It’s Time to Colonise Earth!
Biodiversity, Deforestation, Demonstration Sites, Food Forests, Global Warming/Climate Change, Land, News, Regional Water Cycle, Rehabilitation, Trees — by Craig Mackintosh September 2, 2010
Ascension Island, in the Pacific Ocean (source)
It seems Darwin was a permaculturist!
In his days globetrotting aboard HMS Beagle, Darwin set in motion the transformation of a dead, volcanic island rock – Ascension Island, described by nearby islanders as "a cinder" – into a green, rain-creating oasis. How did he do it?
Comments (4)Sustenance
Comedy Break, Consumerism, Economics, Food Shortages, Global Warming/Climate Change — by Marc Roberts August 31, 2010
Click for full view
Courtesy: Marc Roberts
In a warming world pests migrate and flourish in previously inpenetrable habitats and latitudes.
Of course there are obvious problems with Frank’s position here – like what happens when your subsistence gets washed away by some other unpredicted AGW shitstorm.
As ever, Permaculture looks straight into the heart of things.
Further Reading:
Comments (1)Tumbling Dice
Comedy Break, Global Warming/Climate Change — by Marc Roberts August 30, 2010
Click for full view
Courtesy: Marc Roberts
Loaded dice and extra spots, courtesy of DotEarth.
Comments (0)The Smearing of An Innocent Man
Global Warming/Climate Change — by George Monbiot August 27, 2010
Has anyone been as badly maligned as Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)?
by George Monbiot: journalist, author, academic and environmental and political activist, United Kingdom
Rajendra Pachauri
In December, the Sunday Telegraph carried a long and prominent feature written by Christopher Booker and Richard North, titled: Questions over business deals of UN climate change guru Dr Rajendra Pachauri.
The subtitle alleged that Pachauri has been “making a fortune from his links with ‘carbon trading’ companies”. The article maintained that the money made by Pachauri while working for other organisations “must run into millions of dollars”.
Comments (3)World Carryover Grain Stocks Fall to 72 Days of Consumption
Economics, Food Shortages, Global Warming/Climate Change — by Earth Policy Institute August 13, 2010
“Uncomfortably Close” to Level Prior to 2007–08 Food Price Spike
Estimates for this year’s global grain carryover stocks have fallen to 444 million tons, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s August 12th World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates report. This amount of grain remaining in the world’s silos and stockpiles when the next harvest begins is enough to meet 72 days of consumption.
“This drop in world carryover stocks of grain to 72 days of consumption is moving us uncomfortably close to the 64 days of carryover stocks in 2007 that fueled the 2007–08 spike in world food prices,” says Lester R. Brown, president of Earth Policy Institute.
Against the Grain
Comedy Break, Economics, Food Shortages, Global Warming/Climate Change — by Marc Roberts August 11, 2010
Click for full view
Courtesy: Marc Roberts
Russian president Medvedev puts unprecedented weather conditions down to Climate Change. The potential impacts on food supplies of this sort of occurrence are pretty clear.
Further Reading:
- The Biology of Global Warming
- Rising Temperatures Raise Food Prices
- The Looming Food Crisis and the 2030 Report
- The Food Crisis: “A Perfect Storm” – and How to Turn the Tide
- Orchestrating Famine – a Must-Read Backgrounder on the Food Crisis
- A Call to Large Scale Earth Healing and Lessons from the Loess Plateau (Video)
- Carbon Trading Under Scrutiny
- Carbon Trading – and What Should Be on the Negotiating Table at Copenhagen
Rising Temperatures Raise Food Prices
Consumerism, Economics, Food Shortages, Global Warming/Climate Change — by Earth Policy Institute
Editor’s Note: As our world warms, grain yields are falling. That’s even without factoring the fires and floods talked about below. It’s time we got serious about resilient food production systems.
by Lester R. Brown, Earth Policy Institute
A Ladakhi woman and her barley
Photo copyright © Craig Mackintosh
Around midnight on Wednesday, August 11th, a group of commodity analysts will gather at a meeting site in the massive South Building of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in Washington, D.C. Once they are assembled, the door will be locked. Cell phones will be collected. Phone and Internet lines will be disconnected. Short of a medical emergency, no one will be permitted to leave before 8:30 am.
