[E-rundbrief] Info 1359 - Starhawk - Permaculture Solutions for Climate Change

Matthias Reichl info at begegnungszentrum.at
Mo Sep 15 15:00:16 CEST 2014


E-Rundbrief - Info 1359 - Starhawk (USA): Permaculture Solutions for 
Climate Change.

Bad Ischl, 15.9.2014

Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit

www.begegnungszentrum.at

================================================

Permaculture Solutions for Climate Change

By Starhawk

             With Arctic ice melting more rapidly than anyone
predicted, glaciers disappearing, freak storms and the carbon in the
atmosphere climbing rapidly, climate change is not something on the
horizon, it’s here.  In California, as we suffer through the worst
drought in memory, it’s both inescapable and frightening.  What will
happen if the rains do not return this autumn, with our reservoirs low 
and our lands crying out for water?  What will happen if this anomaly 
turns out to be the new normal?

              A week from now, the UN Climate Summit in New York City
will be greeted by the biggest climate change protest in history.  I
hope everyone who possibly can will be there.  I’ll be on the West
Coast, at the Women’s Permaculture Convergence which was planned
months before the march was scheduled.  But there, I will be part of a 
panel on Permaculture Solutions to Climate Change.

             I teach permaculture, often with a grounding in spirit
and a focus on organizing and activism, through our Earth Activist
Trainings.  http://www.earthactivisttraining.org/. I practice it on
the ranch managed by Earth Activist Training teacher Charles Williams, 
and in urban settings in inner-city San Francisco.  I’ve written about 
it and made a documentary together with director Donna Read Cooper. 
http://www.belili.org/permaculture/Permaculture_GrowingEdge.html.  For 
me, it’s a great, practical balance to my work as a writer and a 
teacher of ritual and earth-based spirituality, and a hopeful 
counterweight to the activism that addresses the enormous problems we 
face.  I especially appreciate permaculture’s focus on integrated 
solutions.

             For there are solutions.  And that’s vitally important to
know.  More and more, when I talk to people about this issue, I hear
despair and hopelessness.  “It’s too late.” “It’s too big.”  “There’s
nothing we can do.”

             Hopelessness is profoundly disempowering, but it can also
be anesthetizing.  It generates apathy.  If I can’t do anything, then
I don’t have to do anything.  I don’t have to take action or take
risks.  But if I feel a sense of hope, if I can see a pathway forward,
then I might find myself tramping along a rocky road full of
discomforts and dangers.

             At the same time, I see hopelessness infecting some of
the activists who are most dedicated and committed.  The urgency of
the issue can consume us and turn us into joyless, hectoring ascetics
who writhe in guilt over every moment of pleasure and scold their
fellows for every small indulgence.  “How can you go shopping when
your grandchildren will be roasting to death on a dying planet?”
“Human beings are a blight on the planet, and everything we touch is
doomed.”

             We can’t mobilize people by telling them they are bad and
wrong and the world would be better off without them.  What we need is
more like a Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland “Hey kids, we can put on a show
in our own backyard!” moment of optimism.  We need to believe that we
can do something, and that each one of us has an important role to
play in making the change.  We need to trust that the process of
transformation can be a joyful one that will lead us into a better world.

             To make that shift, we need a vision of what that new
world would look like and a set of strategies for getting there.  The
international permaculture movement offers both.



Permaculture Ethics



             Permaculture is a system of ecological design, originated
by two Australians, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, in the
‘seventies.  It’s now a worldwide movement of practitioners,
researchers and teachers who look to nature as a model that can show
us how to meet human needs while regenerating the environment around
us.  The genius of permaculture lies, not in any single technique, but
in looking at how multiple techniques can be woven together into
systems that are more than the sum of their parts.  It offers both
practical tools and an ethical framework for change.

             The major obstacles to addressing climate change are not
technological or even ecological.  They are political, moral, and
spiritual, a set of beliefs and power structures that are driving the
twin crises of environmental breakdown and social disintegration.

