permaculture

["Lee Flier" <lflier@mindspring.com>]

>Which brings up an interesting question. I'd like the definition of
>sustainability to mean maintainable into the indefinite future. It seems
>like a lot of texts want to make sustainability defined only over a
>given (rather short) time period.

When I took a design course from him, Bill Mollison defined sustainability
thusly:

A sustainable system is one that can produce or store as much or more energy
*over its lifetime* than it takes to create and maintain it.

(I took good notes, eh Scott? <G>)

I thought this was an excellent definition.

Basically this means that, for example, a high upfront use of energy is OK
if over the lifetime of the system you don't have to keep using that much
energy.  So... in the case of something like granite dust, I don't see that
it poses an ethical problem to use a byproduct of an unsustainable system to
produce a sustainable system.  It's not like you'd have to keep applying the
granite dust every year.  But so many soils are deficient in trace minerals,
calcium, etc. that it would be difficult to repair them at all without some
high initial input.

Sustainability as defined this way is certainly possible and has been done
before.

>If you look at this policy in terms of mass, it would actually cause your
>system to grow. I think sustainability means perfect maintainance instead
of
>growth. If we continuously add more than we take out, to what ever
>we define as our system, then the system would eventually include the
>whole earth's mass. Then you'd have to start pulling mattter from
>space to keep adding more than you take out.


Not if we consider the permaculture ethic that all surplus is to be returned
to care of the earth.  In natural ecosystems almost all plants and animals
store more energy (food, water etc.) than they will ever use.  They evolved
this ability in order to withstand periods of severe conditions (drought,
fire, etc.)  However, in non-severe conditions, the "excess" that is stored
or given off by some plants and animals becomes the energy that feeds
others.  In a sustainable system, "producing" or "storing" energy does not
equate to "hoarding."

--Lee

***********************************
Lee A. Flier
lflier@mindspring.com
Atlanta, Georgia, USA
http://lflier.home.mindspring.com