Why, you might ask, would anyone want to mix material without a strong tarp? In Mali, where I worked recently, there are actually no good tarps at all. The best ones will rip in a day, so we have to use the ‘old’ way of mixing cob and plaster. This is a step by step explanation of how to do this.

If you have a cement pad or smooth rock to mix on top of it will be easier. If you are doing a lot of mixes, it may be worth it to use a little cement to create a dish-shaped mixing area about six feet in diameter. In general, I keep my mixing piles on the small side so I can manage them and reach into the middle of the pile while standing around the perimeter. You need a really good hoe. The best ones are a little bigger and wider than your average gardening hoe. A medium stout handle is preferred. You will also need a strong shovel. I prefer the medium handled spade with a cross-bar at the end of the handle.

Now, you need to place your materials into the mixing area in layers if you want them to ever mix together. If you have sand and clay, try placing some of each in layers before you add water. And try mixing these together for a bit before adding water. Use both the hoe and the shovel, perhaps with two or more people working at a time if you have them. Many hands makes light work, and this is definately not very light work.

When you add water, be sure to make a crater in the middle of the pile so that none of it will escape your pile. Try adding a little at a time to get a feel for how much you will need. It is really easy to add too much.

While adding water you should maintain the walls of your crater with the tool. Let it soak for a few minutes if you have the time to wait. Then, take off your shoes and roll up your pant legs, because you have to get in there! Using the hoe and your feet at the same time, mix the material with the right amount of water, all the while maintaining the walls of your crater with your hoe so that the runny stuff can’t escape your mixing area. At any time from here on you should add fibers while mixing. You can use the shovel from outside the mixing pile as it becomes more mixed, and turn the stuff from the very bottom outside into the middle where it is wetter. Doing this over and over does the same thing as flipping a tarp. If you have two or more people, it works well to have one or more people mix with the feet and hoe, while others use shovels to turn the outside material into the middle.

Another important tip is that you don’t need to worry if not all the material is fully mixed together. Sometimes, if the pile is bigger in size, you may mix only the top layers well before using them up. Then you will have to make sure the Cob or plaster you are taking to use is indeed mixed well. But the unmixed stuff stays on the very bottom, so you can use all the well-mixed top layers, and then continue mixing when you get to the un-mixed bottom part.

It really isn’t that hard once you get the hang of it!

Want to learn more? Take our course!

A 10% discount is available to anyone who brings another person to the workshop. Group discounts are 20% per person for groups of four or more.

Also, please let us know if you are interested in working for us and we might be able to find some way for you to trade your skills.

Scott Howard has taught Cob and Earthbag building since 1999 and 2003 respectively. His experience with diverse climates such as Thailand, Africa, and the US gives great perspective for education in permaculture building methods.

An intensive course like this one is the best way to get your hands in the dirt and see how it is done. Participants will be able to build their own domes after this workshop.

Click here to find out more and to book!

Here, it is noteworthy that building a complex device such as a nuclear weapon poses a number of massive challenges, in engineering, chemistry, physics, computing, management, electronics, and a number of other fields. Some technical minds (and I should perhaps include myself here) are strongly attracted by such "formidable technical challenges". Quite often, even what was thought to be pretty much impossible eventually turns out to yield to our persistence and cleverness. Solving such a hard technical challenge pretty much feels like reaching the summit feels to a mountain climber. After a lot of frustration, numerous set-backs, and an insane amount of effort, finally, "I won". What we often forget, however, is that "success" does not offer us any guidance for the most important question: are we actually on the right track? However we decide to invest human effort and creativity, ignoring this question can be a fundamental problem.

So, if we could step outside our present cultural context for just one day, would this help us to improve our judgment on how we should proceed? Most likely, this would be a good idea. But, as we cannot really do this, a number of questions arise. One of them certainly is: is there anyone who can articulate an outside perspective on what we are doing that is accessible to us? Considering the present multi-faceted "mankind and nature" crisis, one of the names that might come to one’s mind here is the Japanese farmer-philosopher Masanobu Fukuoka. Another name is Mohandas Gandhi, the "Mahatma".

Interestingly, people in western cultures know very little about Gandhi, and the little they think they know often misses the key point. To us, it certainly does not help that Gandhi is so easily associated with the image of "a half-naked fakir", as Churchill put it, but one has to keep in mind here that, for most of his life, Gandhi worked to improve the lives of people so poor that starvation was a common experience to them. He certainly would not have been anywhere as effective in his regional context if he lived his life in a way that is closer to the everyday experience of most members of western nations. While working as a barrister, he actually did, of course, dress in a suit. Much later, when in England representing India, he of course dressed as a representative of the poor of India.