             “Greed is good” has been the watchword since the Reagan
era, and the exaltation of selfishness, individual and corporate, has
led to political gridlock, crumbling infrastructures, environmental
devastation, and the impoverishment of the 99% while the 1%
concentrate wealth beyond the dreams of emperors.  Climate change
cannot be solved in this framework that honors the accumulation of
wealth over all other values and exempts it from all responsibility.

             To address climate change, we need a radically different
ethic, one based on the values of caring, sharing, and mutual
responsibility that are core values of almost all human societies and
religions.  We are not single, isolated actors, we are interdependent
and to thrive, we must be accountable to the whole.

             Indigenous cultures and those who live close to the earth
have always known that we cannot take endlessly from a system without
giving back.  Philosophy and religion, both Eastern and Western, have
preached compassion, fidelity, and told us to love our neighbors as
ourselves – albeit that these virtues are often more preached than
practiced.

               Permaculture offers a simple, secular framework of
ethics that can guide us:  ‘Care for the earth’, ‘Care for the
people’, and ‘Care for the Future’, which implies the imperatives to
return surpluses into the system, limit consumption and take no more
than your fair share.

             We need a clear framework of values in order to confront
the immense vested interests which both continue the damage and
prevent us from employing the tools of regeneration.  And we need to
transform those ethics into policies and programs.

             What would this look like in practice?  Imagine a world
in which permaculture’s three ethics were the basis of law and policy.



Care for the Earth:

             Corporations and individuals would be required to insure
that their enterprises were, at minimum, harmless to the community and
the environment and sustainable – not using more resources than they
replenish.

             Even better, enterprises should aim to be regenerative –
improving the health and biodiversity of the surrounding environment.
  Below I will discuss what some of those regenerative practices might be.

             Resources would be directed into research and programs
that would help the transition to a regenerative technology and
economy.  Imagine where solar technology might be right now if the
billions that have gone into nuclear power had gone into research on
renewables!  Work that restores damaged ecosystems and heals toxicity
would be valued and paid for and new jobs would be created.



Care for the People:

             The mandated purpose of corporate and individual
enterprises should be to meet human and environmental needs and
desires while providing lives of prosperity and dignity for everyone
involved.

             Productive enterprises, from businesses to agriculture,
would be rooted in local communities, serve them primarily and be
accountable to them.  No longer would they be free to roam the globe
in search of the cheapest labor and most lax environmental and safety
standards.

             Technology and economy would shift away from their bias
toward concentration of resources and power to wide distribution of
resources and power.  This might look like solar panels on every home
instead of nukes, and financial policies that penalize instead of
encouraging the hoarding of wealth.

             Those who engage in work that helps people and the earth
would be encouraged and rewarded, as opposed to our current system, in
which anyone who aspires to be a teacher, a farmer, a healer or even a
firefighter is penalized, while those who manipulate abstractions and
exploit others are rewarded.

             An immense amount of labor and brainpower will be needed
to make the transition, and resources should flow into programs to
educate young people for these challenges, provide jobs and financial
support for making needed changes, and retrain workers in exploitative
industries.



Care for the Future:

             We would shift rapidly from a fossil fuel economy toward
one based on renewable sources of energy.

             We would stop exploiting resources that cannot be
replaced, or limit their use and find ways to re-use and recycle them.

             We would develop industrial ecologies, where the ‘wastes’
of one industry become the raw materials of another.

             We would assure health care for all people and a free,
quality education for all young people as a right.  We would provide
programs to re-educate and train older people, as well, to adapt their
skills for new forms of work and to deepen their enjoyment of life.

             We would pour resources into research and support for the
transition to regenerative forms of agricultural and industrial
production.

             New businesses and enterprises would be judged not on
their monetary return on investment but their EROEI: Energy Return on
Energy Invested.  For example, industrial agriculture, with its
massive use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, heavy machinery and
transport of products, uses 15 calories of fuel to produce one calorie
of food.
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2013-07-22/the-energy-cost-of-food
While it may be profitable financially to the big corporations that
supply chemicals, pesticides and fuel, its EROEI is disastrous!



