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John Hardy: My Green School Dream
Aid Projects, Building, Community Projects, Eco-Villages, Education, Education Centres, Energy Systems, Village Development, Waste Systems & Recycling — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor January 16, 2012
Comments (0)Join John Hardy on a tour of the Green School, his off-the-grid school in Bali that teaches kids how to build, garden, create (and get into college). The centerpiece of campus is the spiraling Heart of School, perhaps the world’s largest freestanding bamboo building. — Ted.com
Permaculture Urban Landscape Design Course
Courses/Workshops, Urban Projects — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor
Photo © Craig Mackintosh
I’d love to take this course myself, but alas, I’m unable to make it. Those of you who’re itching to get started, or to do better, with your urban patch (or with someone else’s urban patch!), should seriously consider jumping on this course.
During this intensive 5-day Permaculture Urban Landscape Design course, students will learn the fundamentals of running a professional permaculture design and consultancy business. This is a hands-on learning experience, from the ground up. You will be able to manage contractor bidding and installation of the design on behalf of the client, able to produce concepts and plans for urban, rural and aid projects, learn about proper selection of plants, softscaping, hardscaping, costing and estimation, and have the opportunity to learn the fundamentals of design, implementation and execution in several real life environments.
The course will be run at the PRI’s Zaytuna Farm, under the expert hands of Nick Huggins. See Nick’s author profile here, and his WPN profile here.
Comments (2)Peak Oil Can Fuel a Change for the Better
Consumerism, Economics, Food Shortages, Society, peak oil — by Samuel Alexander January 13, 2012
The advent of peak oil means we should prepare for a downscaling of our highly energy and resource-intensive lifestyles.
What is peak oil and why does it matter? And what effect will it have on the Western lifestyles we take for granted? These are not questions that many people are asking themselves yet, but this decade is going to change everything. Peak oil is upon us.
Peak oil does not mean that the world is about it run out of oil. It refers to the point at which the supply of oil can no longer increase. There is lots of the stuff left; it’s just getting much more difficult to find and extract, which means it is getting very hard, and perhaps impossible, to increase the overall ”flow” of oil out of the ground. When the flow can no longer increase, that is peak oil. Supply will then plateau for a time and eventually enter terminal decline. This is the future that awaits us, because oil is a finite, non-renewable resource.
Comments (1)Peak Oil, Energy Descent, and the Fate of Consumerism
Consumerism, Economics, Food Shortages, Society, peak oil — by Samuel Alexander
Western-style consumer lifestyles are highly resource and energy intensive. This paper examines the energy intensity of these consumer lifestyles and considers whether such lifestyles could be sustained in a future with declining energy supplies and much higher energy prices. The rise of consumer societies since the industrial revolution has only been possible due to the abundant supply of cheap fossil fuels – most notably, oil – and the persistence of consumer societies depend upon continued supply, for reasons that will be explained. But recently there has been growing concern that the world is reaching, or has already reached, its peak in oil production, despite demand for oil still expected to grow considerably. Put more directly, many analysts believe that demand for oil is very soon expected to outstrip supply, with a recent study by the US military reporting that, globally, spare productive capacity could entirely dry up by 2012 and by 2015 demand for oil could outstrip supply by almost 10 million barrels per day. What this means – even allowing for some uncertainty in timing and extent – is that the world is soon to face a situation where economic and geopolitical competition escalates over access to increasingly scarce oil supplies. One consequence of this (a consequence already playing out) is that oil will get more expensive. Since oil is the ultimate foundation of industrial economies, when it gets more expensive, all commodities get more expensive, and this dynamic will have pervasive implications on the globalised economy and the high consumption lifestyles that fully depend on that economy.
Comments (3)Permaculture at The Farm
Conservation, Demonstration Sites, Eco-Villages, Education Centres, Global Warming/Climate Change, Land, Rehabilitation, Soil Biology, Soil Conservation, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Structure, Water Contaminaton & Loss, Water Harvesting — by Albert Bates
 Former stockbroker Brian Bankston now calls himself the “Keyline Cowboy” after a carbon farming course at The Farm’s Ecovillage Training Center transformed his life. He quit his job, bought a keyline plow and compost tea brewer, and moved to The Farm. |
Climate Prophylaxis
For the past 10 years or so, the land management decisions of The Farm (a 40-year-old intentional community on 1750 acres in rural Tennessee, pop. ~200) have been informed by permaculture. Permaculture was influential in the design and early curricula of The Farm’s Ecovillage Training Center in 1994, and since many, if not all, of the community’s residents have now been exposed to it, it is not surprising to learn that a number of people serving on various village committees, as well some in public office in the surrounding county, have Permaculture Design certificates.
