Climate change, Peak Oil, Economic turmoil… are you worried?

M.K Hubbert's prediction for global oil supply

If the world is starting to look increasingly crazy to you and you feel like you want to do something about it, then permaculture is probably what you are looking for….
Permaculture is much more than a smart idea about sustainability, or a design framework for productive low maintenance gardens and small holdings – it is a rationale that could be the saviour to all our worries and challenges. Permaculture addresses the big and scary questions of the day; population, resources, energy, food, fuel… all that stuff.

How so? And if it is so good why aren’t more people talking about it?
Fair questions to ask.. and firstly actually a lot of people are talking about it.. all over the world a global network of innovators, doers and thinkers have been quietly spreading the ideas. Ever since the mid 70’ oil oil-shocks sent out the first waves of panic about energy and food security people have been convening and attending courses in how to respond to such challenges.

The 72 hr Permaculture Design course is one of the things that makes permaculture unique. It is a crash course in sustainability; which when you do it you do wonder why everyone hasn’t been taught this already, its like an Earth User’s guide. By its very nature sustainability is an inter disciplinary thing. Linking together understanding of compost, soil, water, forest ecology to design productive, abundant gardens and landscapes with energy efficient homes and chance to build productive satisfying lives and livelihoods. Permaculture design knits all these things together into a coherent whole. The course in itself it is a design for passing on knowledge and encouraging people to develop their own understanding through their own observation and experience. One way to look at permaculture is as applied common sense. And, as has been observed, common sense is actually not very common at the moment

Lots of people have been doing it even without having heard the word Permaculture, the ‘P’ word was coined by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren back in the 70’s. The design concept was the result of a lifetime of protracted and thoughtful observations of nature and natural systems like forests. Pioneers the world over, like the Holzer’s in Austria, Robert Hart and Arthur Hollins in Shropshire, Fukuoka in Japan and many, many more have drawn similar conclusions and developed similar strategies. Nature is the teacher.

Truth is, as a society we have not yet really applied ourselves to the sustainability question. The 20th century explosion of technology, population and food production has been fed by a surge of cheap energy and petrochemicals – all derived from finite and highly polluting fossil fuels. We could perhaps be forgiven for being lulled in to the idea that this same acceleration of technologies would also come up with the solutions to the sustainability question, but the truth is that this intensification of resource use has only served to amplify the problem. Our oil addiction is almost total and the world is headed for one hell of a cold turkey if it continues to stumble blindly on

The solution to the sustainability problem is much more simple and much within all of our reach. Permaculture tells us that if not everything, most of what we need is right here already, we simply need to re-jig our priorities, our outlook and the way we make decisions to see the possibilities. We need a design framework, a way to make decisions that actually puts nature and sustainability first. The genius of this is that by doing so we also guarantee our own survival, as we are simply a part of the global ecosystem, like every other organism. We are all interdependent and a lot of our problems are caused by our divorced, separated view of the world.

Throughout the world. Those who have really thought about things in this way have more or less come up with the same conclusion; perhaps not expressed as eruditely and persuasively as by Mollison and Holmgren, but it is a world view that tends to reinforce ones own experiences and observations, once you have let go of that consumerist perspective and are seeing the bigger picture.

I will give you an example of permaculture thinking.. Water and topsoil are the most important resources on the planet, from those we generate our food and a great many of our resources. Barely 3% of the world’s water is available to us, as most is either salty, frozen or deep in the earth beyond reach. Yet we pollute, waste and even flush our toilets with stuff. Observation of nature teaches us that there is no such thing as waste.. In nature everything is composted and recycled, re-incorporated into never ending cyclical systems. Nature has no landfill sites or sewerage farms and no piles of waste leaching toxins into the ground water. Waste as we see it is in fact a missed opportunity. It is the cause of pollution. The planet is a closed system, we all breath the same air and drink the same water.. throw your waste in the sea and it washes up on the beach.

Nature is diverse, complex, interconnected, highly efficient, robust and productive and is 100% solar powered. This is what we should be aspiring to and permaculture could be said to be the process of applying what we learn from natural systems to our homes, businesses and gardens.