permaculture

["Healing Hawk" <healinghawk@earthlink.net>]

Burning wood is a contributor to global warming, no matter where or how you
got that wood.  How long can the ecologically ignorant position that our
behavior has no effect on anyone else hold up?  Up to now, global warming
has overwhelmingly been caused by the wealthy, industrial nations, and been
felt most seriously by poor nations and by wildlife and indigenous peoples
on the polar ice cap, which is at a record small size.     

It is, indeed, possible to live in harmony with trees, but no one does.  By
1900 there was not a single old growth tree remaining east of the
Mississippi.  How many of us know more than nature about trees?  Isn't that
the unspoken assumption in human attempts to "manage" trees?  

Where does urban scale energy come from?  If we start cleaning it up, can't
we transition to clean energy at some point, hopefully before Peak Oil hits
too hard?  How do all those people who live in urban settings transition to
clean energy?  Is there a misanthropic aspect to permaculture, i.e., fuck
urban people?  Fuck global warming victims?  

I contest the statement that burning wood is modest or intelligent.  Burning
wood is spectacularly anthropocentric and ignorant on several levels.  It's
not sustainable on anything above a farmstead scale.  It is immoral to
knowingly cause global warming from which anyone else will have to suffer.  

Each of us has to make the decision, on a personal level, to stop causing
global warming, if there is to be a human future worth living on Earth.
It's a tough thing to be confronted with.  What does a lifestyle which
avoids causing global warming look like?  One thing is certain: that
lifestyle does not include burning wood for any human purpose, whether or
not Mollison or anyone else approves of the method.      

Tommy Tolson
Austin, TX

-----Original Message-----
From: permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Rain Tenaqiya
Sent: Saturday, October 06, 2007 10:29 PM
To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [permaculture] Healing Hawk doesn't do enough observation

Wow, it sure feels good to be on the other side of an "ecological" tirade.
If you had seen my other posts or asked more questions you would know that I
am not cutting down trees to cook and heat.  Our home is passive solar, but
that alone won't keep us warm, even in California (which can be rainy and
cold nine days straight in the Winter).  We hope to use only food tree
prunings and trees grown for firewood someday.  We are now using dead
manzanita bushes and dead oak branches, helping to prevent fire due to fire
suppression.  We could also clear out some of the overgrown Douglas-fir that
need to be thinned due to bad logging and fire suppression.  It is possible
to live in harmony with trees.
   
  On the other hand, "green energy" is dependent on fossil fuel to create
and maintain.  It currently requires an insane fossil fuel infrastructure to
mine, transport, process, manfacture, and repair.  The result is global
warming, oil wars, despotic governments, pollution, and all the rest.  I
would prefer modest and intelligent wood burning instead.
   
  The fact is, with so many people, no solution really works.  At the same
time, Healing Hawk could promote more healing by being a little less
vindictive and not assuming the worse about people.  Ass u mi ng makes an
ass out of you and me.
   
  Long live all trees,
   
  Rain