Actually, only a small part of his work was related to what he is most famous for in the West – independence from the British for India – indeed, a number of his most important achievements are linked to the history of South Africa. We seem to have a tendency to regard Gandhi – and a very small number of others with similarly remarkable biographies – as "saints", which may in part serve as an excuse "for us mere mortals" to not even consider adopting parts of their philosophy in our own life. But precisely this – a fairly sophisticated yet at the same time embarrassingly simple philosophy that has a lot to say about our culture, in conjunction with our collective inability to take a closer introspective look – calls for a deeper investigation.

Gandhi was well aware of the problem associated with becoming an "idol": he realized that much of what Jesus had to say made a lot of sense to him, while much of Christianity essentially seemed to him a clever self-deception designed to avoid the core message through devoutly worshipping the messenger only. In this sense, the imperative is to focus on the structure of Gandhi’s reasoning, rather than on the person and his biography, whose only actual relevance may lie in demonstrating the practicality of these ideas.

In order to understand Gandhi, one has to realize that, growing up in Hindu society his cultural background is very different from that of members of western civilization in one quite fundamental aspect: the perception of the concept "religion". When we try to take a look at Hindu religion, what we see is "polytheism", which we try to comprehend in relation to our culturally dominating "monotheistic" perspective. Now, presuming that any higher powers that may exist perhaps would be quite bemused (if they had such feelings) about our feeble attempts to articulate their characteristics in terms accessible to us, "monotheism" perhaps should be regarded as a consequence of other cultural ideas rather than as a fundament.

My contention is that, quite likely, "monotheism" is a natural concept in a "manipulative" society: If it is implicitly understood and accepted that one interacts with other people by getting them to "do" something that is of advantage to one’s own objectives, then, naturally, the ability to make other people do things is a measure of "power" (or, synonymously, "leadership"), and, as a further natural consequence of this is a "power hierarchy", it is evident that in such thinking, there must be a "supreme power", and as a concept with almightiness can not exist without an almighty, we can pretty much expect monotheistic language to express concepts of "the other world" in a manipulation-minded society. (I first realized this years ago during a fairly technical talk by an Indian physicist on a model of the Universe that does not have a Big Bang. In some aspects, it did not at all seem convincing, but neither do some aspects of the established "Big Bang Theories". I wondered whether the fact that such a model was studied by an Indian physicist had any significance, and came to the conclusion that a "Big Bang" so nicely fits the concept of an act of creation that we may subconsciously favor it, given our cultural programming. While I still do not like this alternative, I now wonder to what extent this may be due to such cultural biases which are difficult for me to assess.)

It certainly would be completely wrong to claim that concepts such as power, manipulation, and hierarchies did not exist in Hindu society. Still, this concept does not seem to play as central a role in the Hindu concept of religion. Cosmology gives an interesting clue here: while we think in terms of an initial act of creation of the Universe by The Almighty, the Hindu sees the world as never-ending cycles within cycles. So, in a sense, where our thinking is mostly focused on power, their thinking is mostly focused on permanence. (One may speculate whether this is what one would naturally expect to see in a society that has been in contact with the soil that sustains it for a very long time, and hence depends on realizing the importance of functioning cycles.)

Why is this clash of perspectives, "manipulation" vs. "permanence", so important? Actually, a common pattern underlying promising approaches to sustainability is to regard it as a three-dimensional problem. In Permaculture, this is encoded in the core ethics which consists of an environmental, a social, and an economic statement (Earth Care, People Care, Redistribution of Surplus). The same idea lies at the heart of the "triple bottom line" approach, only it is expressed using different language ("People, Planet, Profit"). A similar core concept again is found in Holistic Management. The problem is that, in a manipulation-minded society, such an approach appears to be of unmanageable complexity, as the three parts of such an ethics are perceived as independent tools to be used ad libitum to argue in favour or against some new idea depending on whether or not we would like to see it implemented according to more egoistic (potentially subconsciously so) reasons. So, insights that show us how to safeguard against such abuse are extremely valuable, and relevant.

