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  • From: Ben Martin Horst <ben.martinhorst@gmail.com>
  • To: pci@permaculture-inst.org, permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] permaculture - Biofuel Illusion
  • Date: Sun, 09 Jul 2006 15:07:05 -0700

Scott Pittman wrote:
Why is it that no one wants to talk about moving to a more simple life style? People had it pretty good in the 18th and 19th century without all the petroleum, the problem then, as now, was political ineptitude and greed leading to nationalistic war over territory and natural resources.
Amen. However, I think it's important that we not over-idealize the immediate pre-petroleum period. Many of the problems we currently face existed then as well, simply minus the petroleum. For instance, whereas today we use electricity to light our homes, in the 19th century much of Europe used whale oil, leading to a predictable and disastrous population crash among whales from which no cetacean species has fully recovered. And instead of using gasoline and diesel to power transportation and industry, the 19th century world used coal. We'd still be facing global warming crises even if nobody had started pumping petroleum. And, as you allude to, colonial wars of the period led to people having it "pretty good" only in the colonizing nations. 18th and 19th century agrarian and industrial societies were destroying the world every bit as much as modern ones are, though not at quite the same pace.

If we're going to idealize a historical subsistence pattern, than let it be that of all the hunter-gather and horticultural groups that comprised the totality of humanity until roughly 10,000 years ago, and continue to exist in a few places at present. Their effects on overall biomass and biodiversity were/are almost always nil to positive; their people consistently happier than any other type of society, and with the possible exception of modern industrial society, always healthier than any other; their lives ones of more leisure than any agricultural or industrial society.

Our challenge as permaculturists is to translate the tactics and strategies of such venerable peoples into ones useful in the modern context. A world of a few hundred thousand people is a very different place from a world of several billions.

Ben




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