Editor’s Note: This is part two of a series. Read Part I here.

Yoga on the deck which will become our temporary bedroom

We’ve been here a month now, and I’m actually writing from a hammock with my laptop powered by the sun, underneath a pair of orange trees. This is our new “living room” in this experiment in outdoor living, outfitted with a log bench, a couple of rocking chairs woven with cord in the local style, outdoor kitchen and shower and a repurposed buoy that serves as a swing. A few steps away are kitchen and shower, cross a little bridge to the bathtub/dipping pool, and another few meters is our newly finished wooden platform where soon we’ll be sleeping. For now it makes a great yoga deck and has a sweet view across the Machuca River valley to a steep hillside dotted with grazing white cows.

A lot of folks have called us “brave” to move out here with our two little daughters, Serenne (5 months) and Lîla (3 years). From my perspective, parenting here allows me to do basically the same things I’ve been doing at home in Berkeley, but with more of a sense of purpose and alignment with my values. Whereas in the U.S. I find myself feeling like a somewhat unwilling, slightly apologetic housewife, driving my little ones around, grocery shopping and turning up the heat to stay warm, here I can take care of my family’s needs with a much smaller ecological footprint. That is, minus the impact of the plane flight here, which is considerable — a subject I’d like to return to in a future post.

Being in the jungle with a pre-crawling baby is easier than it will be when she’s on the move, as I spend much of my time with her in a carrier. My approach to parenting is strongly inspired by Jean Liedloff’s book The Continuum Concept, which is linked to “attachment parenting” and the resurgence of baby wearing in the U.S. Liedloff based her book on experiences living with indigenous people in the Amazon and observing their relationships with their babies and children. She believes that allowing babies to spend the majority of their first year worn close to mama’s body and snuggled close to her at night helps develop an essential sense of security and trust that stays with the child into adulthood. This concept of “kangaroo care,” and the idea of skin to skin contact as important, especially for newborns, has started to gain credence even in U.S. hospitals.

While the indigenous families observed often saw mama carrying her baby, she would usually have him or her in a sling or wrap so that hands could be free for work, even while nursing. Yet when mama tired of carrying baby, the extended family and community were often available and interested in spending time with the little one. This way of raising children feels right and sensible to me, in contrast to the way I feel when I’m home alone with my baby all day, isolated and trying to stay sane, and driving my toddler to and from preschool.

So far, even though the number of us living at Tacotal is small, my reality has been much closer to that of the indigenous mama, and I love that. There are lots of hands to hold baby and tell stories or show plants and animals to Lîla. The one major issue is that little Serenne’s thermostat is set to North America, so she has been really hot since being here. In the heat of the day when it seems too hot to wear her, I put her in her play gym in the kitchen and give her lots of little baths. She is just as cheerful as she’s always been most of the time, and I’ve been giving her little tastes of our bananas (we’ve harvested a big bunch from one of our trees since arriving) in anticipation of starting her on solid foods in a few weeks. She doesn’t seem to know what to do with the banana yet but is very interested in the new taste. I’m anticipating that when she starts crawling in a few months, it will be trickier as there are currently no baby-friendly floors here. An upcoming project will likely be to finish the kitchen floor, which is now dirt, and make a polished earthen/adobe floor. This will also cut down the frequency of laundry that’s needed and hopefully reduce the layer of red dust that big sister Lîla usually wears around.

I wrote earlier that we’re able to meet our needs with a smaller ecological footprint, and want to discuss a few of the systems that make that true. One major difference from life at home is being off the power grid and away from municipal garbage and sewage lines . I can honestly say I enjoy my daily visit to our composting toilet here, which is up on a breezy hillside and built of bamboo, wood, and recycled materials. It has a small area in front for pee that separates it from the poop, which allows the “humanure” to dry out and prevents bad odor. Instead of flushing, we put a few cups of sawdust in to complete our mission and close the loop (food to poop back to soil where we grow more food).

With no garbage pickup here, we are very aware of the waste we create, and in fact I’m looking right now at the border of our “living room,” marked with green glass wine bottles. Since we don’t have a fridge, we buy more dry bulk items with less packaging. We separate out organic waste for the worm compost, leftovers that feed the chickens, and citrus for the regular compost. Packaging is separated into plastic, glass and metals which can be recycled and paper and cardboard is used for kindling in the wood stove. Another ingenious little system which was put into place since we last visited involves creating building material — mass that can be built into an earthen wall — by stuffing small plastic and cellophane bags that can’t be reused into empty plastic bottles.

Stephen demonstrates how to ‘flush’ the composting toilet

Of course, a major difference from home and one of my favorite parts of being here is the lack of driving. I especially dislike trying to get two kids in and out of their carseats several times a day and fighting the traffic in the Bay Area. The road in here is so rough that you need a good reason to drive out — riding a horse or walking is actually more comfortable. With the number of folks living here, we each only need to leave every few weeks for groceries, though most of us probably venture out once or twice a week to get supplies, go to a restaurant, or visit the beach (about 30 minutes from the end of our bumpy road to the first Pacific beach at Tarcoles. Since I want Lîla to be able to learn more Spanish and have a chance to interact with more kids (there is presently just one other kid here, her good friend Jazz), we’ll be driving a bit more often when the two of them start school next month. Unless we find a school accessible by horse!

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.

I have spent the past few years reporting on how global warming is remaking the map of the world. I have stood in half-dead villages on the coast of Bangladesh while families point to a distant place in the rising ocean and say, "Do you see that chimney sticking up? That’s where my house was… I had to [abandon it] six months ago." I have stood on the edges of the Arctic and watched glaciers that have existed for millenniums crash into the sea. I have stood on the borders of dried-out Darfur and heard refugees explain, "The water dried up, and so we started to kill each other for what was left."

While I witnessed these early stages of ecocide, I imagined that American green groups were on these people’s side in the corridors of Capitol Hill, trying to stop the Weather of Mass Destruction. But it is now clear that many were on a different path–one that began in the 1980s, with a financial donation.

Environmental groups used to be funded largely by their members and wealthy individual supporters. They had only one goal: to prevent environmental destruction. Their funds were small, but they played a crucial role in saving vast tracts of wilderness and in pushing into law strict rules forbidding air and water pollution. But Jay Hair–president of the National Wildlife Federation from 1981 to 1995–was dissatisfied. He identified a huge new source of revenue: the worst polluters.

Hair found that the big oil and gas companies were happy to give money to conservation groups. Yes, they were destroying many of the world’s pristine places. Yes, by the late 1980s it had become clear that they were dramatically destabilizing the climate–the very basis of life itself. But for Hair, that didn’t make them the enemy; he said they sincerely wanted to right their wrongs and pay to preserve the environment. He began to suck millions from them, and in return his organization and others, like The Nature Conservancy (TNC), gave them awards for "environmental stewardship."

Companies like Shell and British Petroleum (BP) were delighted. They saw it as valuable "reputation insurance": every time they were criticized for their massive emissions of warming gases, or for being involved in the killing of dissidents who wanted oil funds to go to the local population, or an oil spill that had caused irreparable damage, they wheeled out their shiny green awards, purchased with "charitable" donations, to ward off the prospect of government regulation. At first, this behavior scandalized the environmental community. Hair was vehemently condemned as a sellout and a charlatan. But slowly, the other groups saw themselves shrink while the corporate-fattened groups swelled–so they, too, started to take the checks.

Christine MacDonald, an idealistic young environmentalist, discovered how deeply this cash had transformed these institutions when she started to work for Conservation International in 2006. She told me, "About a week or two after I started, I went to the big planning meeting of all the organization’s media teams, and they started talking about this supposedly great new project they were running with BP. But I had read in the newspaper the day before that the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] had condemned BP for running the most polluting plant in the whole country…. But nobody in that meeting, or anywhere else in the organization, wanted to talk about it. It was a taboo. You weren’t supposed to ask if BP was really green. They were ‘helping’ us, and that was it."

She soon began to see–as she explains in her whistleblowing book Green Inc.–how this behavior has pervaded almost all the mainstream green organizations. They take money, and in turn they offer praise, even when the money comes from the companies causing environmental devastation. To take just one example, when it was revealed that many of IKEA’s dining room sets were made from trees ripped from endangered forests, the World Wildlife Fund leapt to the company’s defense, saying–wrongly–that IKEA "can never guarantee" this won’t happen. Is it a coincidence that WWF is a "marketing partner" with IKEA, and takes cash from the company?

Likewise, the Sierra Club was approached in 2008 by the makers of Clorox bleach, who said that if the Club endorsed their new range of "green" household cleaners, they would give it a percentage of the sales. The Club’s Corporate Accountability Committee said the deal created a blatant conflict of interest–but took it anyway. Executive director Carl Pope defended the move in an e-mail to members, in which he claimed that the organization had carried out a serious analysis of the cleaners to see if they were "truly superior." But it hadn’t. The Club’s Toxics Committee co-chair, Jessica Frohman, said, "We never approved the product line." Beyond asking a few questions, the committee had done nothing to confirm that the product line was greener than its competitors’ or good for the environment in any way.

The green groups defend their behavior by saying they are improving the behavior of the corporations. But as these stories show, the pressure often flows the other way: the addiction to corporate cash has changed the green groups at their core. As MacDonald says, "Not only do the largest conservation groups take money from companies deeply implicated in environmental crimes; they have become something like satellite PR offices for the corporations that support them."

It has taken two decades for this corrupting relationship to become the norm among the big green organizations. Imagine this happening in any other sphere, and it becomes clear how surreal it is. It is as though Amnesty International’s human rights reports came sponsored by a coalition of the Burmese junta, Dick Cheney and Robert Mugabe. For environmental groups to take funding from the very people who are destroying the environment is preposterous–yet it is now taken for granted.

This pattern was bad enough when it affected only a lousy household cleaning spray, or a single rare forest. But today, the stakes are unimaginably higher. We are living through a brief window of time in which we can still prevent runaway global warming. We have emitted so many warming gases into the atmosphere that the world’s climate scientists say we are close to the climate’s "point of no return." Up to 2 degrees Celsius of warming, all sorts of terrible things happen–we lose the islands of the South Pacific, we set in train the loss of much of Florida and Bangladesh, terrible drought ravages central Africa–but if we stop the emissions of warming gases, we at least have a fifty-fifty chance of stabilizing the climate at this higher level. This is already an extraordinary gamble with human safety, and many climate scientists say we need to aim considerably lower: 1.5 degrees or less.

