If the latter is the case, I am very sorry and I’ll make sure we send a team over as soon as we can afford it.

As for permaculture needing to scale up, well, I disagree, but fortunately it is not within either of our purviews to dictate that. I feel that permaculture is rooted in a community. A project will naturally be the right size for the community it serves. If you acale up a community’s systems you just get… well, take a look around because that is exactly what has happened.

Certainly we need more projects, and that is happening. 30 years ago the vast majority of people were fast asleep, dreaming about cars and football and fashion and mobile phones that didn’t need a car to carry them around. They were unaware of what was happening around them and mostly violently opposed to being told about it.

Now a lot more people are awake, and the PRI’s initiative, which is the subject of this essay, is one of the entities inspiring people around the world to get started. Sure, it’s just the beginning, so how can you say that the movement is a loser from this? It’s an insane proposition. The only thing that could lose is some idea that you have, that you perceive to be losing as a result. Other parts of the ‘movement’ are just getting on with it.

If you want to give Big Permaculture a try, nobody’s stopping you. go ahead and show everyone.

Permaculture as a movement is the loser.

After 30+ years, I’m not seeing permaculture break out into the real world in a way that is required for it to have any measurable impact on collapse. I think the MLM way in which it’s been set up to propagate itself has been part of the problem.

Permaculture needs to start scaling up. Rob Hopkins trying to make Totnes the tree capital in britain, for instance. Maybe a bunch of tree plantings on sidewalks shouldn’t be considered permaculture, per se, but it’s the kind of thing we need to see done. We need to get permaculture out of constant R&D mode and out into the mainstream.

It’s now or never.