Our relationship with permaculture traces back to our connection to Bill Mollison, one of permaculture’s founders, who received the Right Livelihood Award, sometimes called the “Alternative Nobel Prize,” in the year after we did. RLA winners are a gregarious lot and gather from time to time to swap tales, so we have been fortunate to share such meetings with Bill over the past 30 years. We are also fortunate to have had the influence of an erstwhile neighbor, Peter Bane, who for many years published the quarterly Permaculture Activist from his former home in Primm Springs, Tennessee.
Today, as a permaculture instructor, I travel to many of the convergences of the movement and have come to know many practitioners. Our Farm team has taught permaculture courses on six continents and in 27 countries now, so it would only be surprising if The Farm did not have permaculture going on.
Comments (5)Living, Green and Circular
Alternatives to Political Systems, Consumerism, Economics, Financial Management, Global Warming/Climate Change, Health & Disease, People Systems, Society, Village Development — by Dr. Mae-Wan Ho
The new Truly Green Economy needs to be modeled after and embedded within the circular economy of nature to generate and regenerate wealth for people and planet.
Note: A fully illustrated and referenced version of this article is posted on ISIS members website and is otherwise available for download here.
The linear economy and the circular economy
The world’s economy is on the brink of financial meltdown, thanks to the corrupt Wall Street money and banking system unleashed by deregulation in the 1970s and 1980s [1] (“Shut Down Wall Street!” SiS 53). Emerging from the ruins is a new socially accountable economy that can provide good jobs at living wages, and generate real wealth for people and communities, at least in the United States [2] (New Economy Now, SiS 53). But that is not enough, we need a truly green circular economy working with and within nature to generate and regenerate wealth for people and planet.
Until a few years ago, very few people would take green or circular economy seriously. Not anymore; governments and businesses are now outdoing environmental groups in claiming the green circular economy for themselves. So perhaps it is time to put down some goal posts to make sure we get there.
Comments (2)Greeks Reclaim the Land to Ease the Pain of Economic Austerity
Aid Projects, Community Projects, Compost, Consumerism, Courses/Workshops, Economics, Food Shortages, Fungi, Rehabilitation, Salination, Society, Soil Biology, Soil Composition, Soil Conservation, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Village Development, Water Contaminaton & Loss — by Beatrice Yannacopoulou
Editor’s Note: The recently-formed PRI Hellas (Greece) team are making good progress in difficult times, as evidenced by this nice piece from The Ecologist below. If you want to support this work, whilst having a great learning experience in an incredibly beautiful location, be sure to check out their April 23 – 29, 2012, Intensive 6-day Permaculture Seminar & Workshop on the island of Kefalonia, Greece.
A group of community-minded gardeners have turned a former Athens airport into a blooming vegetable plot, showing how Greece’s eroded soil holds the keys to a revival in farming and a way to buck the jobless trend.
by Beatrice Yannacopoulou. Article originally published on The Ecologist
All photographs courtesy: Dimitris.V.Geronikos
"If we want to survive on this land we must first help to heal the earth," said Nicolas Netién, agro-ecologist, teacher and co-creator of the NGO Permaculture Research Institute Hellas. He was talking to a group of some fifty people of all ages who had gathered for two days of workshops on self-sufficiency, how to self-organize, agro-ecology and composting. This small gathering was taking place on a beautifully sunny autumn day at the former Athens airport, Ellinikon.
Comments (3)Permaculturists in Sunday Times – Living Fluidly
Consumerism, Economics, Markets & Outlets, Society, Village Development — by Richard Perkins January 12, 2012
(IM)PERMANENCE film was noticed by the Sunday Times who featured our family in an article regarding "living fluidly".
In case you didn’t catch the article in the Sunday Times last week, our family was featured in an article about living fluidly, how a generation of people are now forging new ways to interact to meet their needs in these uncertain times. To add to this I wished to further explain some of the design thinking behind developing poly-income streams, how and why I connect different aspects of my life together so there is functional interconnection with meeting various goals whilst moving me towards my highest visions and aspirations.
Comments (1)Bumper 2011 Grain Harvest Fails to Rebuild Global Stocks
Biofuels, Economics, Food Shortages, Global Warming/Climate Change, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Water Contaminaton & Loss — by Earth Policy Institute
by Janet Larsen, Earth Policy Institute
The world’s farmers produced more grain in 2011 than ever before. Estimates from the U.S. Department of Agriculture show the global grain harvest coming in at 2,295 million tons, up 53 million tons from the previous record in 2009. Consumption grew by 90 million tons over the same period to 2,280 million tons. Yet with global grain production actually falling short of consumption in 7 of the past 12 years, stocks remain worryingly low, leaving the world vulnerable to food price shocks.
