permaculture

["Marsha Hanzi" <hanzibra@svn.com.br>]

There's something in the air about sustainability..I just posted to my
Portuguese list on the same subject...


> > 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.
>
It is the tendency of all natural systems to grow.  I was impressed at a
recent post which said that recent research shows that old growth ( and
supposedlyt "stable") forests are still growing...
    Ernst Gotsch, our "forest guru" talks of the "Law of otimization of
life", that Natural systems will always increase in their life-support
systems. There just may be no real climax, after all...

Toby says "what you add to the sysem has to come from somewhere"  But if we
work with live systems which include a heavy tree element, that "somewhere"
is the mother rock, where the tree goes to get its minerals to re-cycle to
the rest of the system...

Of course there is no real contradiction here, as Toby is talking about the
parts of the built system which are not growing in the ground and therefore
have to come from somewhere where they WERE  in the ground... Liked the hole
image...

Marsha

PS.  Will sign off for a few weeks.  Off to the mountains.  No telephones
there.  No Internet...

Have  a good time!