 Ok, so Copehagen failed, more or less. Our leaders haven't asked us to do a single thing to fight climate change. Should we kick back on the couch, forget about climate change until some solution is presented, and relax with some form of genetically modified, chemically laden snack food? Absolutely NOT!
If you care at all about climate change, about the possibility that the weather patterns and food production capabilities of planet earth might soon be changed forever, you should switch to organic foods! Organic agriculture is proven to sequester carbon from the atmosphere AND produces less GHG emissions from all operations.
On a global scale, and "assuming organic farming best practices (including composting and agro-forestry), widespread organic farming could...sequester 1.5 billion tons of carbon per year. This would offset about 11% of all anthropogenic global GHG emissions for at least the next twenty years." (Soil Carbon and Organic Farming, Soil Association, Nov. 2009, p.10)
11% of human caused greenhouse gas emissions could be sequestered in soil if we switched to organic food! This is a huge part of the solution to climate change - and it doesn't even take into account the amount of CO2 emissions that could be avoided if our food had less packaging, and we started purchasing that organic food from sources closer to home.
So, next time you think about sitting around with snack food and waiting for someone else to offer a solution, choose an organic snack, and know that you have chosen a solution.
 Bill Mollison Bill Mollison is a living legend. He's known as the genius of permaculture, "the David Brower of Australia," or a crusty old curmudgeon, depending on the source. But whether it's glowing admiration or sneering dismissal, reaction to Mollison is invariably strong. He is clearly one of the most interesting specimens of the human species - which he has spent years studying from a naturalist's behavioral perspective. He passed through Seattle recently with a film crew shooting a documentary about the far-flung successes of permaculture, a radically new (or, some have said, radically old) way of gardening, designing, and living sustainably by cooperating with nature. Ironically, we met in a downtown hotel room - filled with traffic noise - as we stalked a definition of permaculture and considered the eeriness of modern life. Alan: Permaculture is a slippery idea to me. But from what I read, it seems that not even those who actually do permaculture really know what it is. Bill: I'm certain I don't know what permaculture is. That's what I like about it - it's not dogmatic. But you've got to say it's about the only organized system ofdesign that ever was. And that makes it extremely eerie.
Alan: Why "eerie"? Bill: There's no other book about design for living. Don't you think that's eerie? I mean, how can we possibly expect to survive if we don't design what we're doing to be bearable?
Another thing I find extremely eerie is that when people build a house, they almost exactly get it wrong. They don't just get it partly wrong, they get itdead wrong. For example, if you let people loose in a landscape and tell them to choose a house site, half of them will go sit on the ridges where they'll die in the next fire, or where you can't get water to them. Or they'll sit in all the dam sites. Or they'll sit in all the places that will perish in the next big wind.
But then, at least half of every city is wrong. From latitude 30 degrees to latitude 60, say, you've got to have the long axis of the house facing the sun. If the land is cut up into squares, that makes half of all houses wrong if they face the road. Even houses way in the country, and way off the road, face the bloody road. And from there, you just go wronger all the way.
One of the great rules of design is do something basic right. Then everything gets much more right of itself. But if you do something basic wrong - if you make what I call a Type 1 Error - you can get nothing else right.
Alan: When you say "we," do you mean humans in general, or Western humans especially?Bill: Human beings in general. There are a few societies that show signs of having been very rational about the physics of construction and the physics of real life. Some of the old middle-Eastern societies had downdraft systems over whole cities, and passive, rapid-evaporation ice-making systems. They were rational people using good physical principles to make themselves comfortable without additional sources of energy.
But most modern homes are simply uninhabitable without electricity - you couldn't flush the toilet without it. It's a huge dependency situation. A house should look after itself - as the weather heats up the house cools down, as the weather cools down the house heats up. It's simple stuff, you know? We've known how to do it for a long time.
Alan: And it's eerie that we don't do it. Bill: And that we don't design the garden to assist the house is much more eerie. That we don't design agriculture to be sustainable is totally eerie. We design it to be a disaster, and of course, we get a disaster.
Alan: There's an old Chinese expression: "If we don't change our direction, we'll wind up where we are headed."
Bill: Exactly so. I think we probably have a racial death wish. We don't understand anything about where we live, and we don't want to. We're happy to power on to the end - like Mr. Bush. He could have saved more oil than he needed from Iraq, but he preferred to go and "kick ass" - kill people - and usemore oil in the process.
America is an eerie society. It seems to want to live on a dust bowl. But as one of your own Indians said, "If you shit in bed, you'll surely smother in it."
