Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Generative transformation is really good stuff. I believe permaculture and generative transformation are meant to be together, just like orchid and wasp, legume and rhizobia, or carbon and nitrogen in the perfect compost. Indeed, I’d argue that generative transformation is in play when any permaculture project really shines.
We live in an age where more than 4 billion people – some 60% of the human population – live on less than what is required for meeting basic human needs. This is a ringing indictment of the global economy by any standard.
History has witnessed a shift in the dominant organizing structure of the economy from hunter-gatherer to agrarian to industrial. The exploitative tendencies of people, including exploitation of both nature and other people, have expanded with these shifts to the point that humanity now faces a crisis of overexploitation.
We must honor our full humanity, especially the parts of ourselves that aren’t in alignment yet with our liberatory values. And part of honoring our humanity means honoring the humanity of others, even that of our enemies and oppressors.
President Andrzej Duda’s authoritarian government can expect a rough political ride in December, when politicians, diplomats and campaigners stream into Katowice, Poland, for the next UN summit on climate change.
I understand that by publishing this post I may be giving ammunition to the anti-science crowd. But we can’t just hide in the ivory tower and tell people that science is perfect as it is. We need deep reforms in the way science is done.
Owing to the limits of eco-efficiency and the need to liberate environmental space for the global poor,, new policy instruments should be designed to bring about ecological fair sharing between countries and a new economy based on the concept of sufficiency.
My father, eighty-three years old at the time, had spent six decades writing hundreds of articles and twenty-four books articulating an anticapitalist vision of an ecological, democratic, egalitarian society that would eliminate the domination of human by human, and bring humanity into harmony with the natural world, a body of ideas he called “social ecology.”
The following diagram is a hyper-condensed summary of over two years, 80 posts and 70,000 words worth of this blog’s assorted ramblings about permaculture design.
This letter is dedicated to the potential one trillionth human life of the future, for whom inhabiting a healthy, sustainable, and beauteous planet is no longer a given due to the greed, plunder, and destruction of our generations– its ancestors.
The common goal of both the private and public sectors is rapid, sustained GDP growth, so the only climate actions that companies or governments are willing to take are those that will not risk slowing wealth accumulation.
For someone like me who believes we ultimately need to strengthen local economies but doesn’t believe heavy industry (like mining and aluminum extrusion) should form the heart of these economies, the issue of tariffs has no clear answer.
