Swimming Pool to Garden Pool
Fish, Food Plants - Annual, Food Plants - Perennial, Food Shortages, Health & Disease, Plant Systems, Urban Projects, peak oil — by Craig Mackintosh August 31, 2010
When I was in Australia over a year ago, Geoff mentioned that a former student and her partner were converting their pool into a fish farm. I didn’t have a lot of time to spare, but told him I had to go. A day or so later I was poking around Vanessa and Justin’s pool, fussing about with my camera and notepad. The resulting article has since become one of the more popular ones on the site.
Perhaps there are a lot of people out there with useless, empty swimming pools? If so, here’s even more encouragement to get busy and do something with it! This family has, apparently, become self-sufficient in food production in record time – just by making clever use of their disused swimming pool.
Comments (3)
Cracking Codes
Comedy Break, Food Shortages, GMOs, peak oil — by Marc Roberts August 28, 2010
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Courtesy: Marc Roberts
Whilst the Russians learn to live without buckwheat and displaced people are poised for land-struggles in Central Africa, boffins crack the wheat genome, which promises to keep us trying the same industrial scale thing for ever. And how will we fuel this ever expanding industrial agriculture sector? Hmm, maybe.
BAA propose to compost food waste – who’d have thunk it?
Comments (1)The Holistic Flower
Building, Consumerism, Eco-Villages, Economics, Energy Systems, Land, People Systems, Plant Systems, Society, Village Development, Waste Systems & Recycling, peak oil — by Oyvind Holmstad August 23, 2010
I’ve found a wonderful flower; I discovered it not long ago. Still, it’s not so much what I know about it that touches me, I’m just drawn to its colors. This flower is unique, it thrives in every country and climate, and adapts very well to the specific conditions of culture and place. Its colors, smell and form is therefore of unlimited variety and complexity, yet it is the same flower. It is the permaculture flower.
Some people think the permaculture flower is a remnant of the hippie’s flower power movement, or that it has something to do with New Age – just another consumerism idea to be sold to the confused and rich people of the middle classes. Oh no, the ‘flower power’ of the permaculture flower has real power. It has the power to reunite humanity with the complex systems of nature, so they can live in symbiosis, enriching each other. Nothing else possesses this power.
Comments (4)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)BP Target of “Irresponsible Act”
Comedy Break, Economics, peak oil — by Marc Roberts July 27, 2010
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Courtesy: Marc Roberts
Greenpeace shut down 50 BP flagged petrol station franchises in London in order to apply pressure on the incoming CEO, Bo Diddley, er… I mean Bob Dudley, as his predecessor heads for Siberia. I can’t see him giving a tuppenny shite, personally. He’s got a whole planet to fry and his paradigms ain’t for shifting.
Nice try though.
Comments (0)Troubled Waters
Comedy Break, Economics, Water Contaminaton, peak oil — by Marc Roberts July 26, 2010
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Courtesy: Marc Roberts
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 Callout to All Permaculturists on the Gold Coast, Queensland
Community Projects, Courses/Workshops, Demonstration Sites, News, Social Gatherings, Society, Urban Projects, Village Development, peak oil — by Nick Huggins July 21, 2010
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Note: This is a preliminary concept plan only. As the garden develops, further
consultation will be undertaken with the members and other stakeholders
to drive the finished ‘product’. The garden will be organic and will incorporate
many Permaculture design principles.
What: Queensland Southen Beaches Community Gardens Open Day and Working Bee
When: Saturday 31 July 2010, from 1pm (Sausage sizzle from 3pm, finish by 4pm)
Where: Tugun Community Centre (Please bring own gardening tools.)
During my internship (at the Permaculture Research Institute Aus) I had the privilege of getting involved with some dedicated community minded people. I met Margot James, a focused, determined lady on a mission to set the ball rolling on a project called Southern Beaches Community Gardens. It was named this for a very good reason. The Southern beaches take in a handful of suburbs from the Queensland Border up the coast approximately 12km to Palm Beach. So this has set the framework for not just one garden, but a network of gardens and has started cementing some form of future food security for the southern Gold Coast.