Beyond 2 degrees, the chances of any stabilization at the hotter level begin to vanish, because the earth’s natural processes begin to break down. The huge amounts of methane stored in the Arctic permafrost are belched into the atmosphere, causing more warming. The moist rainforests begin to dry out and burn down, releasing all the carbon they store into the air, and causing more warming. These are "tipping points": after them, we can’t go back to the climate in which civilization evolved.

So in an age of global warming, the old idea of conservation–that you preserve one rolling patch of land, alone and inviolate–makes no sense. If the biosphere is collapsing all around you, you can’t ring-fence one lush stretch of greenery and protect it: it too will die.

You would expect the American conservation organizations to be joining the great activist upsurge demanding we stick to a safe level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere: 350 parts per million (ppm), according to professor and NASA climatologist James Hansen. And–in public, to their members–they often are supportive. On its website the Sierra Club says, "If the level stays higher than 350 ppm for a prolonged period of time (it’s already at 390.18 ppm) it will spell disaster for humanity as we know it."

But behind closed doors, it sings from a different song-sheet. Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, in Arizona, which refuses funding from polluters, has seen this from the inside. He told me, "There is a gigantic political schizophrenia here. The Sierra Club will send out e-mails to its membership saying we have to get to 350 parts per million and the science requires it. But in reality they fight against any sort of emission cuts that would get us anywhere near that goal."

For example, in 2009 the EPA moved to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, which requires the agency to ensure that the levels of pollutants in the air are "compatible with human safety"–a change the Sierra Club supported. But the Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the EPA to take this commitment seriously and do what the climate science says really is "compatible with human safety": restore us to 350 ppm. Suckling explains, "I was amazed to discover the Sierra Club opposed us bitterly. They said it should not be done. In fact, they said that if we filed a lawsuit to make EPA do it, they would probably intervene on EPA’s side. They threw climate science out the window."

Indeed, the Sierra Club’s chief climate counsel, David Bookbinder, ridiculed the center’s attempts to make 350 ppm a legally binding requirement. He said it was "truly a pointless exercise" and headed to "well-deserved bureaucratic oblivion"–and would only add feebly that "350 may be where the planet should end up," but not by this mechanism. He was quoted in the media alongside Bush administration officials who shared his contempt for the center’s proposal.

Why would the Sierra Club oppose a measure designed to prevent environmental collapse? The Club didn’t respond to my requests for an explanation. Climate scientists are bemused. When asked about this, Hansen said, "I find the behavior of most environmental NGOs to be shocking…. I [do] not want to listen to their lame excuses for their abominable behavior." It is easy to see why groups like Conservation International, which take money from Big Oil and Big Coal, take backward positions. Their benefactors will lose their vast profits if we make the transition away from fossil fuels–so they fall discreetly silent when it matters. But while the Sierra Club accepts money from some corporations, it doesn’t take cash from the very worst polluters. So why is it, on this, the biggest issue of all, just as bad?

It seems its leaders have come to see the world through the funnel of the US Senate and what legislation it can be immediately coaxed to pass. They say there is no point advocating a strategy that senators will reject flat-out. They have to be "politically realistic" and try to advocate something that will appeal to Blue Dog Democrats.

This focus on inch-by-inch reform would normally be understandable: every movement for change needs a reformist wing. But the existence of tipping points–which have been overwhelmingly proven by the climate science–makes a mockery of this baby-steps approach to global warming. If we exceed the safe amount of warming gases in the atmosphere, then the earth will release its massive carbon stores and we will have runaway warming. After that, any cuts we introduce will be useless. You can’t jump halfway across a chasm: you still fall to your death. It is all or disaster.

By definition, if a bill can pass through today’s corrupt Senate, then it will not be enough to prevent catastrophic global warming. Why? Because the bulk of the Senate–including many Democrats–is owned by Big Oil and Big Coal. They call the shots with their campaign donations. Senators will not defy their benefactors. So if you call only for measures the Senate could pass tomorrow, you are in effect giving a veto over the position of the green groups to the fossil fuel industry.

Yet the "conservation" groups in particular believe they are being hardheaded in adhering to the "political reality" that says only cuts far short of the climate science are possible. They don’t seem to realize that in a conflict between political reality and physical reality, physical reality will prevail. The laws of physics are more real and permanent than any passing political system. You can’t stand at the edge of a rising sea and say, "Sorry, the swing states don’t want you to happen today. Come back in fifty years."

A classic case study of this inside-the-Beltway mentality can be found in a blog written by David Donniger, policy director of the climate center at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), after the collapse of the Copenhagen climate summit. The summit ended with no binding agreement for any country to limit its emissions of greenhouse gases, and a disregard of the scientific targets. Given how little time we have, this was shocking. Donniger was indeed furious–with the people who were complaining. He decried the "howls of disaster in European media, and rather tepid reviews in many U.S. stories." He said people were "holding the accord to standards and expectations that no outcome achievable at Copenhagen could reasonably have met–or even should have met."

This last sentence is very revealing. Donniger believes it is "reasonable" to act within the constraints of the US and global political systems, and unreasonable to act within the constraints of the climate science. The greens, he suggests, are wrong to say their standards should have been met at this meeting; the deal is "not weak." After fifteen climate summits, after twenty years of increasingly desperate scientific warnings about warming, with the tipping points drawing ever closer, he says the world’s leaders shouldn’t be on a faster track and that the European and American media should stop whining. Remember, this isn’t an oil company exec talking; this is a senior figure at one of the leading environmental groups.

There is a different way for green groups to behave. If the existing political system is so corrupt that it can’t maintain basic human safety, they should be encouraging their members to take direct action to break the Big Oil deadlock. This is precisely what has happened in Britain–and it has worked. Direct-action protesters have physically blocked coal trains and new airport runways for the past five years–and as a result, airport runway projects that looked certain are falling by the wayside, and politicians have become very nervous about authorizing any new coal power plants [see Maria Margaronis, "The UK's Climate Rebels," December 7, 2009]. The more mainstream British climate groups are not reluctant to condemn the Labour government’s environmental failings in the strongest possible language. Compare the success of this direct confrontation with the utter failure of the US groups’ work-within-the-system approach. As James Hansen has pointed out, the British model offers real hope rather than false hope. There are flickers of it already–there is an inspiring grassroots movement against coal power plants in the United States, supported by the Sierra Club–but it needs to be supercharged.

By pretending the broken system can work–and will work, in just a moment, after just one more Democratic win, or another, or another–the big green groups are preventing the appropriate response from concerned citizens, which is fury at the system itself. They are offering placebos to calm us down when they should be conducting and amplifying our anger at this betrayal of our safety by our politicians. The US climate bills are long-term plans: they lock us into a woefully inadequate schedule of carbon cuts all the way to 2050. So when green groups cheer them on, they are giving their approval to a path to destruction–and calling it progress.

Even within the constraints of the existing system, their approach makes for poor political tactics. As Suckling puts it, "They have an incredibly naïve political posture. Every time the Dems come out with a bill, no matter how appallingly short of the scientific requirements it is, they cheer it and say it’s great. So the politicians have zero reason to strengthen that bill. If you’ve already announced that you’ve been captured, then they don’t need to give you anything. Compare that to how the Chamber of Commerce or the fossil fuel corporations behave. They stake out a position on the far right, and they demand the center move their way. It works for them. They act like real activists, while the supposed activists stand at the back of the room and cheer at whatever bone is thrown their way."

The green groups have become "the mouthpiece of the Democratic Party, regardless of how pathetic the party’s position is," Suckling says in despair. "They have no bottom line, no interest in scientifically defensible greenhouse gas emission limitations and no willingness to pressure the White House or Congress."

It will seem incredible at first, but this is–in fact–too generous. At Copenhagen, some of the US conservation groups demanded a course of action that will lead to environmental disaster–and financial benefits for themselves. It is a story buried in details and acronyms, but the stakes are the future of civilization.

When the rich countries say they are going to cut their emissions, it sounds to anyone listening as if they are going to ensure that there are fewer coal stations and many more renewable energy stations at home. So when Obama says there will be a 3 percent cut by 2020–a tenth of what the science requires–you assume the United States will emit 3 percent fewer warming gases. But that’s not how it works. Instead, they are saying they will trawl across the world to find the cheapest place to cut emissions, and pay for it to happen there.

Today, the chopping down of the world’s forests is causing 12 percent of all emissions of greenhouse gases, because trees store carbon dioxide. So the rich governments say that if they pay to stop some of that, they can claim it as part of their cuts. A program called REDD–Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation–has been set up to do just that. In theory, it sounds fine. The atmosphere doesn’t care where the fall in emissions comes from, as long as it happens in time to stop runaway warming. A ton of carbon in Brazil enters the atmosphere just as surely as a ton in Texas.

If this argument sounds deceptively simple, that’s because it is deceptive. In practice, the REDD program is filled with holes large enough to toss a planet through.

To understand the trouble with REDD, you have to look at the place touted as a model of how the system is supposed to work. Thirteen years ago in Bolivia, a coalition of The Nature Conservancy and three big-time corporate polluters–BP, Pacificorp and American Electric Power (AEP)–set up a protected forest in Bolivia called the Noel Kempff Climate Action Project. They took 3.9 million acres of tropical forest and said they would clear out the logging companies and ensure that the forest remained standing. They claimed this plan would keep 55 million tons of CO2 locked out of the air–which would, in time, justify their pumping an extra 55 million tons into the air from their coal and oil operations. AEP’s internal documents boasted: "The Bolivian project…could save AEP billions of dollars in pollution controls."

Greenpeace sent an investigative team to see how it had turned out. The group found, in a report released last year, that some of the logging companies had simply picked up their machinery and moved to the next rainforest over. An employee for San Martin, one of the biggest logging companies in the area, bragged that nobody had ever asked if they had stopped. This is known as "leakage": one area is protected from logging, but the logging leaks a few miles away and continues just the same.

