permaculture

[Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>]

Karl North:
For those who missed it on sanet recently, or want to review it and use it
as a jumping off point for study, here is a cleaned up version of my
posting, which may be easier to understand. It explains why an
understanding of emergy and its role in human society and agriculture is
crucial to any attempt to design a viable agriculture to confront the
future we face.
The Industrial Economy is Ending Forever: an Energy Explanation for
Agriculturists and Everyone <http://karlnorth.com/?p=1176>
-- 
Karl North -  http://karlnorth.com/
"Pueblo que canta no morira" - Cuban saying
"They only call it class warfare when we fight back" - Anon.
"My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son
will ride a camel."
 —Saudi saying

Gill Gillespie:
I laud Karl for his thoughtful effort to bring the issue of our societal
extreme dependence on fossil energy to the fore. I fully agree that a full
accounting of energy (emergy) and EROEI are critical concepts and recommend
his explanation. I now live in the midst of a geographic context in which
grain and cellulosic ethanol seems to be regarded as the solution to our
problems. Both have their problems, but, as Karl notes, net energy gain is
a serious issue in its production. In my own case, when I burn E-10 in my
recent model vehicle, its gas mileage drops by around 10%, so this problem
may be made even worse in its consumption.

Unfortunately (as I surmise Karl might agree), climate change stemming from
high consumption of fossil energy and our societal tendencies to respond to
its impacts by adopting more energy intensive approaches rather than
adopting agroecological and less resource intensive ways of life seem
likely to fuel unhelpful feedback loops.

Nearly 15 years ago Jared Diamond wrote a book titled "Collapse" with a
subtitle that really bothered me at the time--"How Societies Choose to Fail
or Succeed." I thought...With the complexity of ecosystems and social
systems, how could people really understand that they were choosing
collapse or survival?  Over time, I came to appreciate what Diamond surely
meant...That the choices people make, whether or not they understand the
implications of those choices, can greatly affect their societal
persistence. Our imaginations on matters like the consequences of fossil
energy consumption cannot protect us from what the philosopher John Searle
has called "brute realities." One of the key ideas that I took from
Diamond's book is that societal collapses tend to occur shortly after the
peaks of their development. Concerning tendencies manifested by our
contemporary society include the mining and privatizing of our resource
base  and control of the few over many aspects of our lives (which impedes
responsive decision-making by those who most directly experience emerging
problems).

For anyone who thinks that elite decision-making is needed because common
people are incapable, I recommend a recent article in Science (the AAAS
journal)--see citation below.

*Author:* Dryzek, John S.; Bächtiger, André; Chambers, Simone; Cohen,
Joshua; Druckman, James N.; Felicetti, Andrea; Fishkin, James S.; Farrell,
David M.; Fung, Archon; Gutmann, Amy; Landemore, Hélène; Mansbridge, Jane;
Marien, Sofie; Neblo, Michael A.; Niemeyer, Simon; Setälä, Maija; Slothuus,
Rune; Jane Suiter; Thompson, Dennis; Warren, Mark E.
*Year:* 2019
*Title:* The Crisis of Democracy and the Science of Deliberation: Citizens
Can Avoid Polarization and Make Sound Decisions
*Journal:* Science
*Volume:* 363
*Issue:* 6432
*Pages:* 1144-1146
*Date:* March 16
*Abstract:* "That there are more opportunities than ever for citizens to
express their views may be, counterintuitively, a problem facing
democracy—the sheer quantitative overabundance overloads policymakers and
citizens, making it difficult to detect the signal amid the noise. This
overload has been accompanied by marked decline in civility and
argumentative complexity. Uncivil behavior by elites and pathological mass
communication reinforce each other. How do we break this vicious cycle?
Asking elites to behave better is futile so long as there is a public ripe
to be polarized and exploited by demagogues and media manipulators. Thus,
any response has to involve ordinary citizens; but are they up to the task?
Social science on “deliberative democracy” offers reasons for optimism
about citizens’ capacity to avoid polarization and manipulation and to make
sound decisions. The real world of democratic politics is currently far
from the deliberative ideal, but empirical evidence shows that the gap can
be closed." (authors' first paragraph)

"Psychological research shows that even if people are bad solitary
reasoners, they can be good group problem-solvers. . . The science of
deliberative democracy seeks evidence on the capacities of citizens as they
engage democratic dialogue, not as they respond as isolated individuals to
survey questions (or even as they respond in social psychological
experiments that fail to capture key democratic features). . .Deliberation
entails civility and argumentative complexity. . . Deliberative
experimentation has generated empirical research that refutes many of the
more pessimistic claims about the citizenry’s ability to make sound
judgments. For example, claims that most people do not want to participate
in politics prove false once the possibility of participation in meaningful
deliberation is offered. . . *Ordinary people are capable of high-quality
deliberation, especially when deliberative processes are well-arranged:
when they include the provision of balanced information, expert testimony,
and oversight by a facilitator* [emphasis added]. . . Deliberation can
overcome polarization. The communicative echo chambers that intensify
cultural cognition, identity reaffirmation, and polarization do not operate
in deliberative conditions, even in groups of like-minded partisans. . .
These effects are not necessarily easy to achieve; good deliberation takes
time and effort. Many positive effects are demonstrated most easily in
face-to-face assemblies and gatherings, which can be expensive and
logistically challenging at scale. Careful institutional design—involving
participant diversity, facilitation, and civility norms—enables well-known
problematic psychological biases and dynamics to attenuate or disappear. .
. Introducing deliberative elements may sometimes slow decision-making down
but may also generate smart and sustainable solutions and creative moves
beyond impasse. . . Because the importance of deliberative moments lies in
what they can do for the system as a whole, there is a pressing need to
bring them in from the margins and make them a more familiar part of
standard political practice. . . The prospects for benign deployment are
good to the degree that deliberative scholars and practitioners have
established relationships with political leaders and publics—as opposed to
being turned to in desperation in a crisis. . . That political
reconstruction itself would ideally be deliberative and democratic,
involving social science but also competent citizens and leaders in
broad-ranging political renewal." (selected excerpts).

-- 
Lawrence F. London, Jr.
lfljvenaura@gmail.com
Avant Geared
avantgearedshop@gmail.com
https://sites.google.com/site/avantgeared