permaculture

[Marimike6@cs.com]

John S-- You go to the crux of the matter when you say "The pattern is only 
asking the question "how and with what do we replace fossil fuel?" and the 
consistent avoidance of any possibility of actually having to get used to (or 
better yet designing for) declining energy usage."

Society at large is not equipped to approach the problem in this manner. It 
has been built around the premise of infinitely convenient transportation at 
cheap prices. Change that and not only do we precipitate a worldwide 
depression, 
we become unable to serve a dispersed population.

It's exactly comparable to the distress an organism would feel if it were 
unable to get enough oxygen. Just advising it to learn how to get by on less 
air 
would not be seen as a viable approach. It must have more air! 

I think we will find the open mind we encounter in the PC and the academic 
communities will not be shared by the general public or the politicians. At 
this 
point in history their mindset will be shaped by the need to find new sources 
of energy, particularly vehicle fuels. It is a tremendous step forward for 
them and the dinosaurs who lead them just to begin thinking in terms of using 
switchgrass to generate ethanol. 

Otherwise, a viable approach might be to do something about the projected 
nine billion humans we're going to have on the planet within the next forty 
years. Unlike previous generations used to a life of poverty, all of these 
new 
people are going to see the Americans' profligate lifestyle as being their 
birthright. It would be nice to imagine all of them getting along peacefully 
on a 
fraction of the energy currently being burned up-- but I don't think they're 
going to stand still for that kind of future. 

There will at that point be insufficient available farmland on earth for all 
those people to utilize permaculturally, even if there were enough teachers 
available to show them all how to live locally and "small". They will mostly 
be 
piled into urban slums, awaiting the arrival of the consumer credit economy. 
We need to find a lot of new energy-- and fast.

That's my observation, anyway.

Michael Elvin