In fact, one major logging organization took the money it was paid by the project to quit and used it to cut down another part of the forest. The project had to admit it had saved 5.8 million tons or less–a tenth of the amount it had originally claimed. Greenpeace says even this is a huge overestimate. It’s a Potemkin forest for the polluters.

When you claim an offset and it doesn’t work, the climate is screwed twice over–first because the same amount of forest has been cut down after all, and second because a huge amount of additional warming gases has been pumped into the atmosphere on the assumption that the gases will be locked away by the now-dead trees. So the offset hasn’t prevented emissions–it’s doubled them. And as global warming increases, even the small patches of rainforest that have technically been preserved are doomed. Why? Rainforests have a very delicate humid ecosystem, and their moisture smothers any fire that breaks out, but with 2 degrees of warming, they begin to dry out–and burn down. Climatologist Wolfgang Cramer says we "risk losing the entire Amazon" if global warming reaches 4 degrees.

And the news gets worse. Carbon dioxide pumped out of a coal power station stays in the atmosphere for millenniums–so to genuinely "offset" it, you have to guarantee that a forest will stand for the same amount of time. This would be like Julius Caesar in 44 BC making commitments about what Barack Obama will do today–and what some unimaginable world leader will do in 6010. In practice, we can’t even guarantee that the forests will still be standing in fifty years, given the very serious risk of runaway warming.

You would expect the major conservation groups to be railing against this absurd system and demanding a serious alternative built on real science. But on Capitol Hill and at Copenhagen, these groups have been some of the most passionate defenders of carbon offsetting. They say that, in "political reality," this is the only way to raise the cash for the rainforests, so we will have to work with it. But this is a strange kind of compromise–since it doesn’t actually work.

In fact, some of the big groups lobbied to make the protections weaker, in a way that will cause the rainforests to die faster. To understand why, you have to grasp a distinction that may sound technical at first but is crucial. When you are paying to stop deforestation, there are different ways of measuring whether you are succeeding. You can take one small "subnational" area–like the Noel Kempff Climate Action Project–and save that. Or you can look at an entire country, and try to save a reasonable proportion of its forests. National targets are much better, because the leakage is much lower. With national targets, it’s much harder for a logging company simply to move a few miles up the road and carry on: the move from Brazil to Congo or Indonesia is much heftier, and fewer loggers will make it.

Simon Lewis, a forestry expert at Leeds University, says, "There is no question that national targets are much more effective at preventing leakage and saving forest than subnational targets."

Yet several groups–like TNC and Conservation International–have lobbied for subnational targets to be at the core of REDD and the US climate bills. Thanks in part to their efforts, this has become official US government policy, and is at the heart of the Waxman-Markey bill. The groups issued a joint statement with some of the worst polluters–AEP, Duke Energy, the El Paso Corporation–saying they would call for subnational targets now, while vaguely aspiring to national targets at some point down the line. They want to preserve small patches (for a short while), not a whole nation’s rainforest.

An insider who is employed by a leading green group and has seen firsthand how this works explained the groups’ motivation: "It’s because they will generate a lot of revenue this way. If there are national targets, the money runs through national governments. If there are subnational targets, the money runs through the people who control those forests–and that means TNC, Conservation International and the rest. Suddenly, these forests they run become assets, and they are worth billions in a carbon market as offsets. So they have a vested financial interest in offsetting and in subnational targets–even though they are much more environmentally damaging than the alternatives. They know it. It’s shocking."

What are they doing to ensure that this policy happens–and the money flows their way? Another source, from a green group that refuses corporate cash, describes what she has witnessed behind closed doors. "In their lobbying, they always talk up the need for subnational projects and offsetting at every turn and say they’re great. They don’t mention national targets or the problems with offsetting at all. They also push it through their corporate partners, who have an army of lobbyists, [which are] far bigger than any environmental group. They promote their own interests as a group, not the interests of the environment." They have been caught, he says, "REDD-handed, too many times."

TNC and Conservation International admit they argue for subnational accounting, but they claim this is merely a "steppingstone" to national targets. Becky Chacko, director of climate policy at Conservation International, tells me, "Our only interest is to keep forests standing. We don’t [take this position] because it generates revenue for us. We don’t think it’s an evil position to say money has to flow in order to keep forests standing, and these market mechanisms can contribute the money for that."

Yet when I ask her to explain how Conservation International justifies the conceptual holes in the entire system of offsetting, her answers become halting. She says the "issues of leakage and permanence" have been "resolved." But she will not say how. How can you guarantee a forest will stand for millenniums, to offset carbon emissions that warm the planet for millenniums? "We factor that risk into our calculations," she says mysteriously. She will concede that national accounting is "more rigorous" and says Conservation International supports achieving it "eventually."

There is a broad rumble of anger across the grassroots environmental movement at this position. "At Copenhagen, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing," says Kevin Koenig of Amazon Watch, an organization that sides with indigenous peoples in the Amazon basin to preserve their land. "These groups are positioning themselves to be the middlemen in a carbon market. They are helping to set up, in effect, a global system of carbon laundering…that will give the impression of action, but no substance. You have to ask–are these conservation groups at all? They look much more like industry front groups to me."

So it has come to this. After decades of slowly creeping corporate corruption, some of the biggest environmental groups have remade themselves in the image of their corporate backers: they are putting profit before planet. They are supporting a system they know will lead to ecocide, because more revenue will run through their accounts, for a while, as the collapse occurs. At Copenhagen, their behavior was so shocking that Lumumba Di-Aping, the lead negotiator for the G-77 bloc of the world’s rainforest-rich but cash-poor countries, compared them to the CIA at the height of the cold war, sabotaging whole nations.

How do we retrieve a real environmental movement, in the very short time we have left? Charles Komanoff, who worked as a consultant for the Natural Resources Defense Council for thirty years, says, "We’re close to a civil war in the environmental movement. For too long, all the oxygen in the room has been sucked out by this beast of these insider groups, who achieve almost nothing…. We need to create new organizations that represent the fundamentals of environmentalism and have real goals."

Some of the failing green groups can be reformed from within. The Sierra Club is a democratic organization, with the leadership appointed by its members. There are signs that members are beginning to put the organization right after the missteps of the past few years. Carl Pope is being replaced by Mike Brune, formerly of the Rainforest Action Network–a group much more aligned with the radical demands of the climate science. But other organizations–like Conservation International and TNC–seem incapable of internal reform and simply need to be shunned. They are not part of the environmental movement: they are polluter-funded leeches sucking on the flesh of environmentalism, leaving it weaker and depleted.

Already, shining alternatives are starting to rise up across America. In just a year, the brilliant 350.org has formed a huge network of enthusiastic activists who are demanding our politicians heed the real scientific advice–not the parody of it offered by the impostors. They have to displace the corrupt conservationists as the voice of American environmentalism, fast.

