permaculture

[Russ Grayson <pacedge@magna.com.au>]

Hi Daniel and other participants in this discussion...

On Tuesday, June 17, 2003, at 03:19  PM, Daniel.Donahoo@dhs.vic.gov.au wrote:
> Russ et al.
> Interesting that you worked with Ted Trainer, Russ - I have been raeding
> through his work and am a fan.

I wouldn't describe myself as a 'fan' of Ted although I have a great deal of respect for him for his work and for his swimming against the current, especially as a staff member at a university which, due to government change, is like other universities which have become business entities selling education and research services and have become, like businesses must be, focused on the dollar.

> I think your discussion about a 'hi-tech' conserver society is an
> interesting one. It is almost a discussion that is saying 'what do we
> keep?'. If there isn't as much energy around what will we prioritise.
> Holmgren and others argue to this point it has been travel as you
> identified. It seems that modern society is addicted to moving around and
> using a lot of energy to do it.

Travel is basic to our society and economy. It is necessary for business and there is an entire industry built on recreational travel, ailing it might be currently thanks to SARS and the threat of terrorist action. In this country, thousands and thousands of jobs depend on it. When jobs and income streams depend on something like this, so does the wellbeing of families and individuals, their homes and the viability of the families themselves. In our theoretical discussions around these issues, we might say that this industry or that, or travel in general, should cease to exist. But unless we can propose alternative means of support for families, our proposals condemn people to deprivation and want unless they are fortunate enough to have an alternative income stream. When we do that, are we any better than the economic rationalists who care little for the wellbeing of people and who retreat to various voodoo economics theories to explain how people will be better off?

Conventional economics posits that as a source of energy becomes increasingly unavailable, a new source or means of energy production will rise to replace it at a cost that is affordable. Maybe Robyn's and the other's emails about the hydrogen economy  alludes to this. Maybe the economics postulated by the conventional theorists is akin more to faith than science, maybe its like a cargo cult in which the correct incantations and actions are expected to deliver 'cargo', in this case, affordable and plentiful energy. I don't know, apart from the contested hydrogen, of an alternative fuel that could support the existing infrastructure. Maybe someone else does.

> i don't know if we do need that many high-tech tools. 

What about medicine? Especially when new technologies can reduce suffering? I see a couple people in my life who suffer and would welcome a technological or pharmaceutical intervention that could reduce this and that could eliminate the disease, just as has been done with smallpox.

> it would be interesting to do an audit of internet communication to see how much of it
> is of actual tangible value to people. (i.e. how much of this information
> is practically used?) 

I think a lot of it is practically used. If I can put on my aid industry hat, I know that people in developing countries are very interested in having access to global communications. You would be surprised how little people in some Pacific island villages know about things that are common knowledge in Australia (also US, UK, EU). 

Just a few years back we were doing workshops with the Kastom Gaden Association, the NGO I have done work with, in Solomon Island villages on Malaita and Choiseul islands. Why, the people asked us, is it so dry now? We said that it was a cyclic weather phenomonon called El Nino. They had heard the word, and believed it had something to do with a church in South America. With the village trainers, we then develop workshop modules on El Nino to explain what it was, what people were doing to deal with it and to spread agricultural coping strategies. The trainers took the workshop to other communities. Now, had the villagers access to the WWW, perhaps they could have discovered what the drying was caused by and researched strategies to deal with it. 

Still with my aid industry hat on, let me say that the new village emails service, carried to some Solomon Island villages on the existing HF radio network, is proving useful. Especially to NGO field staff. I know from my time as a project and comms manager with APACE in Sydney how the arrival of email improved our communication with our project staff and how response time was reduced. Those in NGOs who work in remote places, often well off the global telecomm network, will know the value of email, laptop computers and satellite phones. I could say the same with my journalist hat on.

This listserv and the permaculture-oceania listserv seem to be full of people exchanging practical information.

> or do we still prefer to try and work it out
> ourselves? or turn to a local expert to show us?

With the internet, the world is our local expert.

> Side note:
> I think people reject Ted's approach not because they are living in a 'hi
> tech' world that makes sense, I think more and more people are seeing the
> vaccum that is a life based on consumption. 

