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permaculture - Re: [permaculture] Time to pick up our hats?

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  • From: Dieter Brand <diebrand@yahoo.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Time to pick up our hats?
  • Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2007 01:37:29 -0700 (PDT)

Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com> wrote:

> ...
> And I think there's an even better chance that rural areas will suffer
> far more than urban ones, or suffer before cities do. ...

Not necessarily! I remember the old people in the village I was
born in the North of Germany talking about their experience of
WWII. Many of the small-scale farmers recounted stories, not
without satisfaction, about rich people from the cities, as far
away as 50 miles or more, who normally wouldn't deign to even
talk to a "peasant", scavenging the countryside to beg local
farmers to swap a fur coat for a sac of potatoes or the family
jewels for a bit of lard. In theory the government made farmers
account for every bit of food they produced; however, farmers
are not stupid, they always managed to hide away a pig or
two to be slaughtered when nobody was looking. In those
days, farmers never went hungry even during the worst of
times.

This just as an aside. I agree with most of what you said.
Most of all, I'm not a fan of doomsday rhetoric. Whatever
happens in the future will be very different from what people
predict today. This doesn't mean we should be inactive.
We need to cut down on fossil fuel consumption and
reduce the waste inherent in our political, economic
and social systems. It's as simple as that.

Dieter Brand
Portugal



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