What is the core element of Gandhi’s approach to interacting with the world? Gandhi’s most famous sentence perhaps was: "God is Truth". The actual title of his autobiography is "The continued story of my experiments with Truth" (here, "continued story" refers to the way it was published in the newspaper "Indian Opinion"). So, given that "Truth" plays the key role, what is Gandhi’s concept of "Truth"? Interestingly, it is seen as elusive, impossible to grab with both hands, impossible to put into a flask, impossible to "possess". (There is a natural tendency of many members of western societies to react quite strongly whenever the term "Truth" gets mentioned, as many of us have great difficulties to either consider it as something that might be a valid concept at all, or cannot see it in a different context than that of someone claiming to be in possession of it.) The way Gandhi lived suggests he saw "Truth" as an imperative, something that requires all our effort to be unearthed, even as we know we might at best catch a glimpse of it. Why is it so difficult – actually impossible – to "attain Truth"? A key problem is that the conscious human mind stands in the way: consciousness works very hard to interpret the world in a way so that the human Ego can maintain a positive self-image. Individually, it is impossible to completely overcome this obstacle to finding "Truth". But we might nevertheless sometimes manage to pull back the curtain a bit. A very interesting passage from Gandhi’s autobiography is:

The instruments for the quest of Truth are as simple as they are difficult. They may appear quite impossible to an arrogant person, and quite possible to an innocent child.

The seeker after Truth should be humbler than the dust. The world crushes the dust under its feet, but the seeker after Truth should so humble himself that even the dust could crush him. Only then, and not till then, will he have a glimpse of Truth.

Truth is like a vast tree, which yields more and more fruit the more you nurture it. The deeper the search in the mine of truth the richer the discovery of the gems buried there, in the shape of openings for an even greater variety of service.

In the march towards Truth, anger selfishness, hatred, etc., naturally give way, for otherwise Truth would be impossible to attain. A man who is swayed by passions may have good enough intentions, may be truthful in word, but he will never find the Truth. A successful search for Truth means complete deliverance from the dual throng such as of love and hate, happiness and misery. – Gandhi

It is intriguing that in our manipulative culture, the issue of Ego self-protection plays such an extremely dominant role. The concept of "saving face" is a widely known and accepted one. We accept that, at times, many lives get sacrificed for this. How strange then do words such as these sound to us:

The world crushes the dust under its feet, but the seeker after Truth should so humble himself that even the dust could crush him. Only then, and not till then, will he have a glimpse of Truth. – Gandhi

Once one accepts – as Gandhi evidently did – that "Truth" has a transcendental reality, and any idea of "possessing" it would hence be as silly as the idea of "possessing God", a natural conclusion is to pursue aligning oneself with Truth. For, if we live in a way that is in conflict with some fundamental truth, we will experience this sooner or later. Naturally, this world is quite forgiving in the sense that, whenever we make major mistakes, we get feedback in numerous ways, at least for those who pay attention. If we grow grain on steep slopes, say, we easily lose so much topsoil that we notice we will not be able to do this for long. Quite obviously, once one realizes that to be in conflict with some fundamental truth, the best one can do is to correct this as soon as possible. Truth cannot be cheated, and cannot be negotiated. If we stay on the wrong path, we will just keep on getting ever stronger feedback that we have gone wrong. If we stubbornly persist, we may reach the point where external circumstances get so bad that we are deprived of all power.

This phenomenon of making things much worse by sticking to obsolete beliefs is often encountered quite visibly during the last days of a major war. At the end of World War II, some of the Third Reich’s soldiers risked their lives to prevent the destruction of vital bridges which might have delayed the inevitable by just a few days at most, yet would have made the recovery of society a much more difficult challenge. Hence, the aspect of Truth that – sadly – might be most accessible to a society shaped by power-dominated thinking is: "Truth is what will ultimately break your neck if you persist on being stubborn to the last moment". But, as everything works in both ways, there is a flip side of that coin as well, one that shows a positive way forward, a way out of major present-day dilemmas. This will be the topic of Part II. Stay tuned.

Editor’s Note: This is Part III of a series. Read Part I here, and Part II here.

Does Costa Rica hold the secret to happiness? According to a number of different studies, Costa Ricans are the happiest people on the planet, with a longer life expectancy than Americans. Over the past weeks, major news outlets such as the New York Times and the BBC have reported on these results. One figure, called “happy life years,” results from merging average self-reported happiness (where subjects rate their happiness on a ten-point scale) with longevity. Using this system, Costa Rica ranks first, the United States is 19th, and Zimbabwe comes in last.