The USDA produces an estimate of world grain production, consumption, and trade by the 12th of each month. The gathered analysts will consult reports from a worldwide network of agricultural attachés, satellite images of crop vegetation, and the latest weather reports. The widely respected World Agricultural Outlook Board’s report, though little known to the public, is of incalculable value to commodity traders, agribusinesses, and farmers—some of whom stand to gain or lose fortunes on the data it contains.
Comments (4)The Caffeine Did It?
Comedy Break, Consumerism, Global Warming/Climate Change, Health & Disease, Society — by Craig Mackintosh
Warning: Irony alert. People without a sense of humour should proceed with caution.
Some time ago the National Geographic did a piece on the connection between the introduction of caffeinated drinks into Europe and the Industrial Revolution.
It’s hardly a coincidence that coffee and tea caught on in Europe just as the first factories were ushering in the industrial revolution. The widespread use of caffeinated drinks—replacing the ubiquitous beer—facilitated the great transformation of human economic endeavor from the farm to the factory. Boiling water to make coffee or tea helped decrease the incidence of disease among workers in crowded cities. And the caffeine in their systems kept them from falling asleep over the machinery. In a sense, caffeine is the drug that made the modern world possible. And the more modern our world gets, the more we seem to need it. Without that useful jolt of coffee—or Diet Coke or Red Bull—to get us out of bed and back to work, the 24-hour society of the developed world couldn’t exist. – National Geographic
If this is so, then, of course, my incessantly wandering mind must put two and two together. If caffeine was an essential ingredient to bring about the Industrial Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution brought about widespread environmental destruction and climate change, then… that’s it… caffeine is bringing us to the brink of disaster!
Comments (1)A Call to Large Scale Earth Healing and Lessons from the Loess Plateau (Video)
Alternatives to Political Systems, Biodiversity, Community Projects, Conservation, Consumerism, Dams, Deforestation, Economics, Food Shortages, Gabions, Global Warming/Climate Change, Land, Plant Systems, Population, Regional Water Cycle, Soil Conservation, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Swales, Terraces, Trees, Village Development, Water Contaminaton, peak oil — by Craig Mackintosh August 6, 2010
The world is coming unglued. The world burns. What are we going to do about it?
Map of fires in Russia
As I type, half of Russia is on fire after its hottest summer on record, Pakistan is dealing with the biggest floods in living memory and Australia is still in the clutches of a decade long drought. The last decade, worldwide, was the hottest since records began, and 2010 may break the records of 1998 and 2005 to become the hottest year we’ve ever known. We could spend weeks just examining the extreme weather events going on on a country by country basis.
Comments (12)Making The Case For Earth Repair Work – Part 2
Biodiversity, Deforestation, Development & Property Trusts, Economics, Ethical Investment, Food Shortages, Global Warming/Climate Change, People Systems, Population, Rehabilitation, Society, Soil Conservation, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Village Development, Water Contaminaton — by Rhamis Kent August 5, 2010
Over the past couple of years, there has been quite a bit of attention paid to the purchase of massive amounts of agricultural land by rich countries and corporate entities in the developing world. Craig Mackintosh wrote about this on this site, as have many other very informative reports and press stories.
To summarize, there has been approximately US$100 Billion mobilized to purchase somewhere between 40 – 50 million hectares (roughly 100 – 125 million acres) of agricultural land worldwide.
Comments (6)Whale Tale
Biodiversity, Comedy Break, Global Warming/Climate Change, News, Water Contaminaton — by Marc Roberts July 31, 2010
Click for full view
Courtesy: Marc Roberts
With phyloplankton levels crashing and the whole marine food chain going belly-up, perhaps marine life should follow this whale’s example, and be a bit more pro-active.
Comments (0)Solving All the Problems of the World – in a Garden
Aid Projects, Community Projects, Conservation, Demonstration Sites, Developments, Education Centres, Food Forests, Food Plants - Annual, Food Plants - Perennial, Food Shortages, Global Warming/Climate Change, Land, News, Nurseries & Propogation, People Systems, Plant Systems, Rehabilitation, Salination, Society, Soil Conservation, Trees, Urban Projects, Village Development, Water Harvesting — by Craig Mackintosh July 23, 2010
This video can be downloaded in high resolution from Vimeo (see ‘About this video’ section on lower right side’).
