permaculture

[lbsaltzman@aol.com]

Human control of fire began with Home Erectus and is probably a good 500,000 
years old as far as paleo-archeologists can determine. 

Human control of fire is a relatively
recent phenomenon.  What did we do before that?




-----Original Message-----
From: Healing Hawk <healinghawk@earthlink.net>
To: 'permaculture' <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 10:35 am
Subject: Re: [permaculture] small cooking woodstove



How does this self-sufficiency scale up?  How many humans can be
self-sufficient in this way?  What does it say about urban lifestyles?  

As far as can be told, I think, the cliff dwellers of central and northern
New Mexico and southern Colorado went extinct when they overexploited the
forests that provided their living.  Human control of fire is a relatively
recent phenomenon.  What did we do before that?

In 1967, Lynn White, jr. wrote: "No new set of basic values has been
accepted in our society to displace those of Christianity.  Hence we shall
continue to have a worsening ecologic crisis until we reject the Christian
axiom that nature has no reason to exist save to serve man."

US society's propensity for defining "making a living" in industrial terms
(terms of human dominion -divine permission to dominate- over nature)
remains the norm, even (sigh) among US permaculturalists.  Cultural
interventions such as yoga, Buddhism, and Permaculture seem (to me) doomed
to co-optation by The American Way which now wages the War on Terror in
defense of US global domination, i.e., you provide us with the "natural
resources" to live our lives as we see fit or we'll bomb you back to the
Stone Age, with or without UN permission.  In microcosm, the subjugation of
the land in order to support industrial living standards is the same
paradigm.  How do we lose our cultural presupposition of dominion and join
life in its ebbs and flows?

"I know more than nature." Who dares to support that statement, outside of
the current occupants of the White House?

Tommy Tolson
Austin, TX

-----Original Message-----
From: permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Scott Pittman
Sent: Saturday, October 06, 2007 7:52 PM
To: 'permaculture'
Subject: Re: [permaculture] small cooking woodstove

The proper wood for kacheloffens or mass heaters is faggots.  We are self
sufficient with the self pruned wood from our elm and black locust with some
additional wood from our orchard pruning.  A good masonry stove is 90+%
efficient in btu conversion and one can become self sufficient for space
heating and a large part of cooking energy by using these appliances.  This
is our back up for passive solar and it works great.  Two bundles of faggots
per day keeps everything cozy and provides baked bread and crock pot
cuisine. 

There is a critical danger in saying "never do..." about anything there are
always exceptions. 

Scott Pittman
Director
Permaculture Institute
www.permaculture.org


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