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Letters from Costa Rica – Part I
Community Projects, Demonstration Sites, Society — by Juliana Birnbaum Fox March 12, 2010
by Juliana Birnbaum Fox, fellow collaborator with Craig Mackintosh on the Sustainable (R)evolution Book Project.
 The family in front of our jungle kitchen |
Up until now, we’ve collected stories from around the world on this Culture of Permaculture blog – reports back from inspiring sites that we feel are in some way demonstrating solutions to the serious social and environmental crises our generation faces. The posts have included profiles of places that my family and like-minded collaborators have visited and conversations we’ve had on topics such as community, ecological design, and living in balance with natural systems.
Our goal is to publish a tabletop-style book (read more about the Sustainable [R]evolution book project here) that showcases these design solutions in practice around the world, from urban community gardens to indigenous villages to permaculture centers. As an anthropologist, I’ve been writing and editing the manuscript from an ethnographic perspective, looking at these places as evidence of an emerging, international culture of sustainable living.
This entry marks the beginning of a new era of this research. Instead of simply visiting these sites, we have the incredible opportunity to create one. About two years ago, my family decided to join a group of people who formed a collective to buy 55 acres of land in Costa Rica. Many of the members of the group knew each other from an annual Burning Man camp they were part of; some, like us, were connected through Stephen Brooks. Stephen is the ever-optimistic and energetic creative force behind Punta Mona, a permaculture center on the Carribean side of Costa Rica, and Kopali Organics, a natural and fair trade food company. His unmatched networking abilities and experience living and working in Costa Rica made it possible for 33 people – American, Costa Rican and Mexican – to come together and ante up to be part of the community we named Tacotal.
Comments (0)Climate Debate: Opinion vs. Evidence
Global Warming/Climate Change, Society — by Stephan Lewandowsky
by Stephan Lewandowsky, Winthrop Professor and an Australian Professorial Fellow at the University of Western Australia.
What exactly is "balance"? Our society rightly strives for balance, and many issues are deservedly considered by presenting a balanced set of opinions.
There are however clear cases in which the only balance that matters is the balance of evidence rather than of opinion: Serial killer Ivan Milat’s protestations of innocence should not – and did not – balance the evidence arrayed against him. The desire to cure AIDS with garlic and beetroot does not balance the medical consensus that the disease is caused by HIV and can only be beaten by retroviral drugs. And the current wave of sensationalism and distortion cannot balance the scientific consensus that climate change is real and is caused by human emissions.
The current descent of the climate debate into a cauldron of misrepresentations that are at odds with scientific reality must therefore be of concern.
Comments (2)PRI Needs a Cook
Project Positions — by Craig Mackintosh March 11, 2010
If you live local to The Channon, NSW, we’re on the lookout for a good, organised cook. The position would be for seven hours per day, Monday to Friday. You’d be cooking for PRI staff and interns (about ten) on a continual basis and this number will spike to around 35 as our regular courses come and go. With a steady stream of WWOOFers (Willing Workers On Organic Farms) coming through, you would have help from a range of unqualified, albeit keen and interesting helpers who travel here from all over the world.
Experience cooking for mixed groups of meat eaters and vegetarian would be a distinct advantage. You would be utilising fresh, seasonal, organic food grown on the farm.
The Permaculture Research Institute has a very homely, friendly environment in beautiful natural settings. We get a constant stream of interesting people from every place you can imagine.
Please email education (at) permaculture.org.au with your details and expression of interest in the first instance. Be sure to send us your telephone number.
Comments (0)Letters from Slovakia – Kings, Conquerors, Capitalism and Resilience Lost
Alternatives to Political Systems, Consumerism, Economics, Society, peak oil — by Craig Mackintosh
The former east bloc: We look at a life that was, a life that is, and meet some interesting characters along the way.
Orava Castle, north central Slovakia
All photographs copyright © Craig Mackintosh
Contrast and Change
I count it quite a privilege to be one of very few ‘Westerners’ to have been able to visit and observe the transition of former east-bloc countries – from shortly after their break-up from communism, through successive visits until today. It is now eighteen years since my first visit, and, in some places more than others, much has changed.
Looking back, I remember my initial trip to central Europe back in 1992 (then called the ‘East Bloc’). Entering Czechoslovakia from Germany was, to me, like leaving the earth and landing on the moon – except without the space travel in between to get one accustomed to the idea of where one was heading! The difference between the Europe I was familiar with, and the land I discovered immediately beyond the Czech border control, was like day and night. There was no gradual blending of the two civilisations – it was pure contrast.
Comments (6)Choosing Choice
Comedy Break, Global Warming/Climate Change — by Marc Roberts March 10, 2010
Click for full view
Courtesy: Throbgoblins
Many folk are wondering just how to get the seriousness of this thing across to a willfully ignorant section of society:
Comments (7)On Rooftops Worldwide – a Solar Water Heating Revolution
Energy Systems — by Earth Policy Institute
by Lester R. Brown, Earth Policy Institute
The harnessing of solar energy is expanding on every front as concerns about climate change and energy security escalate, as government incentives for harnessing solar energy expand, and as these costs decline while those of fossil fuels rise. One solar technology that is really beginning to take off is the use of solar thermal collectors to convert sunlight into heat that can be used to warm both water and space.
