Ed Dowding

It just makes a lot of sense, k?

via Permaculture Magazine

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It takes no great skill to decode the world system today. A tiny percentage of the population is immensely wealthy, some are well off, a lot are just getting by, a lot more are suffering. We call it capitalism, but within it lies buried residual patterns of feudalism and older hierarchies, basic injustices framing the way we organize ourselves. Everybody lives in an imaginary relationship to this real situation; and that is our world. We walk with scales on our eyes, and only see what we think.

And all the while on a sidewalk over the abyss. There are islands of time when things seem stable. Nothing much happens but the rounds of the week. Later the islands break apart. When enough time has passed, no one now alive will still be here; everyone will be different. Then it will be the stories that will link the generations, history and DNA, long chains of the simplest bits—guanine, adenine, cytosine, thymine—love, hope, fear, selfishness—all recombining again and again, until a miracle happens and the organism springs forth!

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Meanwhile humanity is exceeding the planet’s carrying capacity for our species, badly damaging the biosphere. Neoclassical economics cannot cope with this situation, and indeed, with its falsely exteriorized costs, was designed in part to disguise it. If the Earth were to suffer a catastrophic anthropogenic extinction event over the next ten years, which it will, American business would continue to focus on its quarterly profit and loss. There is no economic mechanism for dealing with catastrophe. And yet government and the scientific community are not tackling this situation either, indeed both have consented to be run by neoclassical economics, an obvious pseudoscience. We might as well agree to be governed by astrologers. Everyone knows this is the situation, and yet no one does anything about it. They don’t try to instigate the saving of the biosphere, they don’t even call for certain kinds of mitigation projects. They just wait and see what comes in. It is a ridiculously passive position.

Why such passivity, you ask? Because NSF is chicken! It’s a chicken with its smart little head stuck in the sand like an ostrich! It’s a chicken ostrich (fix). It’s afraid to take on Congress, it’s afraid to take on business, it’s afraid to take on the American people. Free market fundamentalists are dragging us back to some dismal feudal eternity and destroying everything in the process, and yet we have the technological means to feed everyone, house everyone, clothe everyone, doctor everyone, educate everyone—the ability to end suffering and want as well as ecological collapse is right here at hand, and yet NSF continues to dole out its little grants, fiddling while Rome burns!!!

Well whatever nothing to be done about it, I’m sure you’re thinking poor Frank Vanderwal has spent a year in the swamp and has gone crazy as a result, and that is true but what I’m saying is still right, the world is in big trouble and NSF is one of the few organizations on Earth that could actually help get it out of trouble, and yet it’s not. It should be charting worldwide scientific policy and forcing certain kinds of climate mitigation and biosphere management, insisting on them as emergency necessities, it should be working Congress like the fucking NRA to get the budget it deserves, which is a much bigger budget, as big as the Pentagon’s, really those two budgets should be reversed to get them to their proper level of funding, but none of it is happening or will happen, and that is why I’m not coming back and no one in his right mind would come back either

Another great chunk from Forty Signs of Rain, by Kim Stanley Robinson.

99% of what follows is from Fifty Degrees Below by Kim Stanley Robinson. It is a great book, much like all his others. I have only edited it in places to make it easier to read out of context. I think it makes a magnificent start.

 

If the scientific community were to propose a platform of political goals based on scientific principles, how would it be formulated, and what would the platform say?

It would help to have a macro-goal. Two present themselves:

1) Some form of the “Greatest good for the greatest number” rubric.
Without implying in any way that this “greatest good” could include or justify any planned or accepted structural or permanent disadvantaging of any minority of any size. As should be clear in the wording of the rubric, the greatest number is of course one hundred percent, including also the generations to come.

2) Even in the context of any religious or humanistic anthropocentrism, the life of our species depends on the rest of Earth’s biosphere. Even the utilitarian view of nature as something distinct and subservient to humanity must grant the biosphere the status of a diffused expression and aspect of our bodies. Interdependence of all the components of biosphere (including humanity) is undeniable. An observable, confirmable fact (breathing).

 

This leads us to the detail of the “Contract with Our Children”

1. Protection of the biosphere: sustainable uses; clean technologies; carbon balance; climate homeostasis.

2. Protection of human welfare: universal housing, clothing, shelter, clean water, health care, education, reproductive rights.

3. Full employment: Current economy defines 5.4% unemployment as optimum for desired “wage-pressure balance,” treating labor (people) as a commodity and using a supply/demand pricing model. Five percent in U.S.A. = approx. fifteen million people. At the same time there is important work not being done.

If government-insured full employment reduced “wage pressure,” forcing a rise in minimum wages from the private sector, this would help pull millions out of poverty, decrease their government dependence and social service costs, and inject and cycle their larger incomes back into the economy.

4. Individual ownership of the majority of the surplus value of one’s labor. 

People create by their work an economic value beyond what it costs to pay them and provide their means of production. This averages $66,000 per year for American workers, a surplus now legally belonging to owners/stockholders.

American workers therefore receive between a fifth and a third of the actual value of their work. The rest goes to owners.

A minimum share of 51% of the surplus value of one’s work should be returned to one, this value to be measured by objective and transparent accounting as defined by law.