This will be a difficult and ugly fight, when we need all our energy to take on the forces of ecocide. But these conservation groups increasingly resemble the forces of ecocide draped in a green cloak. If we don’t build a real, unwavering environmental movement soon, we had better get used to a new sound–of trees crashing down and an ocean rising, followed by the muffled, private applause of America’s "conservationists."

~~~~~~
Johann Hari is a columnist for the Independent in London and a contributing writer for Slate. He has been named Newspaper Journalist of the Year by Amnesty International for his reporting from the war in Congo.

Our bonds with other species are as vital, to survival, as our bonds with other people. If we don’t choose our company carefully, disaster is likely to ensue.

As a species, we should be shopping for the best relationships. There’s a lot a stake, and we don’t want to be abused or neglected. When searching for a good fit, we should keep in mind the following characteristics of good relationships.

Healthy Relationships Are:

• Supportive
• Stable
• Trustworthy
• Reciprocating
• Versatile
• Low Maintenance

Any signs of abusiveness, jealousy, extreme neediness, aloofness, instability, selfishness, should be bright red flags. To satiate our needs, we require an assortment of healthy relationships, from lovers and close friends, to co-workers and acquaintances. We know that too few or too many relationships can be a bad thing.

The most conspicuous relationships of the human species involve domesticated plants and animals. Our common pets, and almost all the food items in a grocery store, are domesticated organisms. These are the barnyard plants and animals we learn about from the moment we begin to talk.

But these creatures were not always domestic. All of them descend from wild ancestors, just as dogs descended from wolves. In his book Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond provides an excellent overview of domestication’s history. The domestication of food plants and animals was the basis of the Neolithic Revolution, when Old Word hunter/gatherers became farmers. Diamond make a good point: the reason we domesticated wolves and wheat, instead of moose, zebras, or cheetahs, is because wolves and wheat had a natural tendency to associate with people.

Wolves, for instance, probably first encountered people while scavenging meat scraps from hunting camps. Since wolves and people where both social hunters at that time, and since both species had something to gain from cooperation (increased hunting success), it was highly likely that a relationship would form.

It was the same way with plants like wheat, which probably thrived in man made disturbances before it was domesticated. Out of this relationship people gained food, and wheat gained habitat. Moose, zebras, and cheetahs don’t associate with people, if they can help it, and don’t have much to gain from a relationship.

When examining the planet’s organisms, we find a whole spectrum of tendencies for associating with people. On one side, we have animals like spotted owls and arboreal salamanders, who have very different needs from people. They want little to do with us, because we have nothing to offer them. Endangered species are likely to occupy this side of the spectrum, because, as we modify their habitat to suite us, it becomes less suitable to them.

In the middle of the spectrum are organisms that have needs and habitats similar to ours. Deer for instance, were not abundant in Western Washington State, until people began clearing the old growth forest to suite their needs. While this activity seriously threatened the spotted owl, deer thrived in the fields and thick re-growth that resulted. Similarly, apple trees have a habit of sprouting up in disturbed forests around human settlements. Since people like to eat deer and apples, this is a happy relationship, and both parties have something to gain. But an important distinction is that these species do not absolutely need us. Deer and wild apples would do fine without human help, perhaps making use of natural burn areas. (Read Northwest Lands Northwest Peoples, edited by Goble and Hirt.)

At the far end of the spectrum are organisms that need humans to survive. Corn is an excellent example. In the book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan pointed out that without human intervention, corn could not even reseed itself. Helplessly, corn relies completely on people for it’s propagation. Corn is so needy, it can only survive by rewarding the humans who plant it with prodigious amounts of food. Through the hybridization and genetic modification of corn and other domestic organisms, we make them still more dependent on us. If humans quit supporting them, these organisms would cease to exist.

The Domestication Spectrum:

The most domesticated organisms in the spectrum reward us with the greatest quantities of food, but it comes a cost. Anyone who’s noticed the luxurious lifestyle of some pet dogs has witnessed that cost. I am referring to the frightening phenomenon of co-domestication.

Sure, dogs keep us company, they intimidate thieves, and they fetch the paper. But these same dogs enjoy a constant supply of free food and the freedom to sleep the entire day, while their owners slave away at full time jobs. Who has domesticated whom? This article (PDF) sheds light on how powerfully canines have shaped our species, not just vice versa.

All domestic organisms are the same way. They give more because they need more. The reason they can yield so much more than their wild counterparts is that they have differed the work of their upkeep to us. As much as we have domesticated them, they have domesticated us. We do their bidding, even when it becomes painful.

But do we want to be domesticated? Jared Diamond demonstrated that such relationships have been a primary vector for pandemic diseases throughout history. Almost every plague can be traced back to a domestic animal, even the more recent "swine flu". Domesticated animals also develop much smaller brains than their wild counterparts. Neoteny, or juvenilization, is a common trait exhibited by domesticates, a phenomenon by which adult animals retain the traits of juveniles, becoming helpless, cute, dumb, and compliant. This process can happen in as little as fifty years, as demonstrated by Dmitri Belyaev’s experiment in domesticating the silver fox. The idea that humans have been similarly tamed is a chilling one. (See http://www.primitivism.com/domestic.htm for effects of domestication.)

Have our co-domesticates made lap dogs out of us? Consider that most of the calories you consume come from just four crops. Consider that most of the carbon that comprises your body was fixed by corn. Or take a drive through Middle America and see it stretch to the horizon; corn, corn, corn, corn…. Or better yet, visit the Gulf of Mexico’s vast "dead zone" where all the fertilizer washed from the Mississippi’s corn and soybean fields accumulates, and becomes a patch of lifeless reeking sea as broad as Massachusetts. (http://serc.carleton.edu/microbelife/topics/deadzone/general.html)

Who is in charge here? Whose greed is ravishing the planet? Is it the Exxon? Is it George W. Bush? Is it Wal-Mart?!

No. It’s corn. Corn is in charge.

People are conceited enough to believe that we are the cause of this nightmare. But if our species was really in control, the world would look a lot differently. However greedy we may be, it was never in our interest to pollute and overpopulate the planet, dine on high fructose corn syrup, work long hours plowing up the soil, and cover every arable acre with wheat, rice, and corn. This is, however, very much in the interest of corn.

The human/grain relationship is the definition of unhealthy. Of all the plants we could have loved, we’ve chosen the ones that destroy our home and feed us junk. This is abusive. If we had any spine at all, we’d ditch them forever.

As a species, it’s time we had a talk with crops like corn. What we ought to be saying is, "Look Corn, things started out alright between us. I remember when we first got together in Mexico, we hung out with Beans and Squash, we made tortillas together, it was beautiful. But things aren’t the same anymore. Corn, you’ve been so draining lately. I’ve taken you everywhere and given you everything; land, water, fertilizer, herbicide, even genetic modifications – do you have any idea how many prairies and watersheds I sacrificed? I butchered the nitrogen cycle for you! And what do I have to show for it?! Corn-syrup! Lousy corn fed beef! Diabetes and heart disease! That’s what I have to show for it! And if it was up to you, I’d never have anything else. A person can’t live on cornflakes alone! Corn, I’m an omnivore, I need variety, adventure, and Omega 3 fatty acids. I don’t mind having corn on the cob now and then, but corn syrup on every label? You’re even in my gasoline! I can’t go on like this. You’re jealously is insane! This relationship isn’t working for me anymore. I think it’s time I saw other species."

What would it mean, to divorce ourselves from our co-domesticates?

A healthier relationship with our food might resemble our hunter/gatherer past, when we utilized a greater diversity of plants and animals in our diet. Hunter/gatherers across the world eat somewhere in the ballpark of 200 different plant species. We are omnivores, descended from a long line of omnivores. Even our chimpanzee cousins eat about 200 plant species. Primate intelligence may have evolved, in part, to facilitate such an eclectic diet. Ethnobotanists estimate that indigenous people from my home region, the Columbia Plateau, utilized at least 135 plants for food. When we consider how many non-native plants are available to us, as the result of global exchange, it does not seem unreasonable to demand a 300-plant diet. This is not to mention animal foods, which lag not far behind plants in hunter/gatherer diets, in terms of number of species eaten. The markets of the undeveloped world are a tantalizing example of just how much culinary variety we miss out on in the industrialized world. Broadening the scope of our menu would certainly improve our health and the health of the planet.

A healthier relationship with food might also look a little more independent. By eating from a wider swath of the domestication spectrum, and avoiding the extremes, we could spare ourselves internal and external damages. For instance, most of the vegetable greens consumed by modern Americans come from domesticated crops grown in intensively managed fields, which is totally absurd. There is no shortage of wild greens growing in our waste places, even in urban settings. Commonly overlooked "weeds" such as nettles, lambs quarter, amaranth, purslane, etc. are higher in vitamin and mineral content than their domestic counterparts, and thrive with zero maintenance. Many of these taste as good, or better, than domesticated greens (see http://www.eattheweeds.com). They are more than abundant enough to meet the vitamin and mineral needs of everyone. If we incorporated these semi-wild plants in our diets, we would waste less money and energy, and preserve our integrity as low-maintenance omnivores. Instead, most of us continue to be trapped by our bias toward tame, high-maintenance things.

Few societies are as irrational as ours in this regard. Most of the world’s other cultures have realized that while some foods are worth the effort to cultivate, others are best harvested from the wild. The hunter/gatherer Indian cultures of the Northwest were happy to adopt domestic species like chickens, potatoes, and turnips. It was no stretch. After all, they had been gardening tobacco for a very long time. But almost nothing could stop them from harvesting huckleberries, or wild salmon. Only our culture would build the Grand Coulee Dam, thus terminating a free and abundant supply of wild salmon, in order to irrigate potatoes. Most long-established agricultural societies derive a significant part of their diet from the wild. Farming corn did not keep early American societies from dining on venison and nuts as well.

Sea food, the one wild harvest industry our society wasn’t so squeamish about, is rapidly being replaced by high-maintenance fish farms, and other forms of aquaculture. On the whole, the industrial world has done a very poor job of striking a balance between low and high maintenance sustenance strategies. Indeed, we seem to have an uncanny tendency toward the latter extreme. Why? Why would we go to so much trouble? Perhaps it is because, as any government employee can tell you, make-work can be profitable (the Grand Coulee Dam makes another pertinent example). But this is an entirely different topic, perhaps better covered by Naomi Klein in her book The Shock Doctrine.

If you’re like me, make-work isn’t your forte. You’ve got better things to do than labor for things nature offers for free. You may also like the idea of moving your diet toward the healthy norm – two or three hundred plant species. Find out more about increasing the diversity of your habitat at: https://sites.google.com/site/humanhabitatproject.

Permaculture education should be in every school, everywhere. If it was, I believe most of the world’s problems could be solved within a decade.

One of 55 eco-friendly homes nestled amongst newly established gardens

An hour or so south of the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo is the fishing district of Kalutara. Although only one of many regions hit by the 2004 Tsunami, post-disaster relief efforts here were unique in that Sarvodaya determined to use the situation to create Sri Lanka’s first eco-village.

Designed with the technical advice and guidance of world renowned Australian permaculture experts Max Lindegger and Lloyd Williams, who are affiliated with Ecological Solutions Inc. and Global Eco-village Network (GEN), the village has become a model of sustainable development.

