permaculture

Principles for the Pulse that is Peak Oil

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As I wrote in my post about the Pulse, “Howard Odum was of the opinion that all systems on all scales pulse. Storages gradually accumulate, consumers consume and develop, and eventually decline, and then dispersing materials that will be used in the next pulse.” And if “energy flows, storages, transformations, feedbacks, and sinks” are central to any system, man-made or otherwise, we can see that the peaking of world oil production is going to have a huge effect. So, how does the idea of pulsing change one’s approach to design?

Food & agriculture – April 30

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• The Trouble with Biofuels: Costs and Consequences of Expanding Biofuel Use in the United Kingdom
•Dance of the Honey Bee
•The benefits of alternative farming methods
•A Brief History of Our Deadly Addiction to Nitrogen Fertilizer
•Connecting the Dots: the Big Permaculture Picture
•YFF: Using the Sun to Empower Women and Help Family Farmers
•International Day of Peasant struggles
•Why Saving Seed and Growing Organic Food is a Powerful Weapon Against Corporate Tyranny
•Why farmers still struggle when food prices rise

Principles of Terraforming

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A few months back I started exploring the idea of terraforming. In this post I’d like to consider two important questions about it. First, what is terraforming, anyway? And second, why should we do it? Oddly enough, it seems to me that the second question is easier to answer than the first because even with a vague sense of what terraforming entails, it seems clear that there are many degraded ecosystems around us in the industrialized world today, ecosystems that could use what is conventionally termed “restoration”. (I hesitate to use the term “restoration” as most ecosystems will never be returned to what they once were before being overtaken by human interests, and since my goal isn’t to live apart from nature — there are way too many people on the planet for that — but rather to live among nature and with nature better than we have in the past.)

Guerrilla Forest Gardens

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In the last few years a popular meme growing throughout the ether of the inter-webs is the idea of guerrilla gardening. The idea of guerrilla gardening is really quite simple, but with some rather radical implications. Guerrilla gardening is the cultivation and care of plants (usually edibles) on land that you do not own. It is done on land that may be overlooked and forgotten about by private companies or municipalities. It may be D.O.T. land such as boulevards or parcels cut off by highways, and surrounded by entrance and exit ramps. It may be tucked away off of the beaten path in a county park, or behind the public library.

Permaculture Convergence

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In Extraenvironmentalist #57 we hear from the many speakers at the 2012 Northwest Permaculture Convergence as recorded by our editor Kevin. We hear segments from the dozens of conference session sessions themed around permaculture approaches to global challenges, the social aspects of permaculture and ideas on the built environment.

When Agriculture Stops Working: Ten Recommendations for Growing Food in the Anthropocene

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Now, despite my best efforts to look into the crystal ball here, I fully expect there will be a lot about the future of human food acquisition that will surprise me…and perhaps even in a good way! But in light of all the known troubles bearing down on us, I think it’s just plain suicidal to muddle on as-per-usual and hope it’ll all be OK.