PERMACULTURE: Life After Peak Oil

Mr BoShambles

jambiguous
We are witnessing an exponential growth in the human population globally and at the same time a steady reduction in the availability and quality of productive land.

The so-called 'Green Revolution' is an unsustainable disaster. Large-scale agriculture today is built on mono-cropping which relies almost entirely on industrial machinery and petrochemicals (pesticides and fertilizers) in order to function. This amounts to a dependency on cheap oil. The energy inputs necessary to maintain this system are massive, and increase over time as the soil degrades and thus more chemicals are required simply to maintain productive capacity. Forests are cleared to provide more space for mono-cropping and water systems are disrupted by mammoth irrigation projects.

Ultimately this is a fight against the principles of nature. Natural systems are chaotic; dynamic yet stable; ever more diverse; highly productive. When we try to control nature and bend these principles to create order and "efficiency", we often end up inducing instability, loss of diversity and a fall in productive output over time.

And peak oil is inevitable: the question is not if but when. This will surely signal the decline of modern agriculture as we know it today. But it's not just systems of food production that will be affected of course since modern industrial / post-industrial society depends on oil and its derivatives for just about everything: electricity, heating, transport...

It strikes me that rather than looking for macro-level changes, instead we need to build from the micro level up. I believe that permaculture - as a system of integrated design and social organisation - points the way to many sustainable solutions.

Watch this excellent documentary featuring Bill Mollison - one of the founding fathers of permaculture - to get a good overview.

And this film charts the huge successes in Cuba when permaculture principles were adopted to deal with the oil crisis which arose post the Soviet collapse.

This transcript of a radio documentary about a (genuinely) sustainable community development in the desert of Colombia is very inspiring! More info available here and here.

What do people think? Anyone got any personal experience with permaculture?
 

vimothy

yurp
Here's AF Alhajji on energy independence -- not totally on topic, but something to think about:

The biggest threats to the world’s energy security are not terrorist attacks or embargoes by oil-producing countries — short-term events that can be dealt with quickly and effectively through various measures, including reliance on strategic petroleum reserves, increases in production, and diversion of oil shipments. Instead, the main threat to the long-term sustainability of energy supplies is the mismatch between investment in additional capacity and energy infrastructure, on one hand, and growth in demand for energy on the other.

Major oil exporters could respond in a variety of ways to political posturing on energy, most of which would exacerbate rather than ameliorate the global energy situation. One of the most plausible scenarios in response to calls by governments and politicians around the world to reduce or even eliminate dependence on oil is a relative decline in investment in additional production capacity in the oil-producing countries.

An energy crisis in this case is almost certain if those who press for energy independence fail to provide a workable alternative in a timely manner. Of course, these efforts will almost surely fail to replace oil within a reasonable time, as they are not market-driven and require heavy subsidies.
 

Mr BoShambles

jambiguous
The Global Vision:

There is an old saying: 'Civilised man has marched across the face of the earth and left a desert in his footprints.' (Carter and Dale, Topsoil and Civilization, p.6) Today, worldwide, on land once rich with natural vegetation, we see deserts denuded of their topsoil, deserts of salt-encrusted soil from years of irrigation, deserts due to widespread deforestation having altered the regional climate.

The problem from a permaculture perspective has been a lack of design. Agriculture, from its invention and reinvention from some 10,000 years ago onwards, has generally involved a crude process of clearing the wilderness and establishing a cycle of digging or ploughing, then seeding with a few useful species, primarily grasses,then harvesting the crop to feed humans and livestock - and the cycle begins again year on year until the land is exhausted - after which a new area of wilderness is cleared. Perhaps humans devised this system after surviving for a million years or so by hunting and gathering, and learning that regular firing of the undergrowth encouraged fresh sprouting pioneer species which were more nutritious for people and the grazing herds we hunted than did the stable, mature forest.

The solution from a permaculture perspective is to introduce design into agriculture in order to create permanent high-yielding agricultural ecosystems, so that humans can thrive on as little land as possible, thus leaving as much land as possible as wilderness, if necessary helping the wilderness re-establish itself. This visionary global mission is encapsulated in the word 'permaculture', a shortened form of 'permanent agriculture'.