The Sri Lankan government allocated a parcel of land situated five kilometres inland for the purpose, and financing for construction came via Sarvodaya as well as the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (AJJDC), the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) and the Asia Pacific Forum for Environment and Development (APFED). The combined gifts culminated in the construction of Lagoswatta – a model eco-village, situated on a gentle five acre slope bordered by rice fields, that is now home to 55 families from three villages in the area.

I was of course very keen to take a look, and so after winding our way from the coast, through small farmlets and a rather beautiful and shady rubber tree plantation, I arrived in Lagoswatta for a brief look.

Beginning in April 2005 and completed in 2006, an important aspect of of the work was the involvement of the intended residents in the construction process itself – providing an excellent opportunity to build a sense of ownership and self-determination for their future, whilst giving survivors a sense of purpose that helps them deal psychologically with trauma, loss of loved ones and their subsequent dramatic change in circumstances.

Each earth-brick home in Lagoswatta is virtually identical, measuring about 46 square metres (500 square feet) and consists of two bedrooms, a living room, kitchen and sanitation facilities. Each home has its own garden, and practical involvement of residents are positively encouraged with training in composting, gardening, recycling and also maintenance of the solar panel and battery that provides electricity to each home – something many residents never had before. Homes are also equipped with a recycling receptacle and on the edge of the village is a small recycling station where materials are separated and stored for monthly collection. The project also included a Subterra biological soakage system for household greywater.

Water for drinking and irrigation is one of the biggest problems Sri Lankans face. Construction for Lagoswatta thus included fourteen rainwater harvesting tanks to collect roof run-off, five drinking wells and two communal bathing wells.

An important aspect of design for any eco-village are those that encourage community interdependence. In addition to housing, a multi-purpose community center was built that includes a doctor’s office (manned on Mondays), library, computer room, a childcare/Montessori school centre and a playground – all encouraging community interaction and the pooling and development of the creative abilities of individual villagers. Programs assisting in social mobilization and livelihood support foster this development as well.

A boy plays in the community childcare centre

The edge-of-town recycling station – emptied monthly

One aspect of village life I found interesting was that, unlike other Sarvodaya villages, where the very first stage of development is ‘awakening’ to the Sarvodaya principles based on earth care and the ten basic needs, the villagers of Lagoswatta were somewhat thrown together suddenly at a time of extreme stress. Additionally, many of the villagers were previously fisher folk, so once moved from the coast to Lagoswatta they’ve had to take on a whole new existence. Whilst villagers on the whole largely seemed content and adapting to their new surrounds, it was clear to me there wasn’t the same industriousness and cohesion found in some of the other villages who had opted to join the Sarvodaya network out of acknowledgement and appreciation over time of the principles that forms the basis of the movement.

In other words, these people were somewhat thrown together out of necessity, rather than inspired choice.

A Lagoswatta villager harvests compost from his bin

Practical examples of this could be seen by observing the state of different gardens in the village, where some were making excellent use of their land – cultivating quite a diverse range of fruit, vegetables and herbs and developing a lovely shaded environment that is a major advantage in the tropical heat – while others were making merely token efforts.

Some villagers were making excellent use of their garden space

I spoke with a few villagers about how well their solar system worked. One man spoke despondently about how after only four years the battery had already failed and he couldn’t afford the 15,000 rupees to replace it. Considering this man didn’t have power in the shack he and his small family lived in prior to its destruction, I was conscious of how this ‘upgrade’ in their life was making them dependent on polluting technologies that were too expensive for them to maintain. When I mentioned the failed battery in a neighbour’s house, it was explained to me that the first man had not been maintaining the battery as he was told (topping up with water) and so killed it from neglect. Considering this, I remembered that that particular man’s garden was also largely non-existent, indicating either a general lack of pro-active interest or difficulty in adapting, and it made me appreciate all the more the importance of Sarvodaya’s stepped program that prioritises individual transformation at its base.

Each home has a battery that stores power from a small roof-mounted
solar panel. The only appliances for most houses are normally only lights,

a radio and/or television.

As they say, a house does not a home make. In the same way, a collection of buildings and people does not an eco-village make. It became obvious to me that you cannot just lump a divergent range of people together and call them a ‘community’. A truly successful community requires some planning at a spiritual level to facilitate cohesion – and this centres in all involved being inspired with a sense of positive purpose and collectively shared goals. Disasters like that which gave birth to Lagoswatta obviously do not provide the luxury of time for such considerations, but I think this is an important facet to consider wherever possible.

Villagers said their conditions were improved – homes were warmer in winter,
cooler in summer, and power, water and garden features were all appreciated.

The good news is that Sarvodaya’s efforts in this regard continue to this day, and Lagoswatta has become an excellent model for not only Sri Lanka but also for village development and disaster relief efforts worldwide.

Stay tuned for the next edition in this series….

The community centre is appropriate for culture and climate

The community library was spartan, but it’s a start

Composting toilets are culturally unacceptable to Sri Lankans, so Lagoswatta
utilises septic tanks for black water. Outside are rain-fed washing facilities.

A typical Lagoswatta kitchen. Some homes house two or three families, as
families would open their doors to relatives struggling after the disaster.

A children’s park completes the picture. The sign reads:

"This park is a gift to the children from the American people."

Does Scientology and permaculture’s People Care ethic conflict? And, if so, should this matter to permaculturists?

Preliminary Note: Comments from people who sound like they haven’t read all of this post in its entirety will not be moderated through. I want no ill-thought-out, off-the-cuff comments here. Thank you.

This post won’t be an easy one to formulate so as to avoid controversy. Indeed, avoiding controversy on this topic is likely impossible. But, sometimes when you try to adhere to principle you’re given tasks that are not easy, pleasant or welcome. I’ll state right now that I write this article reluctantly. Making the decision to do so took some deliberation, and was also encouraged by the prompting of others who have emailed me privately with the same shared concern. In this post I will attempt to be objective and respectful – and I hope anyone who comments will endeavour to do this as well.

The tragedy of the Haiti earthquake is immense, and perhaps the worst aspect is that the healing process for people and land will take so much longer than it could have since Haiti was already drowning in problems before the earth shook and as such have little built in resiliency beyond some individual determination to survive. I’ve already visited the topic of how Haiti’s situation has been made a thousand-fold worse because of the economic colonialism of the world’s great powers, so won’t address this again here. The focus of this post, instead, is on aspects of the relief effort that some involved may wish to consider. Actually, I write this not only in relation to the relief effort for Haiti alone, but also for the benefit of the victims, relief workers and donors the world over who will participate in the future disasters that will surely strike in ensuing years.

I speak, in particular, about the involvement of Scientologists in relief efforts. Scientologists state that Scientology is currently the world’s fastest growing religion. Others dispute this, but either way, their involvement in disaster relief is growing. Scientologists claim that "Through the last 20 years, Scientology Volunteer Ministers have provided emergency service at 126 worst-case disaster sites. Today, they are among the most recognized independent relief organizations in the free world." (volunteerministers.org) If the statement is even remotely true, it means the discussion that follows is appropriate since permaculture is increasingly seen as offering some of the best solutions for disaster relief and long term sustainable development – so putting the work of Scientologists in some kind of understandable context will be pertinent for permaculturists who wish to support or be involved in permaculture aid work.

I say I write the post reluctantly for a couple of reasons:

1. First is because I am all for freedom of religion. I believe most permaculturists would agree that the future we would like to build would necessarily incorporate many of the principles featured in the U.S. constitution – like the rights to freedom of speech and freedom of belief, etc. As such, it is not my purpose or desire to stigmatise or publicly attack any group or individuals. So, I won’t. I am flat out not attempting to do this. (I will therefore not moderate through unreasonable rants and vengeful outpourings in comments on this post towards Scientologists. Keep it civil and intelligent and your comment should get through however. I may moderate through unreasonable rants and vengeful outpourings aimed at me though.)
2. Secondly, I am reluctant to write this because Haitians desperately need aid, and I do not wish anything I write to diminish their chances of getting that aid in double-quick fashion.

So, why am I making this post at all? Well, because permaculture is based on three central tenets – Earth Care, People Care, and Fair Share. The purpose of this post is solely to open for discussion the possibility that Scientology may be incompatible with the second principle – People Care. I will state right now that I don’t know enough about the group to be decisive on this, so am here merely bringing this potential incompatibility to the greater permaculture community so they can consider this possibility and then make their own decisions on:

1. whether there is such an incompatibility, and
2. whether that incompatibility is important to us or not.

If permaculturists decide there is no conflict, they would then be able to move on from this issue with peace of mind.

The reason I think this topic should be opened for reasoned and objective debate is that the involvement of Scientologists in permaculture relief efforts (or the involvement of permaculturists in Scientologist’s relief efforts, as the case may be) sets a precedent. There will be more disasters, and we may well find Scientologists and permaculturists working side by side in relief efforts again in the future. Thus, discussing this now is appropriate and timely, even if difficult. Discussing it now, I would state, is in accordance with a very basic permaculture principle – to carefully observe before drawing out a design plan, so as to save time, energy and trouble further down the track. If we’re designing permaculture relief strategies, then careful observation now may help ensure we’re best prepared to be the most effective in subsequent tragedies.

Many of you will have read the Permaculture Relief Corps Forming For Haiti Earthquake Response? post we recently put up. If you haven’t, I’d suggest you do so now and come back here to continue. Please also read the comments through – well, at least those from my comment of January 21, 2010 onwards. (Scroll down to the comment that begins with ‘Note from site editor’ in bold lettering.) From reading those comments you’ll understand more how this situation arose, and you’ll also see from the comments that followed mine the need to stimulate discussion on this. You’ll see from those comments that some people have opted out of getting involved in the relief effort because of the connection with Scientology. (Some who didn’t comment on the site have emailed me to state their decision to opt out as well.) This shows that the issue is of concern to some permaculturists so has the potential to, at the very least, complicate future permaculture aid efforts as it has already for Haiti.

Possible Implications

I think it can be said that if the current precedent is the beginning of further such relief scenarios, then Scientologists may be providing resources (like flights, etc., as they seem to be now) to permaculturists again in the future. Some of the potential/possible implications for this are:

1. The valuable, practical aid capabilities of permaculturists (sanitation/food/water/housing/energy systems, etc.) could become an effective vehicle for Scientologists to gain greater access to vulnerable communities and contribute to the legitimisation of their organisation.
2. Given the controversial nature of Scientology, the reputation of the permaculture community could be tarnished if people perceive that the above point is a reality.
3. If permaculturists do a great work on the ground, and it was financed or otherwise aided by Scientologists, then Scientologists may lay claim to the work itself, thus diminishing the ability of the permaculture movement to develop in its own right and stand on its own legs (donations could potentially also go through The Church of Scientology or its members rather than through permaculture relief groups).
