permaculture

[Sean Maley <semaley@yahoo.com>]

--- "J. Kolenovsky" <garden@hal-pc.org> wrote:
> Your last line in your posted comment struck me into pontificating these
> reply. As being a permaculturist, I think you and I would understand
> this. When the force of Peak Oil hits and starts to sustain itself for
> along while, the food supply will be hampered. Food that is produced
> hundreds and thousands away will cease to be on shelves. There simply
> would not be any fuel to transport  food cheaply if at all.  Mass
> produced food would decrease because of the petro products in
> fertilizer. Shrinking the supply of food will result in billions of
> death in 3rd countries. It's not that there won't be any oil, but that
> what oil remains will be extraordinarily expensive to produce, refine
> and distribute. Folks say ethanol is an answer. We will need all that
> corn to live and survive. Not to use as fuel for energy. I feel that
> people living during the Post-Carbon Age will be shooting deer and using
> the forest as fuel ( to an imaginative extent).  Gee, can energy be made
> from strawberries and grapes? Hope not. I like them.
> 
> J. Kolenovsky

Beware of fear mongering:  attention spans are short, then you get ignored.  
Even if all oil
flittered away within the next year, nothing would change as we burn up the 
forests, unless
culture change happens.  Within the context of culture change, oil by itself 
doesn't really
matter.  With it - or without it - we are just as doomed if we continue to 
believe that the earth
was put here for humanity - that we own it - that there is only good and evil 
- that people must
be saved - that we are the only species with intelligence and language - that 
we are the top of
the food chain, as if it is linear or hierarchical.  Peak oil is a waste of 
time when it is not
accompanied with the fact that we belong to Earth, not the earth belongs to 
us.  Control and
ownership lead to hierarchy, where Permaculture teaches rhizome and 
egalitarian ideals.

We are not in charge of what food/resources nature is willing to provide.  We 
can only request
resources by studying, and understanding, what is already there.  If we get 
slugs, we should be
eating them, or finding an animal that will come anyway.  If we get deer, we 
should be eating
them.  At the same time, let's not forget that the slugs and deer don't 
belong to us.  We take
only what we need.

Generally, nature doesn't provide most of the food items we know and love, 
yet we have coerced
nature to provide them for 10,000 years.  I can see continuing these 
activities as a stepping
stone (who would listen when told to eat pigeons and cockroaches?), but the 
10,000 year record of
agriculture is alarming.  Permaculture, to me, serves as a transition from 
one culture to another,
or from agriculture to permaculture and then back to our natural role with 
nature (hoping to take
some of our agricultural goodies, but not yet knowing what will make it).  
Whether we start now or
in 1000 years, humanity is in a cultural dead end and at the edge of a cliff. 
 Oil is just a turbo
charge off this proverbial cliff which represents the end of humanity.

Stratification will be our tip-off that Mother Culture whispers in our ear.  
The true mother says,
... "come back to me" ....


-Sean.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com