permaculture

[Dawn Shepard <dawnjs@mail.wsu.edu>]

again, I think this is an issue of the time scale that you are
considering. If we look at a stable system at anyone time it may either be
in a state of decline or growth. Being stable doesn't make it static. 
Things don't come from nowhere so unchecked eternal growth is not possible
according to what I've been taught. I'm in no way an expert on modeling
the environment, but there is a man named Andy Ford at Washington State
University who wrote "Modeling the Environment". In his class he shows in
several ways that growth without limit is not healthy or possible.


On Sat, 27 May 2000, Marsha Hanzi wrote:

> 
> 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!
> 
> 
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