Alan: Let's get back to permaculture. What's your current best definition of it?
Bill: You could say it's a rational man's approach to not shitting in his bed.
But if you're an optimist, you could say it's an attempt to actually create a Garden of Eden. Or, if you're a scientist, you could liken it to a miraculous wardrobe in which you can hang garments of any science or any art and find they're always harmonious with, and in relation to, that which is already hanging there. It's a framework that never ceases to move, but that will accept information from anywhere.
It's hard to get your mind around it - I can't. I guess I would know more about permaculture than most people, and I can't define it. It's multi-dimensional - chaos theory was inevitably involved in it from the beginning.
You see, if you're dealing with an assembly of biological systems, you can bring the things together, but you can't connect them. We don't have any power of creation - we have only the power of assembly. So you just stand there and watch things connect to each other, in some amazement actually. You start by doing something right, and you watch it get more right than you thought possible.
 Weed cloth hidden under layers of decomposed matter. I almost planted bulbs right on top! It was so deep I didn't even know it was there. Have I mentioned, I hate weed cloth. In this picture, you can see what happens after just a few years. The fabric is buried several inches below the surface. It has become covered in dirt and is now a breeding ground for, you guessed it, weeds. Weed cloth just doesn't work! At the same time, it prevents your plants from growing proper roots, your soil from being healthy, and you from planting new plants without removing it or cutting holes in it. Have I mentioned, I hate weed cloth?
 More weed fabric hidden under layers of dust, debris, and years of decomposed mulch.  This new topsoil should be mixing into the soil but is prevented from improving what's below because of the weed cloth. Worms, microbes and proper interface are blocked. The soil below becomes packed and depleted.  This is what weed fabric looks like when you first install it. Mulch will be placed over in an attempt to hide it, but will constantly slide off the slippery weed cloth. That said, there are times when weed fabric is appropriate. For example, in high density vegetable gardens where your sole purpose is t grow food without using chemical herbicides or spending tons of time weeding. In this case, heavy duty weed fabric can be used over pathways and rows just up to the plants. Keep weed cloth clean of debris - this isn't necessarily pretty but it will do the trick. Otherwise, it just becomes a layer in the soil, and a disruptive one at that. Your soil still needs to breath however. Worms and other creatures still need to come up to the surface to mix the nutrients and organic matter around and to fluff up the soil. You might consider removing it for your winter crops or to add anew layer of compost. I have little experience with this high intensity use of weed cloth. Can anyone add their personal observations?
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Earth Policy Institute
Plan B 3.0 Book Byte
June 25, 2009
THE OIL INTENSITY OF FOOD
http://www.earthpolicy.org/Books/Seg/PB3ch02_ss3.htm
Lester R. Brown
Today we are an oil-based civilization, one that is totally dependent on a resource whose production will soon be falling. Since 1981, the quantity of oil extracted has exceeded new discoveries by an ever-widening margin. In 2008, the world pumped 31 billion barrels of oil but discovered fewer than 9 billion barrels of new oil. World reserves of conventional oil are in a free fall, dropping every year.
Discoveries of conventional oil total roughly 2 trillion barrels, of which 1 trillion have been extracted so far, with another trillion barrels to go. By themselves, however, these numbers miss a central point. As security analystMichael Klare notes, the first trillion barrels was easy oil, “oil that’s found on shore or near to shore; oil close to the surface and concentrated in large reservoirs; oil produced in friendly, safe, and welcoming places.” The other half, Klare notes, is tough oil, “oil that’s buried far offshore or deep underground; oil scattered in small, hard-to-find reservoirs; oil that must be obtained from unfriendly, politically dangerous, or hazardous places.”
This prospect of peaking oil production has direct consequences for world food security, as modern agriculture depends heavily on the use of fossil fuels. Most tractors use gasoline or diesel fuel. Irrigation pumps use diesel fuel, natural gas, or coal-fired electricity. Fertilizer production is also energy-intensive. Natural gas is used to synthesize the basic ammonia building block in nitrogen fertilizers. The mining, manufacture, and international transport of phosphates and potash all depend on oil.
Efficiency gains can help reduce agriculture’s dependence on oil. In the United States, the combined direct use of gasoline and diesel fuel in farming fell from its historical high of 7.7 billion gallons (29.1 billion liters) in 1973 to 4.2 billion in 2005--a decline of 45 percent. Broadly calculated, the gallons of fuel used per ton of grain produced dropped from 33 in 1973 to 12 in 2005, an impressive decrease of 64 percent.
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