3. and 4. combined would tend to promote the greatest good for the greatest number, by distributing the wealth more equitably among those who have created it.

5. Reduction of military spending

Match U.S. military expenditures to the average of other nations; this would halve the military budget, freeing over two hundred billion dollars a year.

More generally, all national militaries should be integrated in an international agreement upholding nonviolent conflict resolution. (Using black helicopters of course.)

Disproportionate size of U.S. military and arms industry a waste of resources. Doubling since September 11, 2001 resembles panic response or attempt at global hegemony. Results undermine goals outlined in the foundational axioms.

6. Population stabilization

Human population stabilized at some level to be determined by carrying capacity studies and foundational axioms. Best results here so far have resulted from increase in women’s rights and education, also a goal in itself, thus a powerful positive feedback loop with chance for results within a single generation.

Context/ultimate goal: Permaculture

A scientifically informed government should lead the way in the invention of a culture which is sustainable perpetually.

If reproductive success is defined as life’s goal, as it is in evolutionary theory, then stealing from descendants is maladaptive.

Protection of the environment, therefore, along with restoration of landscapes and biodiversity, should become one of the principal goals of the economy. Government must lead the way in investigating potential climate-altering strategies to mitigate current problems and eventually establish a balance that can be maintained in perpetuity.

It seems this list can bring wisdom and insight to pretty much everything we do.

Apart from the more specific ones (like ‘keep water high on the land’, but maybe just try to metaphor these as taoist haikus to trigger bewildering insights.)

• Relative Location Components placed in a system are viewed relatively, not in isolation. Functional Relationship between components.
• Everything is connected to everything else. Recognise functional relationships between elements.
• Every function is supported by many elements – Redundancy Good design ensures that all important functions can withstand the failure of one or more element.
• Every element is supported by many functions Each element we include is a system, chosen and placed so that it performs as many functions as possible.
• Local Focus “Think globally – Act locally” Grow your own food, cooperate with neighbours. Community efficiency not self-sufficiency.
• Diversity As a general rule, as sustainable systems mature they become increasingly diverse in both space and time. What is important is the complexity of the functional relationships that exist between elements not the number of elements.
• Biological Resources We know living things reproduce and build up their availability over time, assisted by their interaction with other compatible elements. Use and reserve biological intelligence.
• One Calorie In/One Calorie Out Do not consume or export more biomass than carbon fixed by the solar budget.
• Stocking Finding the balance of various elements to keep one from overpowering another over time. How much of an element needs to be produced in order to fulfil the need of whole system?
• Stacking Multi-level functions for single element (stacking functions). Multi-level garden design, ie., trellising, forest garden, vines, ground covers, etc.
• Succession Recognise that certain elements prepare the way for system to supports other elements in the future, i.e.: succession planting.
• Use Onsite Resources Determine what resources are available and entering the system on their own and maximise their use.
• Edge Effect Ecotones are the most diverse and fertile area in a system. Two ecosystems come together to form a third which has more diversity than either of the other two, i.e.: edges of ponds, forests, meadows, currents etc.
• Energy Recycling Yields from system designed to supply onsite needs and/or needs of local region.
• Small Scale Intensive Systems start small and create a system that is manageable and produces a high yield.
• Make Least Change for the Greatest Effect The less change that is generated, the less embedded energy is used to endow the system.
• Planting Strategy 1st-natives, 2nd-proven exotics, 3rd unproven exotics – carefully on small scale with lots of observation.
• Work Within Nature Aiding the natural cycles results in higher yield and less work. A little support goes along way.
• Appropriate Technology The same principles apply to cooking, lighting, transportation, heating, sewage treatment, water and other utilities.
• Law of Return Whatever we take, we must return Every object must responsibly provide for its replacement.
• Stress and Harmony Stress here may be defined as either prevention of natural function, or of forced function. Harmony may be defined as the integration of chosen and natural functions, and the easy supply of essential needs.
• The Problem is the solution We are the problem, we are the solution. Turn constraints into resources
• Mistakes are tools for learning
• The yield of a system is theoretically unlimited The only limit on the number of uses of a resource possible is the limit of information and imagination of designer.
• Dispersal of Yield Over Time Principal of seven generations. We can use energy to construct these systems, providing that in their lifetime, they store or conserve more energy that we use to construct them or to maintain them.
• A Policy of Responsibility (to relinquish power) The role of successful design is to create a self-managed system.
• Principle of Disorder Order and harmony produce energy for other uses. Disorder consumes energy to no useful end. Tidiness is maintained disorder.
• Chaos Has form, but is not predictable. The amplification of small fluctuations.
• Entropy In complex systems disorder is an increasing result. Entropy and lifeforce are a stable pair that maintain the universe to infinity.
• Metastability For a complex system to remain stable, there must be small pockets of disorder.
• Entelechy Principal of genetic intelligence. i.e. The rose has thorns to protect itself.
• Observation Protracted & thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labor.
• We are surrounded by insurmountable opportunities
• Wait one year
• Hold water and fertility as high (in elevation) on the landscape as possible
• The only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children.
• Cooperation, not competition, is the very basis of future survival and of existing life systems.

http://www.thefarm.org/permaculture/