             This is just the scaffolding of an ethical framework.
Once we have such a framework in place, we can use it to test our
decisions.  Should we build a new nuclear power plant?  Considering
the incalculable amount of damage it might cause if something goes
wrong, we’d stop right there.  But we might also consider the lack of
facilities for dealing with nuclear waste, the immense amount of
energy needed to construct a plant—much of it in the energy needed to
make  concrete which has a huge carbon footprint, the centralization
of power a nuke represents, and the limited number of jobs it
produces.  A better alternative might be to put those hundreds of
millions of dollars into a mix of rooftop solar, wind generators, and
research into new forms of solar energy that would not require rare
earths or other nonrenewable materials to make them.

             We can also test the nuances of our personal decisions.
Should I put solar panels on my house, or use the money to replace my
old, leaky windows?  Most likely improving your windows and insulation
will have a better EROEI and might support a local business.  Should I
eat meat?  No, not if it’s factory-farmed somewhere thousands of miles
away.  Yes, if it’s local, grass-fed beef from a producer using
regenerative holistic range management techniques.  Should I fly
across the country to comfort my dying mother?  Yes.  You’ll add to
your carbon footprint, true, but you’ll be a better, more whole human
being which may further the effectiveness of everything you do for the
rest of your life.



Practical Solutions and Strategies:



Alternative Energy

             The strategies and practices I will discuss below can
augment the transition in our energy systems and technology, but they
are no substitute for rapidly reducing our use of fossil fuels.  We
need to stop pumping fossil fuel carbon into the atmosphere and
instead turn to safe, proven renewables.  I have focused less on this
because there is already so much written about it.  Alternatives to
fossil fuels exist, they are already viable and rapidly becoming less
expensive.  Germany—not the sunniest place on earth—now gets 30 to 50%
of its electricity from solar panels!

             The problems in making the shift are not
technological—although with more resources put toward research and
development even more efficient alternatives can be created.  The
obstacles are economic and political, and they must be addressed with
political pressure to hold oil companies and polluters accountable,
remove subsidies from the fossil fuel industry, and offer tax
incentives, rebates, retraining and retooling and subsidies to further
the shift.



Carbon Sequestration the Permaculture Way



We are already past what scientists believe is the tipping point,
already seeing major changes in the ice, the oceans, the tundra.  Is
there any way we can turn it back and safely pull some of the excess
carbon out of the atmosphere?

             A permaculture approach would point us to four
interconnected areas, all of which use nature’s own methods – plants!
– to pull carbon out of the atmosphere and store it safely in soil,
where it can heal and regenerate damaged systems.



Soil as a Carbon Sink

             We all know that burning fossil fuels has overloaded the
atmosphere with excess carbon.  But much of that excess may also come
from our agricultural practices.  Healthy, fertile soil is full of
humus – soil organic carbon.  When the ground is tilled, or forests
are clear-cut and the soil is exposed, that carbon oxidizes into the
atmosphere.  In other words, it meets air, joins up with the oxygen,
and becomes carbon dioxide.

             Looking on the bright side, this means that the soils of
the world are carbon-hungry.  If we fill that need, we can pull excess
carbon out of the atmosphere in ways that are safe and have thousands
of other benefits.  Rebuilding damaged soil restores ecosystems,
improves our food security, prevents erosion and restores compromised
water cycles.  Unlike untried massive geo-engineering schemes, it has
no down side.  It is exactly what we need to do, even if climate
change were not a factor.
http://www.epw.senate.gov/hearing_statements.cfm?id=212894



Soil as a Living System

             Until the 1980s, scientists who studied soil looked
mostly at its chemical composition.  When researchers began
investigating the biological life of the soil, they discovered a rich,
interlocking ecosystem of bacteria, fungi, micro-organisms,
micro-arthropods, worms and other animals who work together in
symbiosis to produce soil health and fertility.  Researchers such as
Dr. Elaine Ingham http://www.soilfoodweb.com have developed practices
to support the soil food web.  Paul Stamets http://www.fungi.com has
explored the powerful potential for fungi and mushrooms to break down
toxins in soil and restore health and fertility.

