permaculture

["J. Kolenovsky" <garden@hal-pc.org>]

Sean, I wish I had your eloguence, foresight and knowledge. Then perhaps
my paltry comment s would not construed as fearmongering. You made some
good points. If there is anyone else out there who thinks I was fear
mongering, my apologies as I was not and don't believe in that venue but
rather believe in stark, naked truth of inadequate current man's place
is on this earth. Oil consumption is, as you said, a turbocharger off
the cliff and I believe, a precursor for Permaculture.. 

You quoted this, " 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.". To me, this seems where Permaculture will come into play,
either before the crash or as a result of the crash.  It will not occur
in 1 year. Frankly, I don't know nor think anyone else knows how long it
will take  all this for this to come down the pike. In my simple mind, I
feel that the return to Earth (so to speak for lack of intelligence)
will be forced onto mankind as a result of greed, control, indifference,
ignorance  and that by longevity will lead mankind to believe that
Permaculture teaches rhizome and egalitarian ideals. This is where I get
my idealistic {or does the word "utopian" count, (I need to look it up)}
feelings of the  expected things (no cars, no planes, no  or few fossil
powered equiptment, no fertilizer, Post-Carbon dieoff, etc) to come when
the Post-Carbon Age is all over us like a cheap suit. 
See, in my simple mind,  this is where I see Permaculture rise to fame.
If there are sorry s.o.b.'s out there who won't change and adapt to
egalitarian ideas, then let them suffer and die. I'm sure some
percentage will survive.  As Jerry Jeff Walker, Waylon Jennings and
Willy Nelson sang about Luckenbach, Texas, "Let's get back to the basics
of love". Love for the earth we walk and live on.

Yes, on the eternal timeline of Earth, 150 years of Big Oil is just
hardly a blip on the screen. People in the future will look and say,
"Those were the good old days" or "What did they do that for and what
were they thinking?". I hope the latter is true. Glad I won't be around.

J

p.s. - Sean let's talk off-line sometimes. 

Message: 3
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2006 09:27:20 -0700 (PDT)
From: Sean Maley <semaley@yahoo.com>
Subject: [permaculture] deer fencing - Mother Culture vs. Mother
        Nature
To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Message-ID: <20060420162720.90013.qmail@web52815.mail.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1

--- "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.