permaculture

[Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>]

In the immortal words of Larry Santoyo:

"Then, let's just die."

I don't think saving the planet or the human species or civilization are 
goals worth contemplating--no more achievable or worth wasting resources on 
than keeping the sun from burning out in a few billion years. But what is 
quite achievable is saving myself and any friends who want to play with 
me--and creating models for others to do that--and that's what I'm focused 
on. And I am having a wonderful time doing it, rather than wrecking my spine 
and getting a terrible taste in my mouth by trying to master 
auto-ass-kissing. 

I think "it's too late to do anything" is a harmful and false message. It's 
illogical: if it's true, then it's pointless to waste time talking about it, 
and if it's not true, then you're spreading fear and despair unnecessarily. 
Since you can never, ever know if it's true, given all the other choices of 
message we could have, it's unethical to spread it. The inaction, despair, 
and fear that it breeds are the worst frameworks for decision-making. It's 
the dumbest kind of dead-end street to waste time on! And it sure ain't 
permaculture.

Human extinction would take centuries at the least, and more likely 
millennia, and will be avoided by lots of tiny, local decisions rather than 
giant global plans. The loudest advocate of near-term human extinction is Guy 
McPherson, and he's had to utterly distort the scientific evidence to make 
his case:

http://fractalplanet.wordpress.com/2014/02/17/how-guy-mcpherson-gets-it-wrong/

Guy and his ilk are unfortunate cases of confirmation bias, only hearing 
evidence that supports their theory. 

The most common cause of whole-species extinctions, speaking as a former 
geneticist with a shelf-full of books and papers on the subject, is not 
resource depletion, but climate change. The most common cause of extinctions 
of local populations (rather than widespread species) is competition for 
resources by more fit variant populations (think Neanderthal vs us), and the 
next is predation to extinction. Resource depletion runs a far third (or 
maybe 4th, after epidemic), and usually affects small sub-populations only 
(think rabbits on a small island). And climate change, for local populations 
(emphasis on local), can be dealt with. 

Like the joke says, I don't have to outrun the bear--I just need to outrun 
you (okay, not you, but the fools who refuse to do anything because they 
think nothing can be done; which is the point of the joke).

If I were being truly selfish, I'd encourage others to do nothing; it would 
better my own chances to get their stuff when they die off. Hey, maybe that's 
the point of that message!

But most extinctions are an artifact of evolution--the species drift and 
shift over time into a different species, rather than get wiped out. At our 
distance in the fossil record, it just looks like they died without 
offspring, but they had offspring who were subtly different, generation after 
generation. E.g., the dinosaurs are still with us; they just are smaller and 
have feathers now. Humans will probably do something like it, as we already 
have over the last two million years.

Toby
http://patternliteracy.com


On Mar 19, 2014, at 10:43 PM, Steve Hart <stevenlawrencehart@gmail.com> wrote:

> Yeah...finally the news is out...something I have been quietly commenting
> on for a few years now. For many years we talked of "Saving the Planet" but
> then we realised the planet can do very nicely by itself, and always has.
> The reality is  about saving the species...after all there is such a thing
> as species extinction. And, when we research the reasons for most species
> extinction it is due to total exploitation of its resources, generally, by
> itself....so...does that ring a bell. Yeah well its time to start runnin
> workshops...and we all love workshops....but the next wave of workshops
> will be on How 2 Bend Over and Kiss Your Arse Goodbye. As Schumacher
> said...sometime ago...its all too late we are over the tipping point. So
> not even David Holmgrens scenarios on decline design can save us now. It is
> suggested that even if we plantedt the world in trees ..over the next five
> years...it is still too late. Besides the economic policy of Rockerfella
> and Rothchild who own the world and manipulate every aspect of every
> ecomomy are not into planting trees so...who wants to come to my next
> workshop ?. Maybe I should offer this....H2BO&KYAG...  at the innaugrual
> Nth American Permaculture Conference...
> Like to join me on that one Toby or Scoty? ...how about you Skeeta ?.
> Albert..how about you ?.....Steve Hart
> 
>