permaculture

[Dieter Brand <diebrand@yahoo.com>]

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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