             A sane climate-change policy would support this research
and more.



Compost and Compost Tea:  Cities would separate organic matter from
garbage and compost it – some already do.  Composting clinics would be
established where people could learn to compost their own food wastes.
  Composting would be taught in schools as one of the basic life
skills, along with the three R’s.  Compost tea brewers that create
rich inoculants would



Vermiculture: Communities would establish worm banks to encourage
vermiculture and compost tea brewers to create rich inoculants.

             Mycelium banks would be created in every community to
propagate local strains of beneficial fungi that could be used for
food, medicine, to improve soil fertility and break down toxins.

             Compost toilets and methane digestors would be legalized
and subsidized, especially in rural areas, to deal with human and
concentrated animal waste.



Biochar:  Forest waste, and some urban waste streams such as cardboard
and wood scraps, can produce biochar, charcoal made under special
conditions that preserves much of the carbon in its source and turns
it into rich habitat for micro-organims.   Biochar can be added to
soil as an amendment that increases fertility, provides habitat for
beneficial micro-organisms, and helps to hold water.

             Cities could establish their own biochar kilns to process
some of their waste streams.  Rural areas could build kilns to handle
the thinnings from forestry and some of the agricultural residue.  The
heat from the kilns could be used to heat buildings or water or to
produce electricity.

             Super-efficient biochar woodstoves can be used to cook
food while producing biochar, and they could be distributed throughout
the less-developed world to help conserve wood supplies while
producing soil amendments.  Albert Bates, in his book The Biochar
Solution, explores these and many other exciting possibilities.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Biochar-Solution-Farming-Climate/dp/0865716773



Trees and Forests



Preserve the Pristine:  We would impose an absolute moratorium on the
clear-cutting of old growth, including boreal, temperate and tropical
rain forests, which are huge sinks for carbon and irreplaceable
sources of biodiversity.



Sustainable forestry:  We would shift away from ecologically damaging
clearcuts to sustainable practices, selective harvesting, pruning, and
thinning.  We’d revive ancient techniques such as coppicing and
pollarding, and find uses for poles and smaller timbers.



Reforestation:  We would fund and encourage tree planting - not timber
factory monocultures but diverse forest systems.  Cities would plant
street trees for shade, beauty and fruit, and might maintain community
forests in outlying areas for recreation, wood, and ecosystem
management.  Marginal areas such as the Sahel in North Africa can use
Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration to restore woodlands and provide
forage and firewood.



Agroforestry:  Food for humans can be grown in many ways that preserve
and encourage forests.  Row crops can be surrounded by hedgerows or
interplanted with allees of useful trees.  Food forests produce food,
fodder, fiber, medicine and more in systems that mimic natural
forests.  ‘Fedges’ are food-producing hedges.   City parks could plant
food forests that would provide opportunities for urban dwellers to
forage and feast on nature’s bounty.



Agriculture



             We could phase out industrial agriculture and the use of
chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and shift to organic agriculture
and regenerative growing techniques that preserve habitat and build
soil.  To make this change, we could give farmers and ranchers
financial support and incentives.



Perennial Food Systems:  Much of our agriculture is based on annuals,
grains and vegetables that live for one season and need to be
replanted.  Instead, we could support the research and development of
more perennial crops, that do not need constant replanting, and use
the thousands of species available, from tree crops to berries to
herbs, to establish perennial food systems.  Eric Toensmeier has a
great resource for perennial plants on his website:
http://www.perennialsolutions.org/meet-eric-toensmeier-perennial-solutions-edible-permaculture-books-videos-workshops-organic-gardening.html 






Low-till and no-till food growing systems:  Systems exist for growing
annuals in ways that involve minimal tilling.  More research and
support for farmers to adapt these techniques would aid in the shift
away from erosive soil disturbance.