Nearly half the calories consumed around the world come directly from grain, with grain-fed animal products making up part of the remainder. Three grains dominate the world harvest: wheat and rice, which are primarily eaten directly as food, and corn, which is largely used as a feedgrain for livestock. Wheat was the largest of the world’s grain harvests until the mid-1990s. Then corn production surged ahead in response to growing demand for grain-fed animal products and, more recently, for fuel ethanol. Despite a drop in the important U.S. harvest due mostly to high summer temperatures, global corn production hit 868 million tons in 2011, an all-time high. The harvests of wheat (689 million tons) and rice (461 million tons) were also records. (See Excel data.)
One Application Beauty Solution
Comedy Break, Consumerism, Economics, Society — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor
We don’t normally get into personal beauty products on this site, but I thought this product presentation on what to buy so you can feel good about yourself — with the bonus feature of making everyone else feel inferior compared to you — might be just the thing for some. As you’ll see, you can easily bypass the ‘traditional’, burdensome personal beauty methods of outdoor fresh-air exercise, organic food, clean water and guilt-free sleep with only one application.
Comments (5)
Permaculture and Philosophy
Courses/Workshops, Education, Society, Village Development — by Angelo Eliades January 11, 2012
We can teach philosophy by teaching gardening, but we cannot teach gardening by teaching philosophy. – Bill Mollison
The place of philosophy in Permaculture has always been a contentious subject and for very good reasons. The very identity and credibility of the design system of permaculture rests on its sound scientific underpinnings and foundations.
Through the definition of strict boundaries of what can and cannot be added to the body of the permaculture syllabus, it has managed to retain its intended focus, and therefore its effectiveness as a scientific design discipline.
If the relationship and connection of permaculture to philosophy is not clearly understood, we run the very real risk of destroying the integrity of the discipline of permaculture, by making inappropriate additions in the misguided endeavour to ‘make it all things to all people’.
So, the best way to tackle any contention about this subject is to examine the nature of permaculture itself as well as the nature of what we loosely define as philosophy, and the relationship between them. And that’s precisely what we’ll do!
Comments (14)The Rise of Tricycle Pushcarts
Consumerism, Energy Systems, Markets & Outlets, Society, Village Development — by Albert Bates
Wandering tortillas
Comments (2)Even in backward mining communities, as late as the sixteenth century more than half the recorded days were holidays; while for Europe as a whole, the total number of holidays, including Sunday, came to 189, a number even greater than those enjoyed by Imperial Rome. Nothing more clearly indicates a surplus of food and human energy, if not material goods. Modern labor-saving devices have as yet done no better. — Lewis Mumford, Myth of the Machine : Technics and Human Development, 1967.
Maya Mountain 7th Annual Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) and Advanced Design Courses (Belize, Feb-Mar 2012)
Courses/Workshops — by Albert Bates
Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) Course:
Where: Maya Mountain Research Farm, Belize
When: Feb 20 – Mar 2, 2012
Instructors: Albert Bates, Andrew Leslie Phillips, Cliff Davis, Chris Nesbitt
Cost: US$1250 (including food and accommodation)
Advanced Design Course:
Where: Maya Mountain Research Farm, Belize
When: Mar 4 – 10, 2012
Instructors: Jono Neiger, Eric Toensmeier and Chris Nesbitt
Cost: US$700 (including food and accommodation)
More Info: www.mmrfbz.org or info(at)mmrfbz.org
Comments (0)72-hour Permaculture Design Course, Konso, Ethiopia (Feb 2012)
Courses/Workshops — by Alex McCausland
This PDC will take place in Konso, south Ethiopia, from 13th – 25th February 2011, at Strawberry Fields Eco Lodge. It will have a special focus on the application of Permaculture to communities in the developing world and low tech solutions to food establishment in rural and urban schools and communities drawing inspiration from established projects in a range of locations and climate zones around the country.
Facilitators: Tichafa Makovere and Alex McCausland
Dates: February 13th – 25th, 2012
Location: Konso, South Ethiopia
Venue: Strawberry Fields Eco Lodge
Cost: US$650 ($500 for Ethiopians)
Includes: course fees, food and accommodation for the period of the course
Excludes: Transport, accommodation in Addis, travel insurance etc.
Documents You Will Need
- Info and Application Form (130kb PDF)
- Orientation (62kb PDF)
Winter Sowing – Germinating the Natural Way
Food Plants - Annual, Food Plants - Perennial, Nurseries & Propogation, Seeds — by Sunny Soleil January 10, 2012
When you consider how seeds germinate in nature, it makes sense to sow our own seeds the same way.
In late summer, left to their own devices, seeds fall into the ground. They slowly get covered with leaves and other natural material ready to begin their long winter hibernation in the soil.
As the cold weather sets in and snow covers the ground, the seed toughens up and as spring sets in that little seed will emerge in its own good time, when conditions are perfect for it to start peeking above ground.
July through August (or, in the northern hemisphere, from December through January) is generally a ‘rest time’ for the annual gardener, so if you’re anxious to be ‘out there’ doing something, winter sowing is a perfect way to keep your green fingers active!
Comments (9)
