-systems thinking inspired by lessons from nature and creative design processes. A wide range of technologies and techniques are fed into specific designs as appropriate to individual projects. Starting from a mostly land-based focus, it is now being applied to all aspects of human habitation, from agriculture to architecture, from technology to education and even economics.
Permaculture started in the late 1970s and was initially adopted and tested by people at the margins of society – innovators, back-to-the-land smallholders, ecologists and radical development workers. It has spread rapidly ever since via grassroots education and a lot of practical implementation. From small beginnings in Australia, it is now a worldwide movement spanning 135 countries, with more than 250 national, regional and international organisations and many tens of thousands of local projects and practitioners.
From the article by Andy Goldring available here: Designing The World We Want
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Monday, July 27, 2015
Friday, July 10, 2015
Local, self-sufficient, optimistic: are Transition Towns the way forward?
"The Transition network was founded in 2005, as a response to the twin threats of climate change and peak oil. Unlike other campaign groups, the Transition network never set out to frighten people, but seemed resolutely upbeat, determined to find opportunity in what most regard with dismay.
One of the movement's most fundamental ideas was to ask what the world might look like in the future "if we get it right" – then work out backwards how to get there. Generally speaking, the Transition vision is of a move towards self-sufficiency at the local level, in food, energy and much else, but the specifics of what "getting it right" might look like were never handed down from above."
For more on the Transition Initiative see the article in the Guardian available here:
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
How Our Economy Doesn't Work and Some Alternatives
A great 12 minute video illistrating how our economy works (or actually how it is failing) along with some ideas close to our Transition group on human alternatives can be seen below.
Saturday, June 20, 2015
Growing, Growing, Gone!
Growing, Growing, Gone:
Reaching the Limits. Some
interesting quotes from an interview of Dennis Meadows, one of the authors of
the study of “The Limits Of Growth”.
"Continual physical growth of population and economic
activity eventually reaches the point where the globe simply cannot accommodate
anymore. Biophysical systems press back, whether through disease, scarcity,
climate, or other response mechanisms. These pressures are danger signals,
indicating overshoot of some aspect of the planet’s physical limits."
“The economics profession is based on the assumption that
continual growth is possible and desirable. Likewise, most politicians have a
predisposition for growth because it makes the problems they
address—unemployment, poverty, diminished tax bases—more tractable. Instead of
having to divide a fixed pie, which gets you in trouble with some constituents,
you can grow the pie so that nobody has to make a sacrifice or compromise. So
there was—and is—a set of vested interests in the notion of growth.“
“White water rafting provides a useful analogy here. When
you are going down the river, most of the time it is placid, but every once in
a while, you hit the rapids. When it is placid, you can sit back and think
where you want to be, how you should time your journey, where you want to stop
for lunch, etc. When you are in the rapids, you focus on the moment,
desperately trying to keep your boat upright until you return to quiet waters.
During the placid moments, it is very useful to have a discussion about where
you want to be tomorrow or the day after. When you are in the rapids, you don’t
have the luxury of that kind of discussion. You are trying to survive. Our
society has moved into the rapids phase.”
“ Conventional oil production peaked around 2006.
Unconventional oil production, e.g., fracking and tar sands, has continued some
degree of growth, but it is a totally different matter. Conventional oil is
inexpensive and yields a relatively high energy return on investment.
Unconventionals don’t do that. They are expensive, and the net energy return on
investment is quite low.”
“When you don’t have conventional energy sources like oil,
you cannot sustain the kind of economic growth rates that we have seen in the
past. As a practical matter, then, there is now very little real wealth
generation. Most of the economic activity these days consists of those who have
more power getting richer by taking away from those with less. This is why we
see widening gaps between rich and poor.”
“Many of the futures, including some of Tellus’s, presume
large-scale energy consumption of one kind or another. It is energy intensive
to coordinate and motivate large assemblies of people and organizations. Absent
abundant, cheap energy, this becomes more difficult. I expect that the trend
towards global integration is going to stop and then start to recede.”