Local food systems:  Cities could establish nearby agricultural zones,
protecting prime farmland from development.  Suburban lawns can be
transformed to productive gardens or food forests.  Farmers’ markets,
Community Supported Agriculture partnerships where consumers link
directly to farmers, market gardens, roof gardens, school garden
programs and community gardens are all strategies to help shift food
production back to local areas.  The Local Food movement is already
growing, and could be encouraged with tax benefits, grants and subsidies.



Grasslands

             Grasslands co-evolved with grazers and predators, and
need both for their health.  Grasslands store fertility in the form of
soil organic carbon, underground where it will not be released into
the atmosphere by fire.  They have the potential to be enormous carbon
sinks by replenishing soil fertility, which will also heal erosion and
restore damaged water cycles.

             Where possible, we can restore predators and keystone
species where possible—for example, bringing wolves back to
Yellowstone regenerated the ecology of streams and forests by changing
animal behavior.

             Holistic range management, also called mob grazing is a
powerful tool to reverse desertification.  It was developed by Alan
Savory who now directs the Savory Institute.
http://www.savoryinstitute.com/ Livestock is managed by grazing in
bunches confined to small areas that move frequently, which mimics the
way wild herds behave when predators are present.  Grass is grazed
down hard, the thatch is broken up and pounded into the soil and
fertilized with the animals’ wastes – and then they move on and give
the grass time to recover and regrow.  With each grazing, the grasses
shed roots underground which decay and build soil.  Ranchers can run
more livestock per acre than with conventional methods, while
regenerating marginal land.  See Alan Savory’s TED talk at:
https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world_s_deserts_and_reverse_climate_change 






Water

             Water is one of the key issues in a parched and
overheating world.  And water is a key necessity for life, for the
growth of plants and the viability of soil life.  Permaculture offers
powerful tools for harvesting and conserving water and rehydrating the
land.



Water as a human right:  Water is necessary for life.  Communities
should be in control of their own water systems.  Water should not be
privatized or viewed as a source of profit.  In a world where water is
becoming ever more scarce and precious due to climate change,
polluting water should be not be allowed.  Industries that by their
nature pollute water should be required to restore all water to
drinking-water standards.  Practices such as fracking which endanger
underground aquifers should be banned.



Water as a right of nature:  Not just humans depend on water.  It’s
the key driver of multiple ecosystems, of fisheries, wetlands,
migratory birds, and all of life.  Other creatures besides us also
have a right to water, and safeguarding that right will, in the end,
benefit us by fostering the survival of healthy ecosystems around us.
  Adopting water conservation methods and farming techniques which are
not wasteful of water can allow us to maintain healthy river flows for
fisheries and an adequate supply of water for all.



Water-harvesting earthworks:  Swales – ditches with berms on contour –
ponds, keyline systems which move water slowly across the landscape,
mulch, and many more techniques exist which can slow, spread, and sink
the water that falls on the land, infiltrating the soil, building
water lenses and replenishing aquifers, and preventing erosion by
capturing runoff.



Urban water harvesting:  In urban areas, mini-swales, rain gardens,
curb cuts and porous pavement can harvest rainfall and infiltrate
excess into the land, reducing the need for watering and preventing
the overload on sewers during storms.



Roof catchment:  Roofs can be fitted with gutters to capture rainwater
and direct it into storage tanks, making it available for gardens and
other uses.



Graywater:  Water from laundry, showers and sinks can be captured,
filtered with simple systems and used to grow trees, shrubs,
ornamentals and lawns.



Aquaponics:  Greens and fish can be produced in systems that
recirculate the water.  The fish wastes fertilize the plants, the
plants clean the water.  These systems use 70-90 per cent less water
than conventional farming and can produce large amounts of food in
small spaces.  In greenhouses, they can produce greens all winter in
cold climates.