Latin American countries generally score higher on happiness surveys, perhaps because of the cultural emphasis on family and community.

Another approach combines happiness and life expectancy but adjusts for environmental impact. Here again, Costa Rica tops the list, achieving contentment in an environmentally sustainable way. The Dominican Republic ranks second, the United States 114th (because of its huge ecological footprint) and again Zimbabwe is last. One could argue that happiness is linked to the preservation of nature and people’s access to it — Costa Rica has made the protection of biodiversity a top priority with its extensive network of national parks and indigenous reserves. The country also prohibits private ownership of the coastline, even forcing large hotels to run shuttles across their property to allow locals access to the beach.

We got to check out the Costa Rican health care system up close recently when Louis went to the hospital to get a botfly removed from his belly! This nasty little jungle pest bites you and lays an egg which grow into a worm-like larva. His was only about an eighth of an inch long, but apparently if left there they can grow much longer — gross! However, the experience of the hospital was very positive: the wait wasn’t long, the staff were friendly (joking that the larva they extracted was their new pet) and guess what? When we were finished and asked for the bill, they laughed and waved goodbye – it was free! Needless to say, that made us very happy.

As New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof pointed out, another major reason for Costa Rican happiness might be traced to a decision made in 1949 to abolish the national army and invest instead in education. The investment paid off in many ways: a more stable society free from the violent conflict that has ravaged much of Central America; a narrowing of the gender gap (a few days ago Costa Rica elected its first woman president); and a strong economy that has fostered the effective health care and social systems.

Costa Rican pacifism and biodiversity are both sources of national pride — while waiting in line when we first arrived at the airport on this trip, we enjoyed a video which proclaimed “our army” over footage of leafcutter ants, monkeys and iguanas, and “our navy” over footage of fish and sea turtles.

My family has now been living here for over two months, working on the development of a nascent ecovillage called Tacotal, and examining for ourselves what we need to be happy. Having stripped down our lives from the comforts and amenities of California to a tent in the jungle with no electricity, we’ve been slowly rebuilding those luxuries and considering what comforts are truly necessary to us. Last week we moved into our newly-built bamboo and wood casita, which we managed to complete for about $1500. Nearly all of us in the community (now about 15) contributed to making it over the past month, and it’s definitely made me happier to have a little more space and some furniture.

The A-frame casita serves as a two story sleeping and living space for me, Louis, little Lîla and baby Ren. The roof is a tarp made of a repurposed advertising banner, which works for the dry season but will probably be replaced by something more permanent in May (we see the Kotex logo directly over our heads when we lie in bed). The floor and some of the framing is laurel, a hardwood that (so we hear) is locally and sustainably harvested. The main framework, deck floor, and ladder are Costa Rican bamboo, and the walls are made of a breathable shade cloth they call zaran.

A next step is to work on getting some more solar power. At present we’ve got one 56 watt photovoltaic panel for the community, which is not enough to meet all of our needs. We’re working on the design for our own composting toilet nearer to our cabin, which will all serve as the mount for our own panel (currently somewhere on route from the United States). More lights at night and a baby monitor so we could go up to hang out in the community kitchen after putting the kids to bed would make me happy.

Among the other upcoming projects are putting in a polished earthen floor for the main kitchen, which is currently made of loose dirt (imagine our 3 year-old after a day of playing in the kitchen and the way our baby continually drops her toys—ugh!) Fixing the floor might help reduce the need for building the bike-powered washing machine we’ve been collecting materials for. We’ve got most of the parts save one key gear that has been hard to get a hold of. The rest of the community seems somewhat ambivalent about the washing machine, but I’ve got a pressing need, and that is cleaning diapers.

Sign language for ‘toilet’ has an obscene connotation here.

Diapering is a big question for many new parents, and by now between the two kids I think we’ve tried about all the options — disposables, diaper laundering services, compostables, and washing our own. With Lîla we also started “elimination communication” at six months, teaching her the sign language for “toilet” and having her use the potty at an early age. Here in the jungle, it just didn’t seem right to use disposables for baby Ren, especially when we have no garbage pickup and have to bring our own garbage into town and find a dumpster. Not to mention the fact that we’re supposed to be starting an ECO-village. Unfortunately, we’ve learned that the sign language for “toilet” also means “sex from behind” in Costa Rica….