Read the entire interview here: http://www.greattransition.org/publication/growing-growing-gone
Wednesday, June 17, 2015
Feeling Full?
Herman Daly, an ecological economist, provides a nice
explanation for what is wrong with our current economic system in the essay
“Economics for a full world”. Daily’s essay explains how our
current economic model was designed from the vantage point of the world being
mostly empty (of humans and their impacts). Economic growth has gotten us
to a place of fullness, and it may be time to change our economic models to
become more in line with the real world, while we still can.
The introduction to the essay states:
Because of the exponential
economic growth since World War II, we now live in a full world, but we still
behave as if it were empty, with ample space and resources for the indefinite
future. The founding assumptions of neoclassical economics, developed in the
empty world, no longer hold, as the aggregate burden of the human species is
reaching—or, in some cases, exceeding—the limits of nature at the local,
regional, and planetary levels. The prevailing obsession with economic growth
puts us on the path to ecological collapse, sacrificing the very sustenance of
our well-being and survival. To reverse this ominous trajectory, we must
transition toward a steady-state economy focused on qualitative development, as
opposed to quantitative growth, and the interdependence of the human economy
and global ecosphere. Developing policies and institutions for a steady-state
economy will require us to revisit the question of the purpose and ends of the
economy.
Read the entire essay at the following link for more insights
on the inherent problems with the current economic model and some suggestions
for a revised more realistic model. http://www.greattransition.org/publication/economics-for-a-full-world
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
De-comfortzoned.
Thoughts for the week come from an article titled “What is
needed to get us out of our comfort zone and fight for our children’s future?”
by Christiane Kliemann available here: http://www.resilience.org/stories/2015-06-10/are-we-prepared-to-change-to-prevent-climate-change
. Some highlights follow:
If it’s the way we live, consume
and produce that causes climate change, why don’t we simply stop it and start
doing things differently?
[…] despite the tremendous efforts
that are being invested to convince us that energy efficiency, renewables and
new technologies will do the trick, decoupling in absolute terms remains highly
unlikely if not impossible in a growing economy.
[…] following the logic of homo
economicus that individual profit and competition are the best means to achieve
the higher common good. But what if this system logic itself was the root cause
of our environmental and social crises—climate change above all—and needed to
be replaced by something new to secure our survival on this planet? What if we
have constructed a whole system of theories, models, technologies and defence
mechanisms just to deny the simple truth?
[…]
despite the tremendous efforts that are being invested to convince us
that energy efficiency, renewables and new technologies will do the trick,
decoupling in absolute terms remains highly unlikely if not impossible in a
growing economy.
Given the vast financial and
political power of the global players in these and other sectors, it is no
wonder that governments are usually putty in the hands of their interest
groups. These play with our fears and assure us that their profitability is
essential for keeping our jobs—knowing that politicians fear nothing more than
rising unemployment rates.
And indeed, in the current system,
this fear of losing one’s job often forces people to choose between a secure
livelihood and ethical principles – and to continue to work in jobs that are
obviously damaging for the environment.
Aren’t most of us quite happy in
our comfort zones enjoying all the superficial pleasures the globalized
consumer culture can provide?
We have to bring across that we are
really serious about changing the economy and changing our lives, and that we
won’t accept any excuse. Otherwise they can rely on us being too deeply attached
to our cars, fancy holidays and long-haul flights, globalized supply chains and
ever more electronic gadgets—even at the expense of the millions of deaths,
increasing violence, wars on resources and ever stronger environmental
disasters.
The widespread belief that the
white male hypocrites from Silicon Valley and their likes will save us through
technological innovations is yet another symptom of our collective denial.
These will neither be ecologically sustainable, nor democratic; they will just
tighten our dependence on increasingly complex technologies from large
monopolist corporations.