Terry McCosker Joins the Dots on the Challenges and Solutions of Food Production, Landscape Health and Human Health
Conferences, Conservation, Food Shortages, Plant Systems, Podcasts, Population, Rehabilitation, Society, Soil Biology, Soil Conservation, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Water Contaminaton, peak oil — by Craig Mackintosh July 20, 2010
I’d never heard of Terry McCosker of Resource Consulting Services before, but here he is giving an excellent talk to ABC Rural’s Bush Telegraph Radio on the need to go ‘back to the future’ in our agricultural systems as our populations balloon in combination with disturbing land resource declines. Terry talks about how cheap fossil fuels have been used for soil mining, and that current and upcoming energy/soil/water constraints will force us back to where we need to go to solve our food production challenges, with the effect that this can also solve our environmental and human health problems. Terry also refers to David Montgomery’s excellent Dirt – the Erosion of Civilizations book, talks about peak phosphorus, compost, compost teas, the need to ‘fire up the biology’ in our soils to harness the inherent energy found in natural systems – thus replacing the artificial ‘propping up’ of those systems with fossil fuel energy, and in doing so increasing plant health to further reduce/remove the need for chemical inputs.
The podcast is well worth a listen. Click play below:
Terry McCosker Joins the Dots on the Challenges and Solutions of Food Production, Landscape Health and Human HealthI love to see people joining the dots like this!
Should you be in the area, Terry and others will be speaking at a three-day conference in Brisbane, titled ‘Farmers – Heroes of our Future‘ from July 20-22. You can view the conference program here. Given it’s July 20th as I type, it may be too late to register and go along, but if you’re in the Brisbane area I’ll leave you to make your own enquiries if you’re interested. Sounds like it’d be a great event to attend.
Comments (1)The Return of the Bicycle
Consumerism, Energy Systems, Health & Disease, Society, peak oil — by Earth Policy Institute July 7, 2010
by Lester R. Brown, Earth Policy Institute
The bicycle has many attractions as a form of personal transportation. It alleviates congestion, lowers air pollution, reduces obesity, increases physical fitness, does not emit climate-disrupting carbon dioxide, and is priced within the reach of the billions of people who cannot afford a car. Bicycles increase mobility while reducing congestion and the area of land paved over. Six bicycles can typically fit into the road space used by one car. For parking, the advantage is even greater, with 20 bicycles occupying the space required to park a car.
Few methods of reducing carbon emissions are as effective as substituting a bicycle for a car on short trips. A bicycle is a marvel of engineering efficiency, one where an investment in 22 pounds of metal and rubber boosts the efficiency of individual mobility by a factor of three. On my bike I estimate that I get easily 7 miles per potato. An automobile, which requires at least a ton of material to transport one person, is extraordinarily inefficient by comparison.
Comments (2)Capitalism’s Crowning Achievement – a Cold, Cold Heart, and Deceit to Hide It
Alternatives to Political Systems, Consumerism, Economics, Society, peak oil — by Craig Mackintosh
The following video is shocking. If you don’t want to see real people getting killed with real bullets, then please don’t watch it.
Collateral Murder (Warning: Very disturbing imagery)
But, just like it’s good for us to meet the animals we consume, I think it’s good for us to see what happens to our taxpayer dollars when they’re used in war; in securing oil, securing the lifestyles we’ve grown accustomed to, and in protecting our economic stranglehold on the rest of the world.
In this video, along with a dozen or more ‘unknowns’, two Reuters reporters were killed. In the immediate area, a New York Times reporter almost met the same fate, when he pointed his camera at one of the U.S. attack helicopters.
People will argue over the content of this video. Were the soldiers justified in their request to, as they pleaded to their superiors – "Let us shoot!"? Perhaps there were RPGs. Perhaps they didn’t see the children seated in the front seat of the van they were begging to destroy. Perhaps the children were brought to "a battle", and weren’t on a mission to collect wounded, as it appeared to my untrained eyes. Perhaps they really thought the wounded man attempting to crawl to shelter posed some kind of threat.
Whatever you may think of the incident, the official version given to the media speaks volumes that can be summed up in two words. They lie.
I just feel sadness for an erosion of more than morality – but a complete absence of sympathy or empathy. The modern soldier, protector of liberty and justice, has instead become defender of corporate interests and unbridled consumption, and murderer of anyone who stands in their way.
Further watching:
Comments (41)BP Oil Spill – If it Was My Home
Society, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Water Contaminaton, peak oil — by Craig Mackintosh June 29, 2010
The If It Was My Home website has made it easy to get some grasp of scale of the BP Oil tragedy. Simply head to the above link, enter your city, and cover your region with the gulf spill.