4. If the Scientology belief system itself results in behaviours and activities amongst its own members that conflict with the permaculture People Care principle, then this gives permaculturists a moral dilemma – as by participating in their relief efforts, and effectively helping them to grow as a viable, more acceptable religion, permaculturists may find they’re assisting the growth of an organisation that is in direct conflict with their own principles.
5. If permaculturists are found to be assisting the growth of Scientology through legitimising it via working partnerships, and if the accusations of Scientology critics are at all valid (again, I don’t know, and it seems that for me to find out I’d have to, according to Scientology’s leading spokesperson, join their group to find out for myself, which I have no inclination to do) then permaculturists could be assisting the formation of a power structure whose world view and ultimate goals are in stark contrast to those of permaculturists.

Touch assists and other treatments and accusations of vindictive behaviour

Critics of Scientology, including ex-Scientologists, make startling accusations about the group’s treatment of both Scientology members and ex-members, as well as accusations about other aspects of non-ethical behaviour, like dishonesty.

An example of the latter issue (dishonesty) can be found here, where Scientologists who were at ‘ground zero’ of the 9/11 twin towers disaster are accused of dishonesty in their dealings with news media and in their dealings with police who manned the barricades around the disaster zone. Scientologists are also accused, in this same situation, of trying to stop traumatised people from accessing counseling. (Scientologists are very open about their opposition to traditional psychiatric counseling techniques). The following quote is said to be part of a leaked email from a Scientologist regarding their work on the ground at 9/11:

Additionally we are trying to move in and knock the psychs out of counseling to the grieving families and that could take another 100 plus people right now. Due to some brilliant maneuvering by some simply genius Sea Org Members we tied up the majority of the psychs who were attempting to get to families yesterday in Q&A, bullbait and wrangling. They have a hard time completing cycles of action and are pretty easy to disperse. - Xenu.net

These are all points that permaculturists might wish to consider. In Haiti for example, there is and will be for a very long time, a major problem with mental health/trauma due to the shocking nature of the tragedy that has befallen them – see here, here and here for more on this – and on-going depression as many people fail to come to terms with life without legs, arms, homes, family members, means of sustenance and much more. Scientologists are using ‘touch assists‘ and possibly other assists in Haiti right now and are also training surviving Haitians to do so as well. Scientologists believe these methods to be very effective. (I’ve never experienced such ‘assists’, so can’t comment.) Permaculturists may thus wish to consider the relative merits of these methods compared with those that could be getting applied more widely in Haiti if other agencies were there instead of Scientologists. And, as surviving Haitians are being taught these methods, permaculturists should consider the relative merits of people being given such training as opposed to other types of training they could be receiving instead.

There is a lot of controversy over Scientologists’ views on treatment. The case of Lisa McPherson, who apparently died in very strange circumstances while in their care, is a case in point. (See also.)

Disasters to aid spread of Scientology?

Permaculturists may also want to consider the purpose and potential long-term outcomes of such treatments in view of L. Ron Hubbard’s strategy for the growth of their organisation:

"Every day in the daily papers one discovers people who have been victimised… [The Scientologist] should enter the presence of the person and give a nominal assist, leave his card which says where church services are held with the statement that a much fuller recovery is possible by coming to free services… Handling the press he should simply say that it is a mission of the church to assist those in need." February, 1956

"Casualty contact is very old, is almost never tried and is almost always roaringly successful… This is a pretty routine drill really. You get permission to visit. You go in and give patients a cheery smile. You want to know if you can do anything for them, you give them a card and tell them to come around to your group… Your statement, ‘the modern scientific church can cure things like that. Come around and see’ will work. It’s straight recruiting!" September, 1959

- written by L. Ron Hubbard, published in the Independent

Is there a conflict with the permaculture People Care principle?

In regards to a potential, direct conflict with the People Care principle, specifically, accusations of critics of Scientology are numerous (see here and here to get you started on an internet full of such accusations) and, if true, would make the considerations of this post highly pertinent. The Church’s ‘fair game‘ policy against people and organisations they perceive as being their enemies should form the centrepiece of discussion here, I believe.

The punishments apparently meted out on members and non-members, in different degrees of severity, are quoted below, from Xenu.net, and fairgamed.org lists a great many more practical examples as well:

                           HUBBARD COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE
                     Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead, Sussex

                       HCO Policy Letter of 18 October 1967,
                                     Issue IV
   Remimeo

                          PENALTIES FOR LOWER CONDITIONS

                          (Applies both Orgs and Sea Org)

LIABILITY  Suspension of pay and a dirty grey rag on left arm and day
           and night confinement to org premises.

TREASON    Suspension of pay and deprivation of all uniforms and insignia,
           a black mark on left cheek and confinement on org premises or
           dismissal from post and debarment from premises.

DOUBT      Debarment from premises. Not to be employed. Payment of fine
           amounting to any sum may have cost org. Not to be trained or
           processed. Not to be communicated or argue with.

ENEMY      SP Order. Fair game. May be deprived of property or injured by
           any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the
           Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed.

LRH:jp                                                   L. RON HUBBARD
Copyright (c) 1967                                       Founder
by L. Ron Hubbard
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

An enormous amount of controversy also surrounds the founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, a science fiction writer who went on to create the Scientology belief system. A quick Google search will result in reams of accusations about lies and motives, personal drug abuse and other scandals. An ex-Scientologist, Gerry Armstrong, claims that before he left the organisation he attempted to write a biography on Hubbard so as to address the concerns of critics of Scientology, but that in doing so he discovered that much of Hubbard’s claims about himself (his credentials and history, etc.) were lies. Mr. Armstrong says that when he tried to correct Church records to reflect what he discovered, the church turned on him with litigation:

Mr Armstrong says that when he sought to have the record corrected the church turned on him, eventually suing him for theft of the documents that Hubbard had turned over to him.

The church lost the first round, the judge in part finding: ”In addition to violating and abusing its own members’ civil rights, the organisation over the years with its ‘fair game’ doctrine has harassed and abused those persons not in the church whom it perceives as enemies.

”The organisation clearly is schizophrenic and paranoid, and this bizarre combination seems to be a reflection of its founder. The evidence portrays a man who has been virtually a pathological liar when it comes to his history, background and achievements.

”The writings and documents in evidence additionally reflect his egoism, greed, avarice, lust for power and vindictiveness and aggressiveness against persons perceived by him to be disloyal or hostile." – Sydney Morning Herald

Controversy surrounds the current leader of the organisation, David Misgavige, particularly in regards to accusations by former Scientologists of physical violence inflicted on subordinates by him.

Possible Scientology beliefs that should not be discussed

Controversy also surrounds Scientologists in regards to intergalactic entities that are said to be affecting us all today. These theological beliefs are said to be in ’scriptures’ only accessible to higher level Scientologists. From watching Martin Basher of ABC News trying to get clarification on some of those beliefs I see I might offend Scientologists by discussing these here, so I will refrain from doing so. People in my mind must travel their own path in life and so are welcome to their own beliefs. I would suggest to anyone intending to comment here that they should respect their desire not to discuss this aspect, particularly as I think it may have little or nothing to do with the behaviour of the organisation, which is far more relevant to the discussion at hand.

Is it critical for Scientologists to be involved in disaster relief at all?

Discussing the ideal source of aid in tragic circumstances is obviously more of an argument for us on the outside of the situation. For Haitians of course, they will be happy for assistance from whatever source – in the short term at least. The Volunteer Ministers of Scientology have somehow managed to get in, and fast, where others haven’t:

The lines are worked out to get personnel in these planes through the security lines, etc and on site where it will count… They have the lines greased to get through to Haiti – all you need is a passport and malaria pills, and personal items. This is the best way to go in you will be with a strong, experienced disaster team who knows how to use the lines to get equipment and get things done in a chaotic situation, and are very careful of their safety, etc…. and the church has planes and lines strung to get them in fast…. I can get funding for plane tickets and even get you clearance from Homeland Security…. I’m serious, I’ll do that for you. - Cory Brennan, Scientologist and permaculture aid worker, commenting on our recent post.

This ability to get into Haiti is certainly impressive. I am really unsure how this was acheived.

Some could of course argue that Scientologists bringing in aid is less of a ‘better-them-than-nothing’ situation, but more of a ‘if-not-them-then-someone-else-could-be-there-instead’ scenario. For example, some aid agencies appear to be annoyed that Scientologists are taking airport time and space that they could be utilising instead:

There is a backlog of at least 800 aircraft awaiting permission to land at the overloaded airport, which can handle just 130 flights daily, prompting recriminations from some aid agencies. – Mail & Guardian

Closing thoughts

In addition to the People Care principle, there may also be conflicts between Scientology and the first and third principles of permaculture as well (Earth Care, and Fair Share). There are many accusations of members being tricked out of money, for example, which, if true, would conflict with the economic aspects of the Fair Share principle. I don’t know if Scientology beliefs include earth preservation aspects or not, as many other religions do, but, if not, this could have the potential to impact the Earth Care principle as well? But, with this post already being long enough for one sitting, I won’t take more time on these aspects now.

I will again stress that I’m pleased Haitians are receiving aid, and I am, again, in no way making an attack on Scientologists either as individuals or as a group. As a mortal being I am in no position to judge motives and do want to presume the best of people and trust they are well-intentioned. I am merely seeking to provide a platform for discussion so that the greater permaculture community can take a moment of pause to consider whether the precedent that has begun here is something to applaud or to be concerned about, and so that we can move forward more productively after discussing these things.

In closing, please feel free to comment (with intelligence and civility, or you won’t get through) if you have thoughts/facts that might either: 1) put permaculturists at ease in regards to a relationship between permaculture relief efforts and Scientologists, or that 2) might help permaculturists worldwide determine whether they should have any connection with the organisation at all, and if so, what the nature of that ‘connection’ should be?

I would again suggest that these discussions centre on whether Scientology is compatible with the permaculture People Care principle, as that principle is integral to the permaculture movement and looking at this potential conflict simplifies any argument over whether permaculturists should be involved with Scientologists. If it is not compatible, then the next question is does our connecting with Scientologists legitimise their existence? If we find it does, does that mean that through involvement we’re helping to grow an organisation that is in direct opposition to our world view? And, would that be intelligent permaculture design?

From my attempts to learn more about the group, there does seem to be a clear conflict at a foundational, behavioural level.

Further Watching:

• The BBC Panorama on Scientology: Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV
• Tommy Davis, Scientology spokesperson, on Scientology

As we enter 2010, the script for a futuristic agriculture, which brings back the smile on the face of farmers, without leaving any scar on the environment, is being rewritten.