We’ve gone through the suitcase of compostable diapers I dragged down here. So for now, I’m hand washing the cloth ones in solar-heated hot water, with bio-detergent (imported), soap berries, and limes (both from our land). We spray off the poop into a special compost pit, which after some time will be full of super rich soil. It’s what permaculturists call a closed-loop cycle. And to balance out this fairly unpleasant labor of love, we spend the money we’d use for disposables to pay a local mama to do our other laundry in her machine, so I have time for other things (like making marmalade with some of our million oranges).

For me, happiness is finding that precious overlap between sustainability and comfort, where my family’s needs are met within the boundaries of a healthy ecosystem. And that’s what permaculture is— creating positive, regenerative relationships between humans and the planet. If Costa Rica has a secret to happiness, perhaps it is in the ways it has put this ethic into practice, for the benefit of its people and its environment.

Since the main shed was moved up to the top of the property we’ve been running up and down in the ute more often.

Most Australian farmer use a petrol powered Ag bike to do these smaller trips but on a Permaculture farm where you don’t travel a lot of steep slopes because of the swales a pedal powered bicycle would be perfect, not to mention more environmentally friendly.

Geoff knows I like playing with bikes so he asked me if I would be able to design a bike to get us around the property. The design brief goes like this:

• Secondhand where possible
• Easy to ride the slopes
• Rugged
• Doesn’t have to go fast but must be able to carry tools and miscellaneous items

There were a few bikes around the property so I gathered them up and had a look. With my good design hat on I looked at why these bike were put down in the first place. The common theme was the gearing system. Most failures on a bike are easy to ignore or repair but when the gears are stuck in the wrong spot or in between its game over.

So now to design it from the available parts. I decided on the following:

• Mountain bike frame & wheels with chunky tyres
• Fixed low gear for climbing not speed, eliminating complex derailers and cables
• Ideal tyre pressure 30 PSI to absorb some of the bumps
• Baskets front and back attached with surplus bamboo
• Single back brake

The only new parts used were the cable ties for the baskets however wire or twine would do the same job, I just happened to find the ties first.

It was all done with basic hand tools (pliers, 2 hex keys, hacksaw and screwdriver) plus a drill with a 6mm steel bit (but you could use a hand drill if needed). The front derailer was removed completely and the only challenge was fixing the back derailer which was overcome with a small piece of a coat hanger. After a few rides I decided the best spot was gear 1 on the front and gear 3 on the back but that comes down to personal preference and the property it’s to be used on.

I’m pretty happy with the result and I’m certain these bikes will stand the test of time as they are very basic and easily kept in service. If Geoff’s happy with this one I will build a fleet of 4 or 5 before the internship is over in April.

Total cost $0. Rugged Ag bike: Priceless

Join world class permaculture instructors Brad Lancaster, David Spicer, and Murad Alkufash for the first Permaculture Design Certification course to be held in the West Bank, Palestine.

In addition to this being a groundbreaking drylands PDC course, it is a once in a lifetime immersion opportunity into the rich culture and heritage of the people of the rural West Bank, who have cared for and farmed the land of this region for over one thousand years.

Course participants will be part of the world-changing movement to “green the deserts” of the Middle East through the design principles of permaculture — learning skills such as rainwater harvesting, food forest production, homescale gardening to maximize production on small acreages, and more. Participants will also have the unique opportunity to participate in a 3-day Arabic immersion course, traditional Palestinian culinary workshops, and a historic tour of this ancient city from the pre-Crusades era. Special highlights of the week will include Skype sessions with Geoff Lawton.

The PDC will run from the 6-17th of June, 2010, with an optional 3 day Arabic-language course starting the 3rd of June, 2010.

This course is supported by the Firedoll Foundation, the Council for Australian Arab Relations and the Permaculture Research Institute.

Please go to the bookings page for further information, booking options, and contact details.

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!

Continue on to read Part III

Swales hold and soak water that would otherwise get away without doing anything positive for your property. In fact it can cause problems – like soil erosion.

Swales are critical features in the design of any permaculture project but most of the applications you see on youtube are broad acre properties and many people might think that’s what they’re reserved for. Not true!

Small swales are very useful in urban gardens and can double as footpaths. Have a look at my video of Geoff Lawtons kitchen garden, which is a great example of how to improve your urban garden.

