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Holmgren and permaculture: Backyard answer to energy crisis
Fran Molloy, Sydnery Morning Herald
With crude oil now more than $US110 a barrel and the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries announcing this month that it will not succumb to demands for raised production quotas, dark predictions of an imminent descent into a global energy crisis appear to be coming true.
But the permaculture co-founder David Holmgren, who has been warning of such events for decades, believes the energy crisis heralds the beginning of a low-energy future – a future that may involve a return to 1950s suburbia.
These days Holmgren is a quietly spoken farmer in his 50s, his ponytail the only hint of the radical visionary behind the frameless spectacles.
Thirty years ago Holmgren was a university student who came up with the concept of permaculture, a blindingly simple idea: why not design our living spaces so that human needs for food, water and shelter imitated natural self-sustaining ecosystems?
Bill Mollison, a university lecturer who had worked as a wildlife biologist and helped to start the Tasmanian Organic Gardening and Farming Society, was Holmgren’s mentor and co-creator of the idea.
(19 March 2008)
Rosemary’s Gardens (audio and transcript)
Encounter, ABC-National (Australia)
Rosemary Morrow is a Quaker and a Permaculture teacher and one of Australia’s unsung heroes. From the chilly heights of NSW’s Blue Mountains to the humid heat of Cambodia, Rosemary Morrow encourages people to plant food gardens. For Australians it’s all about simplicity and sustainability, but for the developing world it’s about health and making a difference.
(16 March 2008)
Audio available at Encounter website, at the entry for March 16, 2008.
Michael Lardelli writes:
Just heard a wonderful program on ABC Radio National about permaculture and one permaculturist who helps the Cambodians develop nutritional gardens. Excellent listening and there is also a transcript.
Hope Dances Eternal for This Media Maven (video and audio)
Janaia Donaldson, Peak Moment via Global Public Media
For over a decade, Bob Banner has brought documentary films to his region, and published a bimonthly tabloid HopeDance, “Radical solutions inspiring hope.” Ahead of many, he brings “disturbing” information as well as solutions and positive visions. Bob discusses the massive failure of media, spiritual films, relocalization, peak oil, and myriad other topics. (www.hopedance.org) Episode 99.
(28 February 2008)
