Bolinas and the PDC

As of Friday, i will be up in Bolinas CA for a two week permaculture intensive, to be certified as a permaculturalist.

what is permaculture?

In the mid 1970's Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, in response to the horrid destruction of top soil due to industrialized agriculture and the poisoning of biodiversity, water and land in Australia-

had coined from earlier definitions of permanent agriculture or forest culture at the turn of the 1900s, "permanent culture" or permaculture, defining both land and people in the practice of a more permanent sustainability of resources and biome.

at right, ( a quick and poor drawing)is just a quick visual of the 3 key principals of permaculture:

earth care-

this is recognizing that earth is first. we are a part of it, not apart from it, and it takes input of energy just as much as we take from it.. in fact we should be putting more energy back into it.

people care-

we live with each other, so that we live within our means and the earth's means. we prioritize earth care so that it becomes own by default. care of our environment for us, not for the sake of saving the earth; we seem to forget that this planet lived on quite nicely without us for millennia.

we are only destroying it for our selves, and no one else. that is a BIG DEAL PEOPLE! (i do not consider my self some eco warrior- go hug a tree, i couldn't care less- people need to realize that there will be plenty of life long after we go extinct... it is entirely in our control whether we live on and have a human friendly planet. remember the T-rex and friends lived in a much hotter, more CO2 rich atmosphere/planet then we did- they went extinct because that atmosphere lost its heat that sustained their cold blooded life style, and it happened over millions of years. im sure if they could have helped it, they would have. this is just one example of a cycle that our planet naturally is a part of, and we have altered our environment on every level since our brains have allowed us to. why our smart and very self conscience brains have not recognized the inevitable finite nature of resources is going to be the punch line of our tool using, and amazing evolution.)

fair share-

by recognizing the limits of resources and consumption, and maximizing their outputs, we can put more back into those resources and energies then we take out of both the earth and for our selves.

these three principles are key, all cycling back into one another, and creating a balance and organization that allows the abundance that is needed for all three- earth, human, and fair share.

if we do not share or work together within this cycle, then we create a isolated, closed system.

imagine a fish tank: we want to keep water and oxygen flowing through the filter and pump, populate it with some plants, invertebrates, and add only a few larger fish that can add to that cycle. every once and a while we must tend to it, clean it, and make sure everything has what it needs and is kept in balance.

permaculture is our solution to our own fish tank (earth) and if we don't start treating it as such, we will all be floating belly up like that gold fish we once had long and ago. might as well flush us down the toilet....