In order to implement this global vision, we need local solutions, because every place on earth is different in local climate, land form, soils, and the combinations of species which will thrive. Not only does the land and its potential vary from place to place, but so do the people vary in their needs and preferences and their capacities. Every place and community requires its own particular design. Hence at the local level, permaculture designers often refer to permaculture as being about designing for 'permanent culture'.

The global vision can be lost sight of in the nitty-gritty of 'permanent culture' designing for local sustainability. But the vision is vital and can inspire us to keep going in the face of obstruction and apathy.


Permaculture in Practice:

Permaculture is about creating sustainable human habitats by following nature's patterns." It uses the diversity, stability and resilience of natural ecosystems to provide a framework and guidance for people to develop their own sustainable solutions to the problems facing their world, on a local, national or global scale. It is based on the philosophy of co-operation with nature and caring for the earth and its people.

A system of design:

"Maximum contemplation; minimum action"

Permaculture is about thinking before you act.

Permaculture is not a set of rules; it is a process of design based around principles found in the natural world, of co-operation and mutually beneficial relationships, and translating these principles into actions.



More here from the British Permaculture Association.
 

Mr BoShambles

jambiguous
Here's AF Alhajji on energy independence -- not totally on topic, but something to think about:

Interesting argument Vim but not sure where it gets us?

Ultimately - and regardless of whether the "investment in additional production capacity in the oil-producing countries" takes place - peak oil will occur (and may already have done so). Global demand for oil and its derivatives is rising - China, India, Brazil etc - while supplies of these finite resources are gradually disappearing and what is left is ever-more expensive to extract (more viscous; lower pressure requiring higher energy inputs etc). As you are well aware, this is simply not sustainable over the long-term.

The transition to alternative energy sources is always going to painful because it will mean the wholescale reorientation of society. In the long-run historical picture the age of cheap energy for the masses derived from hydrocarbons will be a blip. We need to find other survival strategies.
 

vimothy

yurp
But AF Alhajji's argument is that this is to some extent a self-fulfilling prophecy in that under-investment because of the peak oil scare will lead us to reach peak oil sooner than we would otherwise. Ya gets me?

EDIT: So, if the immediate threat to energy supply is under-investment, then investment will not increase the time it takes us to reach "peak oil", because functional/effective peak oil will hit sooner if we invest less.
 
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Mr BoShambles

jambiguous
But AF Alhajji's argument is that this is to some extent a self-fulfilling prophecy in that under-investment because of the peak oil scare will lead us to reach peak oil sooner than we would otherwise. Ya gets me?

Right. But either way the situation is pretty screwed. Don't invest and this precipitates an energy crisis. Do invest and resources are depleted faster which in turn creates an energy crisis.

Surely a no-win situation which ever way we go. And yet - at least on a micro-scale - there are workable alternatives as the film on Cuba i linked to in the original post demonstrates.
 

vimothy

yurp
Right. But either way the situation is pretty screwed. Don't invest and this precipitates an energy crisis. Do invest and resources are depleted faster which in turn creates an energy crisis.

Not necessarily faster, though -- that's my point.

Effective peak oil really will arrive faster if we continue to under-invest in infrastructure and productive capacity.
 

Mr BoShambles

jambiguous
Not necessarily faster, though -- that's my point.

Effective peak oil really will arrive faster if we continue to under-invest in infrastructure and productive capacity.

So you're saying that major investment will allow us to continue extracting oil esp from deposits which are harder to access i.e. in fields which have been significantly depleted and thus where the pressure has dropped; or where supplies are very viscous (e.g. the Orinoco Belt in the Venezuelan Amazon for one). This will offset peak oil by a undefined period of time.

Right?

But the oil produced this way will have to be offset by the amount of energy (derived from oil) expended in the process of extraction. Huge amounts of capital investment will be required and all to simply prolong an ultimately unsustainable system.

Is this sensible?
 
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Kama

Member
Recently mindblown by 'Greening the Desert'; xeriscape permaculture by Geoff Lawton (Clip). Besides providing me with a welcome nostalgia for Herberts Dune, is the only approach I've seen with positive implications for managing 'Peak Water' in drought-prone or desertified/desertifying regions, 'limit' cases for land reclamation with low inputs.