Now, for good measure, we just need the program to add in the gulf’s hypoxic zone – a 6,000 square mile oxygen-starved dead zone largely caused by excess nitrogen runoff (fertilisers and livestock waste) flowing into the Mississippi basin from U.S. farmers/agribusinesses lining the Mississippi watershed. (The resulting algae blooms and die offs consumes all the oxygen, until there is little to no life in large parts of the ocean water affected – a recent study counted more than 400 such dead zones worldwide.)
I’ve heard a few anti-environmentalists in the past try to tell me it’s impossible for man to damage the earth, as it’s "just too big, and we’re too small". Oh how I wish they weren’t sooo wrong.
Hypoxic, or ‘dead zone’, along the Louisiana coastline
Gasland, the Movie
Water Contaminaton, peak oil — by Craig Mackintosh June 28, 2010
GASLAND – (2010) Directed by Josh Fox. Winner of Special Jury Prize – Best US Documentary Feature – Sundance 2010. Screening at Cannes 2010.
It is happening all across America and now in Europe and Africa as well – rural landowners wake up one day to find a lucrative offer from a multinational energy conglomerate wanting to lease their property. The Reason? In America, the company hopes to tap into a huge natural gas reservoir dubbed the Saudi Arabia of natural gas. Halliburton developed a way to get the gas out of the ground—a hydraulic drilling process called fracking—and suddenly America finds itself on the precipice of becoming an energy superpower.
But what comes out of the ground with that natural gas? How does it affect our air and drinking water? GASLAND is a powerful personal documentary that confronts these questions with spirit, strength, and a sense of humor. When filmmaker Josh Fox receives his cash offer in the mail, he travels across 32 states to meet other rural residents on the front lines of fracking. He discovers toxic streams, ruined aquifers, dying livestock, brutal illnesses, and kitchen sinks that burst into flame. He learns that all water is connected and perhaps some things are more valuable than money.
Head to www.gaslandthemovie.com for more info!
Comments (5)BP’s Dumb Investors
Economics, Society, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Water Contaminaton, peak oil — by George Monbiot June 22, 2010
The companies now threatening to sue BP have only themselves to blame.
First published in November 2007, by George Monbiot: journalist, author, academic and environmental and political activist, United Kingdom
Image courtesy: Marc Roberts
Call me a hard-hearted bastard, but I’m finding it difficult to summon up the sympathy demanded by the institutional investors now threatening to sue BP. They claim that the company inflated its share price by misrepresenting its safety record(1). I don’t know whether this is true, but I do know that the investors did all they could not to find out. They have just been presented with the bill for the years they spent shouting down anyone who questioned the company.
They might not have been warned by BP, but they were warned repeatedly by environmental groups and ethical investment funds. Every year, at BP’s annual general meetings, they were invited to ask the firm to provide more information about the environmental and social risks it was taking. Every year they voted instead for BP to keep them in the dark. While relying on this company for a disproportionate share of their income (BP pays 12% of all UK firms’ dividends), they refused to hold it to account.
It’s not as if the warning signs were hard to spot. One of them is splashed across the front page of BP’s 2009 annual review: the title is “Operating at the Energy Frontiers”(2). Like all multinational oil companies, BP has been shut out of the easy fields by the decline of its old reserves and the rising power of state-owned companies. So, to keep the money flowing, BP takes risks that other companies won’t contemplate. “Risk”, the review states, “remains a key issue for every business, but at BP it is fundamental to what we do. We operate at the frontiers of the energy industry, in an environment where attitude to risk is key … We continue to show our ability to take on and manage risk, doing the difficult things that others either can’t do or choose not to do.”(3)
Comments (0)GrowUp Project
Biodiversity, Community Projects, Consumerism, Economics, Global Warming/Climate Change, Presentations/Demonstrations, Social Gatherings, Society, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Urban Projects, peak oil — by Lee Hewson June 21, 2010
The GrowUp project aims to develop a model community/communities which, as much as possible are self sufficient, low impact and carbon negative,and whose main objective will be to reforest/replant, as we believe that this is the starting point to solve the problems facing humanity. Assisting the Earth to regenerate biomass, soils, water and nutrient capacities. Following permaculture principles, we will address the problem of greenhouse gas emissions whist providing a source of fuel, food and material for shelter which will allow people to create low impact homes, and small communities and to provide for their needs locally and organically. By creating forest gardens to provide for our food supply, we will also work at increasing biodiversity, reducing carbon in the atmosphere,increasing carbon in the soil, at retaining more water in the soil and re establishing nature’s way of controlling the water cycle, at increasing the fertility of the soil and stopping soil erosion; the list of benefits that intelligently replanting achieves goes on.
