permaculture

[Marimike6@cs.com]

In a message dated 6/17/2003 7:12:55 PM Eastern Standard Time, Daniel.Donahoo@dhs.vic.gov.au writes:

mike wrote:
>>The real future will lie in the development of new fuel processes

why does the future rely on 'new' development?

In David Holmgren's new book he recognises the value of 'new energy
technologies' as helping us trhough the energy descent, but looks to main
pre-industrial fuel as our future energy source - wood.

it appears to me that amid all the pace of post-modernity that our culture
refuses to acknowledge the 'one step forward, two steps back approach'...we
need to step back a little and acknowledge the value of more sustainable
times than ours.

Daniel--

Not to be contentious, but the reason we need new developments is because all the developments we've made over the past ten thousand years have brought us to this point. Is this where we should stop? If going backwards was an improvement people would've stayed where they were rather than come this far.

Wood's a good fuel for some very finite purposes. It is, however, polluting (very smoky, with carcinogenic components and carbon monoxide, for instance), inefficient (we would very soon strip all the earth's forests bare just trying to heat our houses) , heavy to haul and very expensive per therm. But it's a fine luxury fuel, for occasionally sitting by a roaring fire in the fireplace. The only reason my Black Bart puts out more heat into the room than it sends up the chimney, though, is because it has an electric blower behind the firewall. Otherwise a fire with an open flue normally cools the room overall, heating mostly only whatever's directly in front of it.

For these reasons, civilization took a giant step forward once we figured out how to extract and utilize coal. We're still on the learning curve, developing better, cleaner, cheaper fuels and trying to figure out how to fix the drawbacks each one has.

I'm with you that sustainable is better. But we need to get sustainable on a higher level. People in the grand old days were really cold and miserable all their lives. My mother grew up on a farm in Maine in the twenties, and it was cold and miserable. Plus, diptheria took a lot of people because when someone got sick you had to go out in the snow in your horse buggy to look for a doctor in town who would come out into the woods at night. I'm not nostalgic about the good old days. They'd have been more survivable with telephones.

The easiest place to start is with our waste. And people are doing some neat stuff with the waste stream right now, turning it into better fuels, soil conditioners, synthetic materials and a host of brand-new recycled and artificial products. I think innovation's what's going to save us. My personal opinion.

Mike Elvin

PS-- I'll follow your advice and check out David Holmgren. I'll be surprised-- wood seems like it would be the last on the list of promising fuels, not to mention a waste of soon-to-be-scarce lumber.

M.E.