permaculture

[Will Carey <cure@rtinet.com>]

on 10/26/04 9:00 AM, permaculture-request@lists.ibiblio.org at
permaculture-request@lists.ibiblio.org wrote:

>> Of course Mollison could say he wanted "vertical greenhouses built up the
> side of skyscrapers", but obviously knew it would be a ridiculously
> inefficient and unsustainable use of resources. And he did not promote such
> a thing as being Permaculture, so let's not make it out to be something it
> wasn'

Graham... You don't know me well enough to call me a liar

Folks... We're on the verge of making Permaculture into a Bad Religion.....
Fighting over Doctrine like this....

"If it ain't in the Good Book, it Ain't the True Word of Mollison!"

I grew up among Fundamentalists, thank you.  Nice people, usually... But....

I'm sharing what I've seen and heard Mollison do and say.  It was
Permaculture then and it's Permaculture now because it is based on well-
thought out design principals....

Like one evening, Big Bill was walking up to the Evergreen campus with us,
.... he was going to give that night... He spotted the great concrete slab
wall that was the south-facing back end of the lecture hall.  He got excited
about all that "vertical potential" and thermal mass going to waste...

"Just let me plant some Kiwis to trellis up that wall..... I'll just take
three percent of the money they make from selling the fruit and from the
energy savings they have inside..."

OK... It's not an exact quote.  But Mollison was always finding great
opportunities for vertical gardens and harnessing wasted solar potential.

He was big on this... Especially in harnessing the wasted solar potential of
Manhattan high-rises.

The efficiency and sustainability of such a project would depend on a lot of
design and engineering factors, as well as site-specific aspects.

But potentials like this are never realized until given due consideration.

"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof
against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting
ignorance ­ that principle is contempt prior to investigation."
                                                           --Herbert Spencer

-- Will Carey, Director
Center for Urban & Rural Ecology
32861 Lake Creek Drive
Halsey, OR 97348
cure@rtinet.com