Consume less, share more and stand
up against fossil fuels, urban sprawl, destructive infrastructures and resource
extractivism. And, above all, fight for an economy that can fulfil everyone’s
basic needs within the natural boundaries of a healthy planet.
Monday, May 18, 2015
Climbing The Ladder of Awareness -
Written By: Bodhi Paul Chefurka
Originally Posted At: http://www.paulchefurka.ca/LadderOfAwareness.html
When it comes to our understanding of the unfolding global crisis, each of us seems to fit somewhere along a continuum of awareness that can be roughly divided into five stages:
How people cope with despair is of course deeply personal, but it seems to me there are two general routes people take to reconcile themselves with the situation. These are not mutually exclusive, and most of us will operate out of some mix of the two. I identify them here as general tendencies, because people seem to be drawn more to one or the other. I call them theouter path and the inner path.
If one is inclined to choose the outer path, concerns about adaptation and local resilience move into the foreground, as exemplified by the Transition Network and Permaculture Movement. To those on the outer path, community-building and local sustainability initiatives will have great appeal. Organized party politics seems to be less attractive to people at this stage, however. Perhaps politics is seen as part of the problem, or perhaps it's just seen as a waste of effort when the real action will take place at the local level.
If one is disinclined to choose the outer path either because of temperament or circumstance, the inner path offers its own set of attractions.
Choosing the inner path involves re-framing the whole thing in terms of consciousness, self-awareness and/or some form of transcendent perception. For someone on this path it is seen as an attempt to manifest Gandhi's message, "Become the change you wish to see in the world," on the most profoundly personal level. This message is similarly expressed in the ancient Hermetic saying, "As above, so below." Or in plain language, "In order to heal the world, first begin by healing yourself."
However, the inner path does not imply a "retreat into religion". Most of the people I've met who have chosen an inner path have as little use for traditional religion as their counterparts on the outer path have for traditional politics. Organized religion is usually seen as part of the predicament rather than a valid response to it. Those who have arrived at this point have no interest in hiding from or easing the painful truth, rather they wish to create a coherent personal context for it. Personal spirituality of one sort or another often works for this, but organized religion rarely does.
From my observations, each successive stage contains roughly a tenth of the number people as the one before it. So while perhaps 90% of humanity is in Stage 1, less than one person in ten thousand will be at Stage 5 (and none of them are likely to be politicians). The number of those who have chosen the inner path in Stage 5 also seems to be an order of magnitude smaller than the number who are on the outer path.
I happen to have chosen an inner path as my response to a Stage 5 awareness. It works well for me, but navigating this imminent (transition, shift, metamorphosis - call it what you will), will require all of us - no matter what our chosen paths - to cooperate on making wise decisions in difficult times.
Best wishes for a long, exciting and fulfilling journey.
Originally Posted At: http://www.paulchefurka.ca/LadderOfAwareness.html
When it comes to our understanding of the unfolding global crisis, each of us seems to fit somewhere along a continuum of awareness that can be roughly divided into five stages:
Dead asleep. At this stage there seem to be no fundamental problems, just some shortcomings in human organization, behaviour and morality that can be fixed with the proper attention to rule-making. People at this stage tend to live their lives happily, with occasional outbursts of annoyance around election times or the quarterly corporate earnings seasons.
- Awareness of one fundamental problem. Whether it's Climate Change, overpopulation, Peak Oil, chemical pollution, oceanic over-fishing, biodiversity loss, corporatism, economic instability or sociopolitical injustice, one problem seems to engage the attention completely. People at this stage tend to become ardent activists for their chosen cause. They tend to be very vocal about their personal issue, and blind to any others.
- Awareness of many problems. As people let in more evidence from different domains, the awareness of complexity begins to grow. At this point a person worries about the prioritization of problems in terms of their immediacy and degree of impact. People at this stage may become reluctant to acknowledge new problems - for example, someone who is committed to fighting for social justice and against climate change may not recognize the problem of resource depletion. They may feel that the problem space is already complex enough, and the addition of any new concerns will only dilute the effort that needs to be focused on solving the "highest priority" problem.
