Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

permaculture - [permaculture] on cars and communal building

permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: permaculture

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Anne Schwarz" <thegrayhat@hotmail.com>
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [permaculture] on cars and communal building
  • Date: Mon, 09 Jun 2003 03:36:31 +0000

Hello~

Amanda said:

How quickly does sustainable culture need to move away from
fossil fuel usage? Should committed permaculturists be giving up
private fossil fuel burning cars as quickly as possible, and moving to
sustainable forms of transport (including community vehicles running
on alternative fuels)? How important are communal sustainable car
washing facilities in comparison to these reductions in fossil fuel
burning?

In terms of air polution, modern cars are actually not as responsible as many people think. The main culprits are those horrible engines in lawn mowers, leaf blowers, etc. and diesle engines.

Also, something I think will interest everybody... There is now a way to turn compost garbage (and most other types of garbage) into oil, gassoline and minerals. Check out: http://www.discover.com/may_03/featoil.html

If this takes off, it seems that the fossil fuel shortage has reached an end... As well as foreign fuel dependency and so many other problems.

I would also like to warn anybody thinking about owning hybrid or electric cars... Sure, the gas efficiency is wonderful, but the batteries that compensate for it are some of the most toxic things I've ever heard of. A car crash involves evacuating 6 city bocks for ehalth reasons, not to mention that they eventually lose their charge and you have to throw them out...


On the topic of permaculture appartment dwellings:
I think the main thing to think about is how to organize the community in the building. How is the community garden being maintained and by who? We can all hope that the owner of the building would jump on the band wagon of permaculture and do it for us, but chances are, it's the tennants who have to do all of the maintanace and financing.

This problem reminded me of my neighborhood's "road association." Since we have about a half mile of privately owned dirt roads before we hit the main road, maintenance is up to whoever lives next to any particular section. However, my road (and many others) have chosen to group together and split the costs of maintainance as evenly as possible so we don't constantly have patches of upkept road interspliced with potholes you could hide your vehicle in. (I would like to note that not having a car would be near suicide since the 9 miles winding road to town has no shoulder to speak of, which means bikes have to compete with cars on blind turns... Very scary, never doing it again.) However, my point is that the same type of action could be used to make a "rooftop association." The only problem with this system si that it is totally dependant on volunteers. It can work very well, like in the case of my road, or it can go very very badly, when two or three people fund and maintain everything out of necesity and everybody else piggy-backs on their efforts (especially in a situation where people are constantly moving in and out of their residency). I suppose you could deny roof access to anybody who didn't pitch in, but I think that creates a whole new set of problems...
Any other ideas on how to make sure a building with a high population turn over can sustain a communal garden?

Anne

_________________________________________________________________
The new MSN 8: advanced junk mail protection and 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail





Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page