permaculture

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

When $100 a barrel oil is factored throughout the US economy, no telling
where we're going.  I see a HumVee in almost every used car lot in Austin,
it seems.  Predatory lending has hung the big banks out to dry and that's
depressing the stock market and the banks counted on a continuing Republican
majority in Congress for when they needed a bailout so now they're all
firing their CEOs.  We're spending $2 billion of borrowed money every day to
wage the propaganda event Karl Rove named the War on Terror as cover for
advancing Big Oil's agenda in Afghanistan and Iraq.  If OPEC unhooks from
the dollar (which I understand Saudi Arabia will try to prevent), I suspect
we're in deep economic crisis in the US.  So we'll bomb Iran and seize their
oilfields, right?  Einstein would grin.

I think at least part of the problem is that we attempt to address an
ecological problem with economic solutions.  We continue to throw fragmented
information into the maw of human-caused ecosystemic transformation even
though we see no evidence that it has any effect at all.  Economics is a
fragment of ecology and will not, I suspect, save us this time.  We need a
new hero.  Lovelock says that humans need to accept the fact that we are the
brains and nervous system of Gaia.  Rather humbling, eh?

I'm reading a book, _Resilience Thinking_, by Brian Walker and David Salt,
which talks about how, even within an unfolding ecological disaster, people
want to keep doing what makes them comfortable.  As we've progressively
stripped more and more of the resiliency from Earth's infrastructure,
ecologists have warned us over and over of the approaching thresholds, and
the possibility of tipping into a new regime that may or may not support
life but almost certainly won't provide the same level, or type, of
ecological services.  They examine the Everglades, the Goulburn-Broken
Catchment, the Caribbean coral reefs, the Northern Highlands Lake District,
and the Kristianstads Vattenrike to demonstrate how ecological tools are
used.  Most readers would probably find it a pretty dry read, but I think
it's fascinating, and it's totally germane to permaculture design.  As
designers, we need these specific tools to grasp and to deal with the
effects of our interventions in the ecological order.  I suspect we need to
learn how to stop our interventions and learn to join life in progress.
Resiliency has been around since the 70s but the cultural resistance to the
science of ecology has been fierce, and fiercest among those who operate
from an intellectual embrace of the Christian axiom of dominion (defined as
a supremacy in determining and directing the actions of others or in
governing politically, socially, or personally: acknowledged ascendancy over
human or nonhuman forces such as assures cogency in command or restraining
and being obeyed), like the ecologically ignorant despots in the White
House. 

After the corporatists finish bleeding and crashing the US economy and we no
longer have the huge sums of money required to address the ecological
disasters that seem to continue occurring with increasing frequency, I'm
thinking it gets pretty grim pretty fast in the US.  Too many of us still
insist on living out the 1950s Cleavers lifestyle.  

The people who are now attempting to make ecological consciousness a
pleasant thing are on the right track, I think.  Scared people don't engage
risk.  They look for a hero to slay the dragon.  It works in mythology.  I'm
not certain that it works in real life today.  But I think ecological
consciousness is a big part of the solution, if not the easy solution we
seek.  Something needs to enable us to leave this stampede of lemmings.

Tommy Tolson
Austin, TX

-----Original Message-----
From: permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Charles de
Matas
Sent: Monday, November 19, 2007 2:17 PM
To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [permaculture] "Apocalypse Not" - How do you


Thanks to Toby for some very enlightening comments.  I think the most
imminents threats to stability in the U.S. are economic rather than related
to global climate change or energy shortage.  Economic shocks will be felt
before the direct effects of these other problems.  
   The signs for the U.S. economy are ominous.  I think you are already in a
recession, otherwise I don't see how it can be avoided much longer.  The
falling exchange rate of the US$ and problems with mortgages etc are signs
of an economy under serious stress.  You may even see capital flight like
that which occurs in many 3rd world countries.   Good luck.
 
Charles de Matas