What began as a small initiative some six years back in a non-descript village in Khamam district, has now spread to over 2 million acres in 21 districts of Andhra Pradesh. I remember when I first talked about the miracle brought about in village Pannukula in Andhra Pradesh, many thought I was simply trying to romanticise agriculture. How farming can be done without the use of chemical pesticides, I was repeatedly asked.

Pannukula dug out a lonely furrow, but eventually blazed a trail. In the next four years, more than 318,000 farmers in 21 out of the 23 districts of Andhra Pradesh have discarded the intensive chemical farming systems, and shifted to a more sustainable, economically viable and ecologically friendly agriculture. A silent revolution is in the offing. In Kharif 2009 (the monsoon season), some 1.4 million acres was covered with what is now known as Community Managed Sustainable Agriculture (CMSA).

As I write this in the first week of January 2010, the area had expanded to 2 million acres of 21 districts. More than 0.6 million acres increase in a farming system that does not use chemical pesticides, and is also phasing out chemical fertiliser, that too in matter of few months, is a record of sorts. And all this has happened without any push from the government agencies and the private sector. I see no reason why this environmentally safe, and a farmer-friendly system of sustainable agriculture, cannot cover 200 million acres across the country in another ten years or so if the government gets serious.

60,000 acres increase in a farming system that does not use chemical pesticides, and is also phasing out chemical fertiliser, that too in matter of few months, is a record of sorts. Ten years from now, in 2020, when we try to look back, Indian agriculture can be transformed into a healthy and vibrant system where farmer suicides have been relegated to history, where distress and despondency has been replaced by the lost pride in farming, and where agriculture becomes sustainable in the long run and does not result in climate change.

What began as an experiment to evolve a farming system without the application of chemical pesticides is now also phasing out the use of chemical fertilisers. It uses a mixture of scientific proven technologies, indigenous knowledge and traditional wisdom. Farmers are replacing chemical fertilisers and pesticides with microbial formulations, intensive use of composting techniques, vermi-composting, and apply bio-fertilisers, and use bio-extracts for controlling pests.

Paddy crop has increased significantly under CMSA. It therefore brought in a complete shift from conventional agriculture and offered secure and stable livelihoods. The crop yields have remained the same, the pest attack has drastically reduced, and the soil is returning back to its natural fertility levels. As soil fertility improves over the years, crop yields have started going up still further. More importantly, farmer’s expenditure on health problems emanating from pesticides application has also gone down by 40 per cent on an average.

There is more money now in the hands of the farmers. The cost of cultivation per acre has also come down by 33 per cent. Take the case of cotton, a CMSA farmer saves more than Rs 12,500 per hectare in a year on account of no application of pesticides alone. With his crop productivity remaining stable, cotton farmers have got a new lease of life. The environment too has become healthier and safe.

What began as an experiment to evolve a farming system without the application of chemical pesticides is now also phasing out the use of chemical fertilisers by relying on a mixture of scientific proven technologies, indigenous knowledge and traditional wisdom. Normally, 56 per cent of the cost of cotton cultivation is primarily on account of pesticides. And don’t forget, elsewhere in the State and for that matter in the country, 70 per cent of the farmers who are committing suicide are engaged in cotton cultivation.

No farmer has committed suicide in the areas where non-pesticides management system of farming is being followed.

More money in the hands of farmers means less debt. I haven’t seen any other village in the country in past three decades of my work in agriculture, which has been able to recover its entire mortgaged land from the money lenders in just three years of adopting non-pesticides management. This happened in village Ramachandrapuram in Khamam district where all 75 farmers have even paid back the outstanding rate of interest.

Studies in five districts show that out of the 467 families that had mortgaged their land, at least 386 have recovered it in two years time.

This is a roadmap for the future of Indian agriculture, and for that global agriculture. It not only provides a sustainable path, with a very low carbon footprint, and has tremendous potential to remove poverty and hunger. It has been conclusively demonstrated that household food security has improved with a 40 per cent drop in the purchase of food from the market. The crop yields have gone up, and farmers are now able to cultivate two crops in a year. This is the Zero Hunger model that I normally talk about which needs to be adopted under the proposed National Food Security Act.

Women and farmer Self Help Groups’ play a critical role in CMSA. Savings have increased, and a federation of 850,675 self-help groups now involves 10 million women from the poor households. This federation now holds a corpus of US $ 1.5 billion providing a bundle of economic services. No wonder, sustainable agriculture without external inputs can revolutionise the rural landscape, where hunger and poverty becomes history.

Devinder Sharma is an award-winning journalist, writer, thinker and researcher respected for his views on food and trade policy. His writings focus on the links between biotechnology, intellectual property rights, food trade and poverty. He is a regular contributor to leading national print publications.

by George Monbiot: journalist, author, academic and environmental and political activist, United Kingdom

The only question that counts is the one that the Chilcot inquiry won’t address: was the war with Iraq illegal? If the answer is yes, everything changes. The war is no longer a political matter, but a criminal one, and those who commissioned it should be committed for trial for what the Nuremberg Tribunal called “the supreme international crime”(1): the crime of aggression.

But there’s a problem with official inquiries in the United Kingdom: the government appoints their members and sets their terms of reference. It’s the equivalent of a criminal suspect being allowed to choose what the charges should be, who should judge his case and who should sit on the jury. As a senior judge told the Guardian in November, “Looking into the legality of the war is the last thing the government wants. And actually, it’s the last thing the opposition wants either because they voted for the war. There simply is not the political pressure to explore the question of legality – they have not asked because they don’t want the answer.”(2)

Others have explored it, however. Two weeks ago a Dutch inquiry, led by a former supreme court judge, found that the invasion had “no sound mandate in international law”(3). Last month the former law lord, Lord Steyn, said that “in the absence of a second UN resolution authorising invasion, it was illegal.”(4) In November Lord Bingham, the former lord chief justice, stated that, without the blessing of the UN, the Iraq war was “a serious violation of international law and the rule of law.”(5)

Under the UN Charter, two conditions must be met before a war can legally be waged(6). The parties to a dispute must first “seek a solution by negotiation” (Article 33). They can take up arms without an explicit mandate from the UN Security Council only “if an armed attack occurs against [them]” (Article 51). Neither of these conditions applied. The US and UK governments rejected Iraq’s attempts to negotiate(7). At one point the US State Department even announced that it would “go into thwart mode” to prevent the Iraqis from resuming talks on weapons inspection(8). Iraq had launched no armed attack against either nation.

We also know that the UK government was aware that the war it intended to launch was illegal. In March 2002, the Cabinet Office explained that “a legal justification for invasion would be needed. Subject to Law Officers’ advice, none currently exists.”(9) In July 2002, Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, told the prime minister that there were only “three possible legal bases” for launching a war: “self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC [Security Council] authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case.”(10) Bush and Blair later failed to obtain Security Council authorisation.

As the resignation letter on the eve of the war from Elizabeth Wilmshurst, then deputy legal advisor to the Foreign Office, revealed, her office had “consistently” advised that an invasion would be unlawful without a new UN resolution. She explained that “an unlawful use of force on such a scale amounts to the crime of aggression”(11). Both Wilmshurst and her former boss, Sir Michael Wood, will testify before the Chilcot Inquiry today (Tuesday). Expect fireworks.

Without legal justification, the war with Iraq was an act of mass murder: those who died were unlawfully killed by the people who commissioned it. Crimes of aggression (also known as crimes against peace) are defined by the Nuremberg Principles as “planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties”(12). They have been recognised in international law since 1945. The Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court (ICC) and which was ratified by Blair’s government in 2001(13), provides for the Court to “exercise jurisdiction over the crime of aggression”, once it has decided how the crime should be defined and prosecuted(14).

There are two problems. The first is that neither the government nor the opposition has any interest in pursuing these crimes, for the obvious reason that in doing so they would expose themselves to prosecution. The second is that the required legal mechanisms don’t yet exist. The governments which ratified the Rome Statute have been filibustering furiously to delay the point at which the crime can be prosecuted by the ICC: after eight years of discussions, the necessary provision still hasn’t been adopted.

Some countries, mostly in eastern Europe and central Asia, have incorporated the crime of aggression into their own laws(15), though it is not yet clear which of them would be willing to try a foreign national for acts committed abroad. In the UK, where it remains illegal to wear an offensive T-shirt, you cannot yet be prosecuted for mass murder commissioned overseas.

All those who believe in justice should campaign for their governments to stop messing about and allow the International Criminal Court to start prosecuting the crime of aggression. We should also press for its adoption into national law. But I believe that the people of this nation, who re-elected a government which had launched an illegal war, have a duty to do more than that. We must show that we have not, as Blair requested, “moved on” from Iraq, that we are not prepared to allow his crime to remain unpunished, or to allow future leaders to believe that they can safely repeat it.

But how? As I found when I tried to apprehend John Bolton, one of the architects of the war in George Bush’s government, at the Hay festival in 2008(16), and as Peter Tatchell found when he tried to detain Robert Mugabe(17), nothing focuses attention on these issues more than an attempted citizen’s arrest. In October I mooted the idea of a bounty to which the public could contribute, payable to anyone who tried to arrest Tony Blair if he became president of the EU(18). He didn’t of course, but I asked those who had pledged money whether we should go ahead anyway. The response was overwhelmingly positive.

So today I am launching a website, www.arrestblair.org, whose purpose is to raise money as a reward for people attempting a peaceful citizen’s arrest of the former prime minister. I have put up the first £100, and I encourage you to match it. Anyone meeting the rules I’ve laid down will be entitled to one quarter of the total pot: the bounties will remain available for as long as Blair lives. The higher the reward, the greater the number of people who are likely to try.

At this stage the arrests will be largely symbolic, though they are likely to have great political resonance. But I hope that as pressure builds up and the crime of aggression is adopted by the courts, these attempts will help to press governments to prosecute. There must be no hiding place for those who have committed crimes against peace. No civilised country can allow mass murderers to move on.

References:

1. http://books.google.com/books…
2. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/nov/23/chilcot-inquiry-iraq-war
3. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/12/iraq-invasion-violated-interational-law-dutch-inquiry-finds
4. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/dec/01/iraq-inquiry-interim-finding-illegal-law-lord
5. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/18/iraq-us-foreign-policy
6. http://www.un.org/en/documents/charter/index.shtml
7. http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2003/11/11/dreamers-and-idiots/
8. http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2002/10/08/thwart-mode/
9. http://downingstreetmemo.com/iraqoptions.html
10. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article387374.ece
11. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4377605.stm
12. http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/full/390
13. http://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=XVIII-10&chapter=18&lang=en
14. Article 5.2, http://www.icc-cpi.int/NR/rdonlyres/EA9AEFF7-5752-4F84-BE94-0A655EB30E16/0/Rome_Statute_English.pdf
15. Astrid Reisinger Coracini, 2010. National Legislation on Individual Responsibility for Conduct Amounting to Aggression, in: Roberto Bellelli (ed.), International Criminal Justice. Lessons Learned and the Challenges Ahead (forthcoming).
