Or, from the other end of the transaction, get rid of your “waste” without paying a shipper. This idea is a twofer, two goods from one action.
Archive | Permaculture
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The illusion of magic bullets
Here’s a hidden assumption—crudely put, that every problem has only one answer, which fails if not universal. For example, “Tidal energy can’t work inland, so it’s useless.” Really? It works for Scotland and the Bay of Fundy, where tides run strong, so why is it “useless”?
How can we possibly attack a mess as big as the world situation? Answer—Create something else.
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” —Buckminster Fuller
That’s clearly right, if you think about it: In the U.S., railroads and canals didn’t fail—cars arrived. Or looked at from the other point of view, has the so-called “war on cancer” done any good? No, not for most forms of cancer. Better diets, cleaner air, …
Work on transforming your community into one that that will provide a satisfying way of life in, let’s say, a warmer world having much less oil.
Old community organizers will like this one—systematic approaches for the local community, which can ACT, as opposed to the issues, which are gigundous.
Growing more and better food—links of interest
Inspiring story from CNN Turk of Nazmi Iilicali, who took advantage of his poverty (couldn’t afford chemical fertilizers) and his bone-chilling climate (pests and their eggs don’t survive a -50°C winter), to go organic. In a sense, traditional Turkish agriculture was already organic, but applying the modern scientific version greatly increased Nazmi’s yield. Once certified, he soon began to do so well that in 2003 he recruited 633 other …
Trees + crops + animals + people, integrated with skill = agroforestry = better living
Agroforestry/permaculture is an example of something that indigenous peoples of the world appear to have done to perfection, until monoculture farming was forced upon them. Some of that traditional knowledge is being recovered and researched, both in the West and in the Global South, and we can learn a lot from the web. We can use these valuable techniques to plant trees now, urgently, to sop up carbon dioxide, and …