Absolutely. That's why they quit the city and high paying jobs for the country and a lower income.

> They reject ideas because ultimately what Ted is saying is there is a lot of good stuff we've left
> behind and change is hard at any time - change back to a time that people
> think is regressive is even harder. 

As they say though, you can't 'return' to the past. And some of those 'old ways' are plain inefficient. That's why I like Fritz Schumacher's notion of 'intermediate' or 'appropriate' technology - you can improve on traditional technology, modernise it and make it work better.

Some old stuff is good as is, though. In our before-mentioned Solomon Islands projects, in which traditional technologies, processes and species were assessed for usefulness, we found that the traditional digging stick - a stout pole made usually from mangrove wood with a point made at one end - was still best for the planting of tuberous crops. Not all the time though - the modern, metal hoe was better in hardened soils. 

> We all see the value of permaculture, but why doesn't all of society...not because they don't see the value, but
> because to actually break out of one way of living is so extrodinarily hard

Daunting to most people. They have so much invested in existing society, such as buying a home, educating their children etc - that breaking away has to be put aside until they retire.

> - and who tend to be attracted to permaculture ideas. People on the edge,
> and we know the value of the edge, that is where it all happens where the
> interactions take place. 

The edge, sure, is a productive place. Good ideas, like permaculture, fall into the mainstream from the innovative social edge. But it is also where most of the weeds grow because it is so productive there; and, just like in ecology, it is the place where two ecosystems meet - and clash at times.

> The most interesting thing is we are headed (in time) far away from the edge, back to pre-modern times when life is stable
> and uniform and doesn't change as much as it has in the last 100 years...it will probably take another 200 to get back there, but Holmgren presents some strong arguments for this.

I don't know if life was so stable in pre-modern times. There was no lack of conflict and displacement of population by immigrating peoples. There was parochrialism because communities lacked means of mass communications and, consequently, suspicion of and hostility to outsiders. 

The challenge, I think, would to be to construct a decentralised society that is globally linked and that still retains useful items of hi-tech, such as medical services and communications. Though I don't know how people would make a living. Maybe we could live in broadband-equipped rural ecovillages, but not all jobs can be teleworked, so there would continue to be a need for large cities - that's why they developed in the first place.

I recall someone - an American called Callenback, I think - wrote a couple books in the 1970s called 'Ecotopia' and 'Ecotopia Revisited', or similar. I read them in the 1980s. Now, a contemporary SF writer, Kim Stanley Robinson, has produced a compilation of ecotopian writing that is currently in the bookshops - sorry, don't recall the title. He wrote the Mars trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars) which, while in the SF genre, explore the terraformation of the planet to make it habitable for humankind. Maybe there's some clues in those books about the use of hi-tech in decentralised societies (though not necessarily conserver societies).

FUELWOOD
I recall someone on this listserv saying that David's new book promotes the use of fuelwood as an energy source. I haven't read the book yet - was waiting for it to appear in the bookshops, but it looks as though it will not - so I can't address what he says.

My initial reaction on reading this was to recall my years in Launceston, a city of 70 000 in northern Tasmania. Launceston occupies a bowl centred on the estuary of the Tamar River. As in the rest of Tasmania, fuelwood is a main means of winter heating. Now what happens in Launceston is that the smoke from all these domestic fires becomes trapped in a body of warmer air below a denser, cooler air cap that sits atop it - a 'temperature inversion'. Consequently, Launceston has among the country's most polluted air in winter. Sydney, being a city facing the Pacific Ocean to the east and surrounded by the Blue Mountains to the west and uplands to north and south, sits in the 'bowl' of the Sydney Basin. And, in winter, there occurs a temperature inversion that produces the city's famous brown haze. 

This made me wonder about the broader use of fuelwood as a major energy source. Perhaps - and I will have to read the book - David envisages a more decentralised society, however we will continue to need cities even in such a society for the very reasons that they evolved in the first place and that surely brings into question an energy source that the state government is considering banning because of the pollution it causes.

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Russ Grayson
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pacedge@magna.com.au  Phone/ fax: 02 9588 6931
PO Box 446 Kogarah NSW 2217 Australia
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