16. http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/06/03/justice-undone/
17. http://www.petertatchell.net/direct%20action/mugabe.htm
18. http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/10/26/arresting-blair/

"Money" is nothing but a social construct that comes with a number of "rules of the game". In one way, "money" has much in common with computer operating systems: most users are completely unaware of the degree to which these rules are flexible, malleable, and allow very different designs. So, before we ask ourselves: in what way could a different design of rules lead to a different role of money, it is worthwhile taking a look at what sort of phenomena the present arrangement gives rise to. A telling passage can be found in Bill Mollison’s autobiography:

For six days a week, 8 or more hours a day, for years on end, we felled and milled trees; at the end of each day, we had cut all the timber for houses. (…) On bad days, we cut five houses, on good days, seven.

We cut about 35 houses a week. But one lunch time, pondering on this remarkable record, I asked the apparently simple question of all seven of we mill-workers. "Do any of us own a house?" We all looked at each other; none of us did. To get a house, one would in those days borrow $7000, pay for 56 years, and repay $30,000 – 50,000 dollars. It all seemed ridiculous.

After very little discussion, we agreed to work one day for ourselves and easily cut seven houses.

(…)

Many working men must be able to count such wealth, but they never possess it. Something is seriously wrong and you cannot see what is wrong until you follow each product and its financing through. If I build a house for $7000 and it is ten years older, I may sell it for $30,000. The same house is sold for more money again and again and again. A confidence trick indeed. Every time it is sold, someone pays for it all their lives; yet it was already paid for! It seems clear that, in a very few weeks of a whole life, we could provide for all our needs; shelter, food, fuel, fibre, energy, the lot. But we waste our lives in debts. – Travels in Dreams, Tagari, p. 829

Things are quite a bit more subtle than presented here, but this passage certainly is valuable for raising the question: how big are the implications of the rules of the money game for society?

If money is needed for some specific economic activity, there are a number of alternatives to obtaining credit from a bank, which very often is the only strategy considered even though it may not be the economically most advantageous one. One such alternative would be subscription schemes: a book is announced and the money to print it is raised through pre-orders at a reduced price. Such schemes can become quite clever: The Permaculture Designers’ Manual gives the example of a restaurant that handed out dated meal vouchers at a reduced price ("A voucher for 8 dollars, for one 10-dollar meal, at one day in July") to raise the money for major refurbishment. Here, something interesting happens: as these vouchers have an immediately verifiable value, they themselves become a sort of "valid currency" (in the sense of "having a verifiable value", although they are not "legal tender") that can be used to settle debts between people who use them. In the end, what the restaurant did was to enlarge the money supply in circulation themselves, rather than asking a bank to do such a favour for them. (Banks have the exclusive strange privilege to expand the money supply, cf. [1], and charge massively for exerting this holy power, in the form of interest, ultimately paid for in real economic goods and services!) So, the provider is using his customers as a "bank" here. Once one starts to develop an eye for this, one discovers a zoo of such "banking with the customer" schemes already being in place, from cell phone top up vouchers, to customer accounts, and even "company money" [2].

The essential insight here is: banks are not "holy institutions", and there is pretty much nothing a bank can do (save from receiving large government bailouts maybe) which people themselves could not do as well – perhaps even in a much better way, considering the imperative of re-investing surplus from rehabilitative activities to further speed up rehabilitation, rather than re-investing loot to speed up plunder.

Wherever people can agree on rules to regulate the flow of claims on work, they can easily cast this into an own currency. As we have seen, taking away people’s freedom to come up with their own rules of the game for their currency is a serious step towards the destruction of their culture. But, this works in the opposite direction as well: if a culture wants to retain, strengthen, or rebuild its identity, it is well advised to take a close look into the money issue and start to design its own currency according to the rules that fit it best. The objective of such a currency is not to drive out the transregional currency, but it should be made very clear by which schemes the transregional currency in the past has elbowed its way into its present dominance.

There are a number of such regional currency schemes in place, quite many of them being based on ideas of the Austrian Silvio Gesell; a key one being that of "demurrage:" holding on to money rather than getting it back into circulation fast is punished in some form. While this rule seems somewhat popular among alternative currencies, it is by no means the only conceivable option: when it comes to the design of rules, the sky is the limit of our imagination.

A very interesting and quite successful regional currency scheme was set up in 2003 in a rural district in South-Eastern Bavaria (incidentally the home region of the author): the "Chiemgauer" currency [3]. This currency is restricted to a region of about 500,000 inhabitants and is governed by a few rules easily comprehensible by everyone, which, however, achieve quite interesting different effects depending on the role of the participant in the "Chiemgauer" economy.

Key rules are:

• There is a registered association, the "Chiemgauer e.V.", open to everyone, which administrates, runs, and sets the rules for the currency. The rules of the game are not cast in stone, but open for being fine-tuned by the inhabitants of the region (through participatory democracy) as needed in order to deal with positive or negative trends.
• Formally, the "Chiemgauer" is a voucher whose value is identical to the Euro. Available denominations presently are 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, and 50 Chiemgauer.
• When person X exchanges Euros for Chiemgauer, this is done at a 1:1 exchange rate. If, however, Chiemgauer are exchanged back by person Y for Euros, the reverse rate is 1:0.95. Of this 5% difference, 2% are presently used to pay the administrative costs for running the regional currency. The other 3% are passed on to a regional charitable organization (e.g. a kindergarten, a music school, a museum, etc.). This "charity tax" is entirely paid for by Y, the person withdrawing purchase power from the region (the reason for exchanging Chiemgauer into Euros, rather than spending them locally), while X gets to choose the charity (which is registered in a database along with the serial number of the bill). Charities receive the money generated from this scheme as Chiemgauer.
• There presently is a "2% per quarter" depreciation fee on Chiemgauer, i.e. a bill becomes invalid after three months, unless upgraded by a stamp costing 2% of the bill’s value. This provides an extra incentive to keep the currency circulating fast.
• From the perspective of a charity, asking their members to make their regional purchases in "Chiemgauer" with them as the re-exchange beneficiary is a great way of raising additional money at no additional expense to their members. As they receive this money in the form of "Chiemgauer", they have an incentive to preferentially spend it on regional products.
• From the perspective of a shop owner, the fee rates associated with accepting the "Chiemgauer" are comparable to the fees paid when accepting payment by credit card. However, it gives local businesses an interesting advantage over chain store competitors, as an enterprise that works by widely distributing centrally sourced identical goods throughout the country (rather than providing functionally equivalent goods produced from regional sources) is punished by the back-exchange tax not felt by regional businesses (who can pay their providers in Chiemgauer). As members of charitable organizations are keen on making their purchases in Chiemgauer, there is a need for opportunities to spend them, so accepting Chiemgauer means enlarging one’s customer base. Also, holders of Chiemgauer are keen on getting rid of that money fast, i.e. tend to pay their bills as soon as possible.
• From the perspective of a (residential) consumer, exchanging Euros into Chiemgauer is a great way of supporting specific regional organizations that contribute to the cultural strength and identity of the region without extra direct costs.

This fairly clever scheme seems to have proven its value, as is witnessed by the growing popularity of this currency. It clearly illustrates what can be done just through the design of the rules of a currency. One might expect that much more would be possible if a bit of effort were invested into educating people about what money is, and how it works – or rather, how we can make it work to our advantage by appropriately designing its rules.

References:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking
2. http://www.disneydollars.net/, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_dollar
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiemgauer, http://vimeo.com/4606454

You’re trying to say that you can live in the modern way and continue to think in the traditional way. That’s not true. The way you live affects the way you think. – Danny Billie, Traditional Seminole

I’d like to recount here my impressions of the PRI, and how different it is from many other organizations. We (Tribal Networks) first came across them when looking for solutions to problems we found in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, where we were starting a project to bring in a school and an internet / community centre. Searching for "dry land permaculture" soon found Geoff’s "Greening the Desert" clip, and things progressed from there.

"The Permaculture Master Plan – Permaculture Centres Worldwide" is different not just in its broadness of vision and scope, but also, and I believe more crucially, in how it is being implemented. The PRI is making no demands on us as a local organization, they are not trying to take over or control us in any way. This is a common phenomenon among the relatively big organizations; they get bigger by assimilating smaller projects they are supposedly helping out. Everything they do has an underlying urge to make the organization bigger, and aims and intentions become subservient to that imperative. In this way most big organizations, while they may have started out with the best of intentions, end up mirroring the ways of the system that caused the problems in the first place.

Which brings me to the Danny Billie quote above. The principle is the same here. You cannot hope to do permaculture successfully when operating in the ‘normal’ way. Good permaculture can only be done under a system that follows the principles of permaculture. It seems to me that the PRI has managed to do that, even while becoming an internationally recognized and respected institution. This needs to be stressed. It doesn’t just happen, it requires conscious effort to keep true to your principles and yet still find a way to promote those principles on a large scale, worldwide. This is no small achievement.

So what am I on about? How does the "Permaculture Masterplan" embody permaculture principles? Let’s take our little project as an example. Our problem was a severe lack of water for most of the year, which then causes the other problems. For example; desertification, poverty, and disease from dirty water. The Permaculture Master Plan involves setting up independent projects, which become self-financing largely by running courses. Our project will repair the watershed of the whole valley, which in turn will hold in the water and increase water flow and fertility. This provides a long-term solution, unlike such things as irrigation, which cause debt and interfere severely with the local economy and relationships.

When Geoff described it all to me, sitting outside a farmhouse on top of a mountain in Ait Attab, it all sounded too good to be true. The first thing that came to my mind (being a corrupt European) was ’scam’. Honestly that’s what it sounded like. We get a load of students to come over and do a course. They build the earthworks, pay for all the labour, and even pay for other students either locally or from poor communities elsewhere. It all costs us nothing at all!

But if it is a scam, then where are the losers? A scam always has losers, by definition. I could see no losers. The students have an amazing experience in a remote Berber tribal area, and gain experience and a qualification that can provide them with a worthwhile and fulfilling life (not to mention the chance of a future for our children!), the land gets to keep its water and become fertile again, the local people have more water and better variety of food, become more independent and regain self-respect, and our organization has a place, a root structure for future projects to sprout from and grow.

Where else do you see this win-win situation? Not in modern top-down systems, that’s for sure. But anyone who has done even just a Permaculture Introductory Course, or read a few of the entries on this website can recognize it right away. The Master Plan is planting seeds on many levels, and the principles of permaculture are carried through on each level. The design for the Master Plan is every bit as much a permaculture project as each on-the-ground project is.

Editor’s Note: People who want to take take a Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) course in an amazing location in Morocco, whilst in doing so supporting the education of poor locals, can check out the course for April.