Rob Hopkins cheers whenever energy prices rise, since in his approximate words 'everything I want for society only happens when energy gets more expensive'. In a cheap-energy situation, the efficiency advantages of permaculture are largely negated by stored-solar inputs from petrochemicals, while the form of agricultural instantiation that has characterised development (whether from economic thought eg. comparative advantage, or monocultural mechanization) thrives. The issue hence becomes path dependency and retrofit costs, in different transfer scenarios according to how severe shocks are, or how much forethought/planning is applied. The 'sweet spot' seems to be a gradual increase in real energy price as a stick, increasing local competitivity,with enough slack to allow the retro-fit shift to take place. Downside here, I remember this as the orthodox 'Peak Oil' scenario planning for 2010 in approximately 2000, between 'Managed Transition' and 'Enforced Localization', and here we are...

The more cornucopian approach still considers that replacements, from nuclear to algal, will substitute; I'll admit I find that a untested assumption, especially in liquid fuels; the Stone Age didn't end because we ran out of stones, but most historical empire-projects seem to fall in resource overshoots. It does have the advantage of (apparent) optimism, which as Ellul noted is something in high demand for myths of progress; Green futures have often seemed unattractive scenarios to the unconverted, and were typically heavily-tinged with bien pensant sanctimony, the 'Green' as a moral injunctive, post-Christian consumerist guilt, etc. Permaculture and inspired projects like Transition Towns (emphasising the 'culture' part) dodge this bullet imo; permaculture with fairly non-dogmatic engineering-style pragmatism, TT by open structuring at the design level, both leveraged and 'going viral' off the back of Peak Oil.

We now have a harsher stimulus to change, and an emotional-mythic context where confidence in market systems is lower; 'running to the hills' has become more of a life-strategy, or a 'Doomer' reinterpretation of 'downshifting' for those with the capacity to do so; anecdotally I can name a fair few ex-traders stocked up on seeds and non-perishables, part of a growing band with motivations between necessity and insurance, sufficiency and resilience.


AlHajji's criticism of the (populist, nationalist, protectionist) implications of 'independence' I view as true but partial; in macro-context of reconfiguring state policy in a growth-based world-economy I'd agree, while in a still-very-micro perspective like permaculture, for all its hopes of scaling up, the argument that we require survival or insurance strategies and substantial socio-economic retrofit is more salient.

That being said, the strategic point on beggaring by crowding out with low-cost energy is an interesting one, as is the point that embedded energy is the source of wealth, something Mollison, Hopkins et al would agree with. The 'answer' of permaculture or ecological economics and accounting hinges on the differentiation or conflation of resources that are mined (conventional forestry to coal and oil) and those which replenish (the initial etymology of 'resource') and are permanent. At the same time, even scaled, I don't see a mass technological society as we understand it supported on this resource-base.

Edit: Agree, sounds quite Catch-22 on multiple/delaying peaks (as has been argued took place from underinvestment in Russia, by Orloff I think, or possibly Jerome a Paris). The issue with this is declining EROI, diminishing real energy returns, and the opportunity cost of this investment. Increased infrastructure brings 'real' (albeit modulated by technological limits) Peak sooner, and closer to URR, while decreased brings market-structural Peak sooner. At best, there's a delay, buying time for...what?
 
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Mr BoShambles

jambiguous
Edit: Agree, sounds quite Catch-22 on multiple/delaying peaks (as has been argued took place from underinvestment in Russia, by Orloff I think, or possibly Jerome a Paris). The issue with this is declining EROI, diminishing real energy returns, and the opportunity cost of this investment. Increased infrastructure brings 'real' (albeit modulated by technological limits) Peak sooner, and closer to URR, while decreased brings market-structural Peak sooner.

Spot on! I reckon you've argued pretty much this same point before yourself Vim.

At best, there's a delay, buying time for...what?

So.....? What do you think?
 
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Mr BoShambles

jambiguous
BTW Kama your last post requires a more considered response than I can manage right now.... i'm rather hurriedly trying to write a book review on Arquilla and Ronfeldt et al' The Zapatista Social Netwar in Mexico. Really interesting and speaks a lot to the work of Robb and the whole Political Economy thread... but why do i always leave things till the last f**kin minute :eek:
 

Kama

Member
What else are forums for? ;)

Good luck with the review...

Apropos of leaving things to the last minute, that echoes the Perma-retrofit situation, and human motivation generally (as always when a speaker makes generalities about 'human nature', assume it to be an semi-veiled expression of their own :eek:)...I won't move until there's a strong stick-stimulus, even if that makes it more painful to when I do. Irrational herd of monkeys...

