Permaculture as Education - A polemic
If PC is about design then it is not something that is simply contained in the private sphere but also something that exists in the public sphere.
PC is about town planning, grass roots democracy, neighbourhood committees and rescuing ourselves. This is a call to action. PC IMHO seems to have not considered it's social and political side as important as it's private side.
Let's not kid ourselves though - if PC means anything beyond a middle class wank about trees - then it belongs to the poor, serves the needy, and defends the weak The second weapon is compassion.
We need to teach/learn about the local plants in our neighbourhood that were indigneous sources of food (I've made a sort of start for s.w of W.A.) We need to encourage the creation of farmer's markets and local economies.
In Australia, we need to start to educate people about our backyards, the resource that is going to save most of us when the crunch comes.
We need to create "compleat idiot" guides to backyard farming and survival for the suburbs.
From time to time, local governments or the Ag dept wipe out some fruit or nut tree from an area to control some disease or pest. PC applied over a council area would be a definitive answer to this simply by increasing the complexity of the environment you would reduce the risk of spread etc. (fill in the arguments).
We need to start now establishing establishng alternative food webs within our community.
We need to start working on a manifesto about how our town, or neighbourhood could be and we need to start a revolution of hope.
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