Much Love! Pat

Although he may not succeed Robert Redford in a sequel to ‘The Horse Whisperer’, I think Rob could definitely learn a thing or two from this guy. The passive control he has over his horse is incredible to watch, and took me quite by surprise.

The man and his horse quietly and efficiently harrowed this field – with the foal learning the ropes from the sidelines.

There was no barking of instructions, and no pulling on the reins whatsover. To get the horse to turn, or move to a new section, he simply spoke in subdued tones to this very cooperative worker.

He is obviously also sympathetic to the plight of the modern working mum, as when a couple of times the foal seemed to want the attention of his mother, the man graciously allowed these little interruptions without hesitation or irritation.

Although using horses as beasts of burden is not uncommon here, it is a diminishing art.

Postscript: I’d love to hear about your experiences in developing symbiotic relationships with the non-human, sentient beings around you. Send such posts, with photos, to editor (at) permaculture.org.au

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

This is my third and final salvo in the heated debate over feed-in tariffs. You can follow the arguments for and against through the following links:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/01/solar-panel-feed-in-tariff

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/03/solar-panel-workable-future

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2010/mar/05/solar-feed-in-tariff

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/mar/09/george-monbiot-bet-solar-pv

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2010/mar/11/solar-power-germany-feed-in-tariff

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2010/mar/05/solar-panel-feed-in-tariff-benefits

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/10/feed-in-tariffs-solarpower

Let me begin with a plea to tone down this debate. Jeremy Leggett and I have addressed each other politely and stuck to the facts. I have no ill-feelings towards him: I simply believe that he is wrong about solar power. But the level of viciousness displayed on the comment threads, by email and on other sites has to be seen to be believed.

Where does fury of this kind come from? In my experience it’s often associated with denial. People who don’t like the outcomes dismiss the facts and lash out at the bearers of bad news. Could we, just for once, please try to get past this reaction, and judge the case on its merits?

My own instincts press me to support solar power. Like most environmentalists I believe that small is beautiful. I hate pylon lines and I don’t care for the sight of big power plants of any description, wind farms included. I detest the big energy firms which provide our electricity. I am deeply attracted to the idea of being able to produce my own power, just as I love producing my own fruit and vegetables. But my attempts to find the best means of tackling climate change, which I explain at greater length in my book Heat, have forced me to put my gut feelings to one side. Our choices must be based on the best possible information. Otherwise we waste our lives chasing chimaeras.

Against my instincts I’ve come to oppose solar photovoltaic power (PV) in the UK, and the feed-in tariffs designed to encourage it, because the facts show unequivocally that this is a terrible investment. There are much better ways of spending the rare and precious revenue that the tariffs will extract from our pockets. If we are to prevent runaway climate change, we have to ensure that we get the biggest available bang for our buck: in other words the greatest cut in greenhouse gas production from the money we spend. Money spent on ineffective solutions is not just a waste: it’s also a lost opportunity.

Environmentalists have no trouble understanding this argument when lobbying against nuclear power. Those who maintain that it’s more expensive than renewable electricity argue that we shouldn’t waste our money investing in it. But now I hear the same people telling us that we should support every form of renewable generation, regardless of the cost.

I’m delighted that Jeremy has accepted my bet that solar PV won’t reach grid parity in 2013. I am also happy for the winnings to go to SolarAid. I agree with Jeremy that solar PV is an appropriate technology in Africa, where most people are off-grid and there’s much more sunlight. It’s in this country that it makes no sense. I suggest we each appoint two fair-minded, independent seconds, who will confer with the other side to agree the terms of the bet: the exact date on which it falls due, and how and by whom electricity prices will be measured. They will also be responsible for deciding who has won.

And I accept Jeremy’s challenge to write a column admitting I’m wrong if he wins the bet (but I won’t accept his subtle slippage, substituting “near” for “at”). If I am wrong, it won’t be the first time. In 2005, before I had crunched the numbers, I called on green NGOs to switch from supporting windfarms to promoting “decentralised micro-generation projects”, which I considered a more attractive option. After I discovered just how badly this would set back efforts to decarbonise our power supplies, I changed my views. What would it take to change his?

Jeremy and I can speculate about how useful solar electricity will be in the UK until we’ve worn our keyboards out. Until our bet closes in 2013, by which time billions of pounds will have been committed, no one will know which of us is right. But you don’t have to rely on speculation to see how this is likely to pan out. As the old cookery programes used to say, “here’s one we prepared earlier.” The German experiment, almost identical to the UK’s, has now been running for ten years. An analysis published in November by the Ruhr University shows just what it has achieved.