- Awareness of the interconnections between the many problems. The realization that a solution in one domain may worsen a problem in another marks the beginning of large-scale system-level thinking. It also marks the transition from thinking of the situation in terms of a set of problems to thinking of it in terms of a predicament. At this point the possibility that there may not be a solution begins to raise its head.
People who arrive at this stage tend to withdraw into tight circles of like-minded individuals in order to trade insights and deepen their understanding of what's going on. These circles are necessarily small, both because personal dialogue is essential for this depth of exploration, and because there just aren't very many people who have arrived at this level of understanding. - Awareness that the predicament encompasses all aspects of life. This includes everything we do, how we do it, our relationships with each other, as well as our treatment of the rest of the biosphere and the physical planet. With this realization, the floodgates open, and no problem is exempt from consideration or acceptance. The very concept of a "Solution" is seen through, and cast aside as a waste of effort.
How people cope with despair is of course deeply personal, but it seems to me there are two general routes people take to reconcile themselves with the situation. These are not mutually exclusive, and most of us will operate out of some mix of the two. I identify them here as general tendencies, because people seem to be drawn more to one or the other. I call them theouter path and the inner path.
If one is inclined to choose the outer path, concerns about adaptation and local resilience move into the foreground, as exemplified by the Transition Network and Permaculture Movement. To those on the outer path, community-building and local sustainability initiatives will have great appeal. Organized party politics seems to be less attractive to people at this stage, however. Perhaps politics is seen as part of the problem, or perhaps it's just seen as a waste of effort when the real action will take place at the local level.
If one is disinclined to choose the outer path either because of temperament or circumstance, the inner path offers its own set of attractions.
Choosing the inner path involves re-framing the whole thing in terms of consciousness, self-awareness and/or some form of transcendent perception. For someone on this path it is seen as an attempt to manifest Gandhi's message, "Become the change you wish to see in the world," on the most profoundly personal level. This message is similarly expressed in the ancient Hermetic saying, "As above, so below." Or in plain language, "In order to heal the world, first begin by healing yourself."
However, the inner path does not imply a "retreat into religion". Most of the people I've met who have chosen an inner path have as little use for traditional religion as their counterparts on the outer path have for traditional politics. Organized religion is usually seen as part of the predicament rather than a valid response to it. Those who have arrived at this point have no interest in hiding from or easing the painful truth, rather they wish to create a coherent personal context for it. Personal spirituality of one sort or another often works for this, but organized religion rarely does.
It's worth mentioning that there is also the possibility of a serious personal difficulty at this point. If someone cannot choose an outer path for whatever reasons, and is also resistant to the idea of inner growth or spirituality as a response the the crisis of an entire planet, then they are truly in a bind. There are few other doorways out of this depth of despair. If one remains stuck here for an extended period of time, life can begin to seem awfully bleak, and violence against either the world or oneself may begin begin to seem like a reasonable option. Please keep a watchful eye on your own progress, and if you encounter someone else who may be in this state, please offer them a supportive ear.
From my observations, each successive stage contains roughly a tenth of the number people as the one before it. So while perhaps 90% of humanity is in Stage 1, less than one person in ten thousand will be at Stage 5 (and none of them are likely to be politicians). The number of those who have chosen the inner path in Stage 5 also seems to be an order of magnitude smaller than the number who are on the outer path.
I happen to have chosen an inner path as my response to a Stage 5 awareness. It works well for me, but navigating this imminent (transition, shift, metamorphosis - call it what you will), will require all of us - no matter what our chosen paths - to cooperate on making wise decisions in difficult times.
Best wishes for a long, exciting and fulfilling journey.
Bodhi Paul Chefurka
October 19, 2012
October 19, 2012
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