Laws, regulations and policies:  In some places, rainwater catchment
or graywater re-use are illegal.  Laws and regulations need to be
changed, and model codes developed that will be easy for regulators to
adopt.



Making the Transition



             Many of these solutions have something in common.  They
involve more thought, observation and labor than conventional
practices.  In a world in which unemployment is a huge problem, this
could be a benefit.  But in an economy set up to favor heavy inputs of
energy rather than inputs of labor, it’s a drawback.  To make the
transition feasible and sustainable, we need a new form of economics.



Economics

             Our current economy is designed to maximize profit and
concentrate wealth in the hands of the few at the expense of the many
and the planet.  A sane economics would instead favor and reward those
practices which lead to a healthy ecology and a thriving community.

             That’s a huge transformation.  Some steps along the way
might be:



Hold Corporations Accountable for the Damage:  If I were to go into my
neighbor’s house and slip poison into her dinner, I’d be a criminal.
But if a corporation poisons the water, the soil, or the air, they are
rarely penalized beyond at most a financial slap on the wrist.  As a
result, the environmental and human costs of their products and
practices are not part of their accounting, they are ‘externalities’.
  And responsible corporations are penalized with higher costs of
production than those borne by irresponsible companies.

             Governments can change this by requiring financial and
legal liability from corporations.  The tar sands would shut down if
the companies involved had to pay for the cancers downstream.  No
nukes could be built in the US if our government no longer provided
insurance for the builders.  Oil companies would soon go out of
business if they had to pay for the Gulf Oil Spill or shoulder the
real costs of broken pipelines and spills.



Government action:  Governments, through taxes, grants and subsidies,
can help us make the transition to a regenerative economy.



Investors and funders:  Private investors and funders, large and
small, can put resources into programs and enterprises that help make
these needed shifts.



Entrepreneurs:  Inventive and energetic folks can start new businesses
that follow the ethics and employ regenerative practices.



Consumers:  We cannot shop our way out of climate change.  The needed
changes are too big, and the destruction is too vast, for us to simply
buy green and assume that will be enough.  But we can make choices to
support local businesses and producers that care for the earth, the
people and the future, and help keep their enterprises viable.



Hope and Action



The earth, the people, and the future, are all at stake right now.
The concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is directly
related to the concentration of wealth and power here on earth, and we
can easily feel overwhelmed by the task of transformation.  We need
both huge, systemic changes, and immediate small reforms, and both
seem difficult to make.  But we have many solutions available to us,
and many reasons to let hope galvanize us into positive action.

             And the solution to both our social and ecological
solutions are the same:  community.  Restore the community of caring
and sharing, understand that community means the interconnection of
people with the environment and natural communities that sustain us,
restore power and resources to communities, and trust in the
resilience of the community of life.  We have already altered the
world, and it will never be the same again.  But if we take action to
stop the damage and employ the solutions, if we partner with nature
and our great earth-healing allies, it can still be a beautiful,
thriving, life-sustaining place for ourselves, for the life around us,
and for future generations.

I'll be on a panel there with other amazing permaculture designers and
teachers on a permaculture approach to climate change, and in thinking
about the solutions I wrote a blog which is now posted at:
http://starhawksblog.org/?p=1014

Starhawk teaches permaculture through Earth Activist Trainings.  In
the next year, we’ll have courses in Northern California, British
Columbia, Western Massachusetts and Spain, and she’ll be coteaching a
course in Belize.  Check our website for information.
http://www.earthactivisttraining.org/jan_2015.html

Starhawk’s complete schedule can be found on her website:
http://www.starhawk.org/  Follow her on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Starhawk/165408987031

And Twitter: @Starhawk17


-- 

Matthias Reichl, Pressesprecher/ press speaker,
Begegnungszentrum fuer aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
Center for Encounter and active Non-Violence
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fon: +43 6132 24590, Informationen/ informations,
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