China, for example, is now home to 27 million rooftop solar water heaters. With nearly 4,000 Chinese companies manufacturing these devices, this relatively simple low-cost technology has leapfrogged into villages that do not yet have electricity. For as little as $200, villagers can have a rooftop solar collector installed and take their first hot shower. This technology is sweeping China like wildfire, already approaching market saturation in some communities. Beijing plans to boost the current 114 million square meters of rooftop solar collectors for heating water to 300 million by 2020.
Comments (3)Indoor Vegetable Garden with Topsy Turvy Planters and Window Boxes
Food Plants - Annual, Food Shortages, Nurseries & Propogation, Urban Projects — by Matthew Trotter
One cool product that I’ve had the pleasure of using is the Topsy Turvy Upside-Down Tomato Planter. (Note: I’ve since stumbled up on DIY version of this product made with 5-gallon buckets. How cool is that?) It’s kind of an experimental product as is, and I was using it in an even more experimental way. I got the Topsy Turvy so that I could utilize the vertical space in my indoor container garden. Not being able to grow a garden would have been the bane of my college dorm room existence…. but I wasn’t about to let someone tell me that I couldn’t do it.
Comments (4)Hubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble
Comedy Break, Global Warming/Climate Change — by Marc Roberts
Click for full view
Courtesy: Throbgoblins
Permafrost is not so permanent after all – here, here and here.
Comments (0)The Wrong Kind of Green
Alternatives to Political Systems, Consumerism, Economics, Ethical Investment, People Systems, Society — by Johann Hari March 9, 2010
Editor’s Note: This excellent and disturbing piece on the buyout of environmental organisations by corporate interests, brought to my attention by Marcin Gerwin, who discovered it on The Nation, is kindly reproduced with permission of the author, Johann Hari.
Why did America’s leading environmental groups jet to Copenhagen and lobby for policies that will lead to the faster death of the rainforests–and runaway global warming? Why are their lobbyists on Capitol Hill dismissing the only real solutions to climate change as "unworkable" and "unrealistic," as though they were just another sooty tentacle of Big Coal?
At first glance, these questions will seem bizarre. Groups like Conservation International are among the most trusted "brands" in America, pledged to protect and defend nature. Yet as we confront the biggest ecological crisis in human history, many of the green organizations meant to be leading the fight are busy shoveling up hard cash from the world’s worst polluters–and burying science-based environmentalism in return. Sometimes the corruption is subtle; sometimes it is blatant. In the middle of a swirl of bogus climate scandals trumped up by deniers, here is the real Climategate, waiting to be exposed.
Comments (4)How Cows are Treated in India
Animal Housing, Consumerism, Livestock, Society — by Craig Mackintosh March 8, 2010
We’re having a stimulating discussion about our relationship with animals in Lindsay’s recent ‘Meet Red‘ post. One side thought amidst the discussion prompted me to take the opportunity to share what may well be a little known fact about the treatment of India’s supposedly sacred cows.
Many people think that in India cows are almost universally worshipped, and treated better than your pampered collie or russian blue. But, the reality is that although killing cows is illegal in all but two states in the country, these laws are poorly enforced, and local officials are often bribed to turn a blind eye to both the cruelty and slaughter of these animals. And where they aren’t killed in states where it’s illegal, they’re forced to walk vast distances until they reach the states where killing is legal, or they’re crammed like sardines into trucks and train carriages in stifling hot conditions and taken there. Because of the distances involved, the herders often have to resort to extreme acts of cruelty to ‘encourage’ the animals to continue their trek – like breaking their tails and rubbing hot spices into their eyes, and worse. An example of ‘worse’ is making them drink water laced with copper sulphate. It destroys their kidneys so they can’t urinate, so while in agony upon arrival they are also heavier and fetch a better price.
This article gives you a bit of a start on the topic, and the video below is well worth a watch. Warning – extreme animal cruelty footage:
For me, scale is always the source of our problems – be they environmental, ethical or otherwise.
Comments (3)April 11 Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) Course Now Full
Courses/Workshops, News — by Craig Mackintosh
The April 11 Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) course at Zaytuna Farm (home base for the PRI, in northern NSW) is now full. People keen to attend this particular course are welcome to email education (at) permaculture.org.au to register your interest, and we’ll put you on a waiting list in case any of the existing registrants cancel.
Alternatively there’s Morocco on April 17 with David Spicer, otherwise our next Zaytuna PDC is on July 11 (there are still a few spaces left on this one).
Comments (0)Weekly News Linkfest – 003
News — by Craig Mackintosh
Welcome to round three of our Weekly Linkfest, where we share the good, the bad, the ugly and the just plain interesting from what we’ve seen this week.
