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permaculture - RE: [permaculture]Hydrogen, wood, peace, justice

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  • From: "John Schinnerer" <john@eco-living.net>
  • To: "Permaculture List" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: RE: [permaculture]Hydrogen, wood, peace, justice
  • Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 13:01:45 -0700 (PDT)

Aloha,

A friend summarized the thesis of my more lengthly post very succinctly:

> You've caught the crux of the energy
> issue: power sources that empower rather than disempower.

That's the fundamental difference I see between hydrogen (and fossil fuel,
etc.) and wood, low-tech solar, low-tech wind, etc..

It's the old "give a man a fish vs. teach a man to fish" pattern - with
"fish sustainably" in place of just plain "fish."

Knowing how to use and manage (perhaps even create) local
wood/brush/forest systems in a potentially sustainable manner (including
simple, efficient, low-tech clean-burning systems for wood combustion),
people can then choose to apply that knowledge locally and appropriately
for their own benefit (or not - choice is theirs). There are no
*necessary* dependencies on outside materials, money or "intellectual
property." They control their wood-energy destiny to the extent they
choose to (aside from land-as-commodity complications, of course).

There is no equivalent "teach a man to fish" with hydrogen technology.
Hydrogen power and/or the means to produce and manage it can only be
*realistically* produced and distributed, in our existing cultural
patterns, by the existing corporate/industrial systems (and/or by smaller
entities they control). It's a simple matter of resources - financial,
intellectual and physical.

These are not people who have historically or presently demonstrated "care
of people" or "care of ecosystems" in their actions. In fact they serve
systems (corporations) which *explicitly require* profits to be
prioritized over people and ecosystems. They will control who gets what
in the mythical hydrogen economy, for their own benefit first and
foremost. There will be no truly local control of hydrogen-energy
destiny.

If anyone really thinks that hydrogen *technology* will change *human
behavioral patterns*, I can only be astounded by their naievete.

So if your neighbors are going to jack your stuff, they will jack your
wood *or* your hydrogen, or your solar panels or your windmill or your
diesel generator or your cable TV service or whatever. It's not about the
hydrogen or the wood, it's about scarcity and human relatings.

On the other hand, if you *really* want to see hydrogen technology benefit
*people* (if such is possible), you'll need to work for major *cultural*
change much more than for any technological change.

Otherwise hydrogen energy technology will simply be the newest industrial
energy technology embedded in a cultural pattern of exploitation,
colonization and oppression of people and ecosystems. That's the pattern
in which all previous industrial energy systems exist. The source of the
energy (from industrially harvested wood to coal to gas and oil and
nuclear) has had no discernible effect on the larger pattern. It's not
about "the technology" - never has been, never will be.





John Schinnerer, MA
-------------------------
- Eco-Living -
Cultural & Ecological Designing
People - Place - Learning - Integration
john@eco-living.net
http://eco-living.net




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