I hope you’ll enjoy this clip. More, I hope it encourages you to dare to be different, and dare to have your work noticed. The garden we profile in the video above, as you’ll discover after watching it, has just won a national competition held by the Jordanian Department of Education – for schools who incorporate environmental projects into their curriculum. This means that thousands of schools, in what is arguably the most water-stressed country on the planet, now have the possibility to learn from this humble example of permaculture in action – and get inspired to do similar.
Special thanks to Lesley Byrne for her enthusiastic support, and to Nadia Lawton for her vision and determination to help her own people – and in so doing setting such an excellent example for us all.
Making the Case for Earth Repair Work
Economics, Ethical Investment, Global Warming/Climate Change, Society — by Rhamis Kent
I put together a brief document for an acquaintance of mine who said she recently met Juergen Voegele, Chairman of the World Bank’s Agriculture and Rural Development Department. She asked me to prepare something for him as it relates to what I had described as earth repair work – a term of course used often by Geoff, Paul Taylor and a number of others.
It was an attempt to make a case for having these efforts adequately funded given the importance of the work. This certainly isn’t an exhaustive, comprehensive reference (it was done with very short notice), but I’d like to think it conveys the basic premise behind the work and why it needs to be done – and, more importantly, deserves real financial backing.
Click to open (152 kb PDF):
Economic Support for Global Earth Repair Work & Ecosystem Restoration: Making The Case
Comments (3)Soil Carbon – Can it Save Agriculture’s Bacon?
Biodiversity, Compost, Conservation, Economics, Food Plants - Annual, Food Plants - Perennial, Food Shortages, Fungi, Global Warming/Climate Change, Health & Disease, Irrigation, Land, Plant Systems, Regional Water Cycle, Rehabilitation, Society, Soil Biology, Soil Composition, Soil Conservation, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Structure, Water Contaminaton, Water Harvesting, peak oil — by Christine Jones PhD July 22, 2010
Editor’s Note: Thanks to Darren Doherty of ReGenAg for sourcing and getting permission to run this.
The number of farmers in Australia has fallen 30 per cent in the last 20 years, with more than 10,000 farming families leaving the agricultural sector in the last five years alone. This decline is ongoing. There is also a reluctance on the part of young people to return to the land, indicative of the poor image and low income-earning potential of current farming practices.
Agricultural debt in Australia has increased from just over $10 billion in 1994 to close to $60 billion in 2009 (Fig.1). The increased debt is not linked to interest rates, which have generally declined over the same period (Burgess 2010).
Fig. 1. Increase in agricultural debt (AUD millions)
1994-2009 vs interest rates (%pa)
The financial viability of the agricultural sector, as well as the health and social wellbeing of individuals, families and businesses in both rural and urban communities, is inexorably linked to the functioning of the land.
There is widespread agreement that the integrity and function of soils, vegetation and waterways in many parts of the Australian landscape have become seriously impaired, resulting in reduced resilience in the face of increasingly challenging climate variability.
Agriculture is the sector most strongly impacted by these changes. It is also the sector with the greatest potential for fundamental redesign.
Comments (8)A Bookful of Bookerisms
Global Warming/Climate Change, Society — by George Monbiot July 7, 2010
The climate change deniers are digging themselves an ever deeper hole over ‘Amazongate’
by George Monbiot: journalist, author, academic and environmental and political activist, United Kingdom
Well this becomes more entertaining by the moment. Those who staked so much on the “Amazongate” story, only to see it turn round and bite them, are now digging a hole so deep that they will soon be able to witness a possible climate change scenario at first hand, as they emerge, shovels in hand, in the middle of the Great Victoria Desert.
Here’s the story so far. In January the rightwing blogger Richard North claimed that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had “grossly exaggerated the effects of global warming on the Amazon rain forest”. In 2007 the Panel had claimed that “up to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation”. Reduced rainfall could rapidly destroy the forests, which would be replaced with ecosystems “such as tropical savannahs.”
Comments (9)