When the German programme began, in 2000, it offered index-linked payments of 51 euro cents for every kilowatt hour of electricity produced by solar PV. These were guaranteed for 20 years. This is similar to the UK’s initial subsidy, of 41 pence. As in the UK, the solar subsidy was and remains massively greater than the payments for other forms of renewable technology.

The real net cost of the solar PV installed in Germany between 2000 and 2008 was E35bn. The paper estimates a further real cost of E18bn in 2009 and 2010: a total of E53bn in ten years. These investments make wonderful sense for the lucky householders who could afford to install the panels, as lucrative returns are guaranteed by taxing the rest of Germany’s electricity users. But what has this astonishing spending achieved? By 2008 solar PV was producing a grand total of 0.6% of Germany’s electricity. 0.6% for E35bn. Hands up all those who think this is a good investment.

After years of these incredible payments, and the innovation and cost reductions they were supposed to stimulate, the paper estimates that saving one tonne of carbon dioxide through solar PV in Germany still costs E716. The International Energy Agency has produced an even higher estimate: E1000 per tonne. There are dozens of ways in which you can save carbon for 100th of the cost of solar PV at high latitudes.

The paper comes out against using feed-in tariffs to stimulate wind power as well, but in this case it shows that largescale wind in Germany is likely to become cheaper than conventional power by 2022, at which point subsidies will become redundant. It makes no such prediction for solar PV. It reinforces the point I made in my first sally: that while Germany, like the UK, belongs to the European emissions trading scheme, any carbon savings made by feed-in tariffs merely allow polluting industries to raise their emissions. The net saving is zero. The paper suggests that a far more cost-effective mechanism would be to crank down the emissions cap under the trading scheme, then let renewable technologies fight it out to offer the biggest carbon savings per euro.

As for stimulating innovation, which is the main argument Jeremy makes in their favour, the report shows that Germany’s feed-in tariffs have done just the opposite. Like the UK’s scheme, Germany’s is degressive. What this means is that the earlier you adopt the technology, the higher the tariff you receive: if you waited until 2009 to install your solar panel, you’ll be paid 43c/kWh (or its inflation-proofed equivalent) for 20 years, rather than the 51c you get if you installed in 2000. This encourages people to buy existing technology and deploy it right away, rather than to hold out for something better. In fact, the paper shows, the scheme has stimulated massive demand for old, clunky solar cells, at the expense of better models beginning to come onto the market. It argues that a far swifter means of stimulating innovation is for governments to invest in research and development. But the money has gone in the wrong direction: while Germany has spent some E53bn on deploying old technologies, in 2007 the government spent only E211m on renewables R&D.

In principle, tens of thousands of jobs have been created in the German PV industry, but this is gross jobs, not net jobs: had the money been used for other purposes, it could have employed far more people. The paper estimates that the subsidy for every solar PV job in Germany is E175,000: in other words the subsidy is far higher than the money the workers are likely to earn. This is a wildly perverse outcome. Moreover, most of these people are medium or highly skilled workers, who are in short supply there: they have simply been drawn out of other industries. The researchers say that

“any result other than a negative net employment balance of the German PV promotion would be surprising. In contrast, we would expect massive employment effects in export countries such as China”

Germany’s solar exports (E0.2bn in 2006) have been greatly outweighed by its imports (E1.44bn in the same year). And it’s not getting any better:

“Recent newspaper articles report that the situation remains dire, with the German solar industry facing unprecedented competition from cheaper Asian imports.”

The UK’s prospects of building the major export industry Jeremy dreams of are even slighter, as it will now have to take on Germany as well as China and Japan. We’ve missed the boat by years.

While I’ve been taking plenty of flak for arguing this case, I’ve also received a lot of support from green energy experts. Chris Goodall and David Thorpe, for example, have both come to similar conclusions, by working the case out from first principles. If you doubt what I say, I urge you to read their analyses, and the astonishing figures they have produced.

I have no horses in this race: no products to sell, no shares in any company, no favours to discharge or lobbyists to please. I am simply trying to work out what’s best. I realise that there is no persuading some people: that they will believe what they want to believe. But I hope that some of you might be able to see that this is an honest attempt to get to the truth of the matter, and to find the most effective means of preventing runaway climate change.