As to buying time and energy independence, I view this (macro-policy-level) as a gap to phase in substantial baseload nuclear, with a mixed-basket rump, and the hope that some substitutable liquid fuel 'arrives'; hence the 'cornucopian' slur, the implication that a benevolent market or technoscience will meet the demand as wishful thinking. It may, but relying on serendipity as a global strategy seems insufficient on many levels.

Buying time as a synonym for systemic inertia, to be crude.

Again, I'd be less critical if I saw a clearer Plan B or C as a fallback or failsafe, comparable to 70/20/10 planning, which brings us directly back to resilience and the virtues of diversity.
 

Mr BoShambles

jambiguous
Canadian National Post reports on a fledgling permaculture movement in Palestine (West Bank).

Read more on the homepage of Green Intifada:

Green Intifada is a community based, grassroots democratic movement; aiming to rebuild Palestinian society upon the ethics of sound environmental practice, sustainability and community cohesion. Green Intifada is not an organisation. It is the beginnings of a network of organisations, working together for social transformation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Not read this yet but it looks interesting:

‘Peak Oil’ Is a Waste of Energy, Michael Lynch, NYT

eh I dunno man. it's really depends who you ask, pro or con. that "fuzzy logic" bit he mentioned seems to extend out over the whole business. I reckon it's just too complex to model accurately, so instead you get a lot of educated (or not) guessing, hedged by various agendas - this dude, for example, is an "energy consultant", which I'm 99% certain really means "lobbyist". I'm not saying that peak oil proponents (wrong word, but you know what I mean) have flawless science either, they tend to disagree with each other as much as anything. it's very difficult to make predictions based on incomplete data & anticipated technological advances that may or may not allow us to extract more oil in a cost-effective fashion. I will say tho that that piece reads like oil industry propaganda, whether it is or not.
EDIT - just checked, it is oil industry propaganda. Michael Lynch is the President & Director of Global Petroleum Service at Strategic Energy & Economic Research Inc. that doesn't make peak oil any more or less real but it does make me, yunno, skeptical.

& screw a bunch of this anyway:
but we can’t let the false threat of disappearing oil lead the government to throw money away on harebrained renewable energy schemes or impose unnecessary and expensive conservation measures on a public already struggling through tough economic times.
 
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zhao

there are no accidents
Not read this yet but it looks interesting:

‘Peak Oil’ Is a Waste of Energy, Michael Lynch, NYT


"don't worry, keep consuming and polluting at unprecedented rates, everything will be fine! (or so Exxon Mobile which pays my bills told me to say)"

and "instability in Venezuela and Nigeria" ? "instability"??? right... like saying a 4th degree burn victim paralyzed from catastrophic muscle damage is "experiencing some discomfort"
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
but wait, what's that sigh for? our lefty skepticism or Michael Lynch's dubious affiliations? or just a throw up your hands in the air with the whole issue?

I'm also glad Zhao & I finally agree on something. tho I think dude's point about "instability" & so on wasn't that those places aren't effed up, but that stuff in oil-producing countries is always effed up, & the answer is to find/invest in oil in places that aren't so effed up. which, I mean, doesn't sound all that great (or entirely possible - surely if there were more stable oil producing countries to invest that's what the industry would be doing...? tho I guess that's what Lynch claims they are doing, I dunno).
 

Mr BoShambles

jambiguous
innit vim... stop huffing and puffing and explain yourself bwoi.

not reads the article yet. generally though, it seems to me that debates about when precisely peak oil occurred or will occur (or foolish outright denial of the whole 'peak oil' concept) have a worrying tendancy to obscure more important discussions that focus on what we can do to make the transition to a non fossil fuel based society less painful. we know that fossil fuels are a finite resource so we have little alternative but to accept the inevitability of this transition. technological innovation in renewables certainly can help but it is not, nor cannot ever be, sufficient in itself. deeply engrained patterns of thought and behaviour in relation to energy production and consumption need to be altered. since energy flows underpin all material aspects of life, the implications of this are pretty massive. but the problems that we face are not insurmountable.

i recommend downloading a free copy of this interesting read: low impact development

edit: just re-read earlier posts and realised that i sound like a stuck record! i guess when it comes to peak oil, for me anyway, there ain't much more to say -- irrespective of Micheal Lynch and his "clever" headline :p so i'll shut up now.
 
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