permaculture

[Stephen Figgins <stephen@plainscraft.com>]

On Mar 30, 2007, at 10:23 AM, Toby Hemenway wrote:

> On 3/27/07 1:49 PM, "Charles de Matas"  wrote:
>
> > It takes less land to grow a person's food requirements for a  
> > vegetarian
> > diet than for a diet that includes meat.
>
> Ah, but let's think permaculturally here.

It might also help to think systemically in general.  Populations  
grow when there are resources available for them to grow, by  
resources here, we primarily mean food.   The lower on the food chain  
a species eats, the more numerous their population can and will  
grow.   Rising population will offset the land required to grow an  
individual's food.

Some believe humans are some kind of special exception to all other  
living species because of our ability to choose - but those choices  
are based on real world economics.  Our population has grown steadily  
as the land required to support our way of life has decreased, from  
hunter/gatherers to farmers to industrialists.  Population size,  
resources required by a lifestyle and resources available are all  
tied together.  You can't monkey with one part of this equation  
without affecting the others.

There may be good reasons to eat vegetarian or to consume less, but  
in the end it's how our living affects the environment that really  
matters.  Do we enrich or do we degrade the environment?  What kind  
of world does our lifestyle create? Rather than looking for ways to  
live on less, we should look for ways to enrich and diversify the  
land on which we depend, to increase its yield for more than just our  
food consumption. In doing so we enrich the world and we enrich our  
lives.

-Stephen