I would greatly appreciate readers getting involved in this weekly linkfest. Please email editor (at) permaculture.org.au with links (and ideally a summary sentence outlining the key point of each link) to noteworthy articles and news reports on the internet.
Off we go:
Good News (coz we all need it):
- Farmers Fighting for Their Health: Taking on Chemical Companies and Transitioning to Sustainable Ag – a legal precedent that we would do well to note and support.
- A Backlash After San Francisco Labels Sewage Sludge "Organic" – Activists wearing face masks and haz-mat suits dumped a pile of sewage sludge on the steps of San Francisco’s city hall to protest the city’s practice of marketing the material to home gardeners as "organic compost."
- It is estimated that food wasted by US and European consumers could feed the world three times over. This is good news in that we see massive potential here in relocalising. Also remember that this article only takes into account the post-sale end of the industrial food production system. Add in waste throughout the rest of the line, from harvesting to processing (including discarding perfectly good food that doesn’t fit chain store requirements for size and shape) to storage, transport and distribution, and we’ll come to realise that the industrial system of food production that Big Agribusiness promotes is a complete waste of land and resources. Transferring food from garden to plate eliminates all these steps.
- Meet the Radical Homemakers – How families are achieving ecological, social, and economic transformation… starting under their own roofs.
- Residents of a Belgian town are to be offered chickens as part of a campaign to reduce household waste. Organic waste is a major thorn in the side of municipal waste systems, This solution deftly solves this problem whilst also bringing the added benefit of free eggs. The initiative includes training on how to take care of chickens. Now that’s progressive thinking from local government if ever I saw it.
- The Foreign Policy website has an excellent piece on How Locavores Could Save the World.
- Ultracool student housing created with shipping containers.
- The US backs an international proposal to ban the trading of the endangered Bluefin Tuna. Will Japan join the party?
Work of Strawberry Fields Eco Lodge Begins Snowball Effect for Entire Region
Aid Projects, Community Projects, Demonstration Sites, Developments, Education Centres, News — by Alex McCausland
Editor’s Note: This is an exciting update on progress from the Strawberry Fields Eco Lodge project in Ethiopia. Congratulations to the whole team in Ethiopia!
It was a moment of fulfillment for us at Strawberry Fields Eco Lodge (SFEL). The head of the Konso Woreda Education Bureau, Mr. Geyeto Gedeno, stood in front of those gathered, his fumbling speech soon beginning to gather momentum:
We now want to see this program expanded to all the schools in Konso, making us an example to the whole society and the rest of Ethiopia! Permaculture shows us how to achieve food security and environmental preservation, how to improve our nutrition and benefit our ecology, all through direct community action!” We all clapped and cheered heartily.
Gathered around the training room were teachers, parents and children from the three schools where the Permaculture in Konso Schools Project (PKSP), pilot project, had been underway since May 2009, when it began with training of teachers at SFEL, in a PDC that was part funded by a former volunteer (and a good friend of ours, Sarah Davis from Austin Texas) and part funded by Save the Children Finland (STCF).
Comments (0)Sons of the Sod
Comedy Break, Consumerism — by Marc Roberts
Click for full view
Courtesy: Throbgoblins
Morocco PDC Update (for April 17-30, 2010) – Let’s Get Behind This!
Aid Projects, Community Projects, Courses/Workshops, Education Centres — by Andy Homer March 5, 2010
Editor’s Note: A couple of months ago we advertised (on the blog and in our course listings) the exciting opportunity to take a Permaculture Design Certificate course (PDC) in an amazing location, and with an excellent permaculture instructor, and where in doing so you’ll be supporting impoverished locals to begin to take charge of their future in a sustainable way. We bring this to your attention once more, and encourage all who can to support this very worthy endeavour by booking now! The climate, culture and instructional quality will make it the experience of a lifetime, and a major additional bonus is it’s all bundled up with that warm fuzzy feeling you get from helping make a difference.
As the time for our design certificate course in Morocco draws near, we have plenty of local people, and some from Warsangeli in Somalia. Warsangeli is a Sultante of peaceful people unfortunate enough to be surrounded by war. Supplies are difficult to get in and people are starving, and drinking dirty water. Permaculture could solve the food and water problems very well.
Current circumstances mean we could not open up courses in Somalia to international students, but a Warsangeli organization in london has secured funding and wants to work with us to spread permaculture there. Inviting a few people from Warsangeli to our course in Morocco would enable us to make much better progress over there.
We do not have enough paying students yet to make the course viable. We’ve been told that many people leave it until the last minute to book, so please, if you’re coming on this course, let us know as soon as possible so that we can confirm it with the African students.
Spring is an ideal time to be doing the course in Morocco, as the weather is fine and warm. This is a wonderful opportunity to get qualified and make a massive difference to the lives of many people by helping us promote permaculture in two areas where there is almost no knowledge of it. (Starting to sound like a missionary!) A lot hinges on the success of this course. As an incentive we will waive the price increase for late booking.
Comments (4)
