Winter’s discontent
This may become the winter of our discontent as people around the world face a widening energy crisis: rationing because supplies are limited due to delivery shortages, production limits, cost, or by government mandate.
This may become the winter of our discontent as people around the world face a widening energy crisis: rationing because supplies are limited due to delivery shortages, production limits, cost, or by government mandate.
If there were a time to allocate some of your resilience work toward the global and national scene, that time might be now, and the place might be Thacker Pass.
This is the main notion, and the importance, of resilience. The whole life process is one of ongoing disequilibrium movement to which we must adapt to survive.
Here was an environmental challenge for which we had no precedent in our lifetimes. Would we persist and adapt? Would we be resilient through change?
What is place? Recently, it has sparked for me a reflection on something I’ve been calling “place-fullness”.
In the Transition movement, we saw resilience as a way of “bouncing forward”. We wanted to use the anticipation of these shocks to design different and better systems.
It will be interesting to see therefore whether Trevelyan will address the key areas for enabling adaptation and enhancing resilience of vulnerable communities in low-income countries to more frequent and intense climate change impacts.
It did not stop it, or make it any less real or stressful but permaculture design has clearly helped smooth decision making in times of crisis and has been a wellspring of ingenuity and optimism. “This is the time to dream, better dreams – what is the future we want to have?” encourages and invites Fran.
Wood stoves can provide a household with thermal energy for cooking and for space and water heating. Wood stoves equipped with thermoelectric generators also produce electricity, which can be more sustainable, more reliable and less costly than power from solar panels.
An overview of the narratives of these resilient women reveals a pattern of resourcefulness, persistence in the face of setbacks, courage to take a stand, and through all the challenges, pride in family and community. All of them continued to be active in community life, and all of them were proud of what their children had accomplished when the walls of segregation came tumbling down.
What is so heartening is how permaculture design in action is proving resilient! Whether in small urban spaces or large land-based projects, designing for multi-functional uses is proving how valuable a permaculture approach can be.
This condition of wondering is still absolutely intact in us. It is. Amongst the loaded shopping trolleys of Walmart and Tesco, the fluorescent tech hubs, flicker-screens and finger-beckoning apps, it’s still there. This raw, imaginative, holy thing.
There’s an audacity to it, but it’s what we’ve always done.