permaculture

["E.Christopher Mare" <ecmare@antiochsea.edu>]

Well said John S., as always. Energetic fundamentals - from a systems
perspective. The work of H.T. Odum is very insightful in this regard.

Of course, the "simply going to *replace* oil with some other fuel" theory
is also a state of denial that doesn't want to notice the massive retrofit
that awaits the settlement patterning in the recently colonized parts of
the world - settlement patterning that was haphazardly installed in an era
of cheap available energy. This coming retrofit is reason to jubilate! N.
America and Australia will finally need to develop some sort of organic,
village-scale infrastructure. This will benefit the people immensely!

Chris Mare
VDI





john@eco-living.net on Thursday, February 2, 2006 at 10:04 PM  wrote:


>Aloha,
>
>I see a clear pattern in all of the institutional citations - newspaper 
>articles, W's speech, Lester Brown, etc. - regarding biofuels/bioenergy.
>
>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.
>
>Avoidance of even asking the most fundamental question:
>
>Are we using more energy per unit of time than we are getting from the 
>sun per unit of time?
>
>If we are - then 'replacing' fossil fuels with biofuels and whatever 
>else is just rearranging those 'ol deck chairs on that big big 
>unsinkable ocean liner.
>
>What is our (very localized) solar gain, and what portion of that could 
>be harvested to support humans in the long term (which of course means 
>allowing all the living systems we need to support us to have at least 
>their necessary share).
>
>Answering these questions - in macro and micro contexts - is the 
>*beginning* of figuring out how much energy use by humans might 
>theoretically be sustainable.
>
>hi ho,
>John S.
>
>-- 
>
>John Schinnerer - MA, Whole Systems Design
>------------------------------------------
>- Eco-Living -
>Whole Systems Design Services
>People - Place - Learning - Integration
>john@eco-living.net
>http://eco-living.net
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