permaculture

[Tommy Tolson <healinghawk@earthlink.net>]

Peak Oil occurred in 2005.  It is not in the future.  High-tech X rays 
from space show all the oil in the planet.  In 2004, I think, it was 
calculated to be one trillion barrels, recoverable or not.  All the 
"discoveries" of oil are not discoveries.  They are production of known 
reserves that were, until now, out of reach for usually political 
reasons.  If you're paying attention, you know that the neocons have a 
US military base and military presence in every oil producing region in 
the world save Russia.   Before now, most people would not allow us to 
produce, and take, their oil.  The neocons changed all of that.  That's 
what this administration is all about.  They planned it in the Clinton 
administration and Dubya has not gone off-task a single bit. 

At current use levels, global oil reserves are depleted in 2043.  Given 
the increase in use levels, usually attributed to China and India 
industrializing, it drops back to 2028.  We have twenty one years to 
build the ecocities that will save enough civilization to avoid a 
collapse back the the Dark Ages.  If you know your history, you know we 
don't want to go there. 

Permaculture design is fixated on building groovy farms and cool 
isolated ecovillages.  This amounts to shooting the future in the head.

WAKE UP!!  If Permaculture designers who are exposed to systems theory 
are too blind to see the systemic implications of no oil, the future is 
not worth living.  What we design for now is isolated farms and 
ecovillages that are vulnerable to marauding bands of starving 
urbanites.  Is this what you want to design for?  If not, WAKE UP.  Yes, 
I'm screaming.

WAKE UP!!  Do your designs work without oil?  Can they be built without 
oil?  Do they have a prayer of maintaining a critical mass of 
civilization?  What are their implications for the global future?  We 
have to take up urban design projects, and we have to become politically 
adept enough to get them built, if civilization is to have a prayer, and 
if our children are to have a future worth living.  Not our 
grandchildren.  Our children, the generation coming to adulthood NOW.  
They are going to see the collapse of the US economic system if we don't 
get ecocities in place before we run out of oil.  Cheap oil pulled the 
US out of the Great Depression, which was caused by overshooting the US 
ecosystem with a population of about one hundred million. Without oil, 
we've overshot our ecosystemic carrying capacity by a factor close to 
four.  Ecocities are a way, perhaps the only way, to design a soft 
landing in sustainability. 

Tommy Tolson
Austin, TX