I don't usually do this, just post the work of others that is, but the following resonated so strongly with me I felt I had very little choice but to pass it on.

Statement by Hopi Elders

You have been telling the people that this is the Eleventh Hour.
Now you must go back and tell the people that this is The Hour.

Here are the things that must be considered:

Where are you living?
What are you doing?
What are your relationships?
Are you in right relation?
Where is your water?
Know our garden.
It is time to speak your Truth.
Create your community.
Be good to each other.
And do not look outside yourself for the leader.

This could be a good time!

There is a river flowing now very fast.
It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid.
They will try to hold on to the shore.
They will feel like they are being torn apart, and they will suffer greatly.

Know the river has its destination.
The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off toward the middle of the river,
keep our eyes open, and our heads above the water.

See who is there with you and celebrate.

At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally, least of all ourselves!
For the moment we do, our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt.

The time of the lonely wolf is over.
Gather yourselves!

Banish the word struggle from your attitude and vocabulary.

All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.

We are the ones we have been waiting for.

The Elders,
Oraibi, Arizona
Hopi Nation

Here in the UK we have been inundated by news of the scandalous expenses claims our honourable elected representatives (members of parliament) have been making. Yes it is utterly disgraceful.

But...

The sums of money involved are dwarfed into insignificance by the huge sums of tax payers money the very same government has poured into the banks and businesses whose unscrupulous lending and borrowing created the financial meltdown in the first place.

But...

While these are both serious issues, though on different scales, my point is that the stories have completely displaced all other news, leading me to consider that the news we hear and see on the media is not the real news or the news we need to hear.

In particular, the real news, which we currently do not get to hear about, relates to the two most serious challenges we humans have ever faced, namely peak energy and climate change which are intimately connected and directly or indirectly are responsible for most of the stresses now becoming really obvious in many countries throughout the world (species extinction, critical materials depletion, water depletion, fragility of the food supply, population pressures, financial instability).

With regard to peak energy (or peak everything) it is becoming clearer that the energy accounting methods used by governments and even scientists have been wholly inadequate in estimating the real worth of energy reserves on Earth (proven, probable and possible) and the possible production rates (how quickly we can get the stuff -oil, coal, gas- out of the ground). This has led to erroneous thinking and decision making that have left countries almost totally unprepared for the challenges to come.

In brief:

1. the possible rates of production have been over estimated; that is, the speed with which we can get energy reserves (oil, gas, coal) out of the ground and into a useable form. This means that even with coal, we will not be able to get it out of the ground and distributed rapidly enough to supply our current energy needs, let alone future demand.

2. the energy return on energy invested (EROEI) has been fudged or even ignored. Tapping the first big oil fields produced EROEI  ratios of up to 1:100 (that's 100 barrels of oil out of the ground for just 1 barrel expended doing the work). This has dropped to as low as 1:7 and for Biofuels from corn oil, for example, the ratio becomes pathetically small at 1:1.6.

3. the quality of the energy source has not been given sufficient consideration, if any. The coal tar shales in Canada, for example, are an extremely low quality form of energy which require considerable inputs of energy to extract and refine to a usable quality with huge environmental costs (eg greenhouse gas emissions). Yet the reserves are assessed in barrels of oil as though they were of the same quality. On the financial markets, these "barrels of oil" are considered to be assets, as with other "proven" reserves, even before they are got out of the ground.

4. All current energy sources and projected alternatives come with energy costs (embodied energy costs in infrastructure, training of skilled workforces, production of equipment, distribution etc as well as energy costs through use). These energy costs will initially be oil dependent and will feed back into increased speed of climate change.

What this means is that without an almost magical solution like cheap, efficient, cold fusion we are looking at an energy descent. This has very profound repercussions, not least of which is the fact that in a continuously shrinking (the forbidden word) economy, capitalism, with its requirement for continual growth in order to pay the compound interest on debt, will no longer work.

The level of ignorance among heads of states regarding the situation is almost unbelievable.

Please forgive the vent of frustration at the end of the title there, as the financial turmoil continues and the banking system that led to the whole sorry credit crunch business in the first place is being propped up at huge cost. The money, as with most money, has simply been conjured into being by yet more financial wizards, as more debt. It is us, our children and probably their children, who will have to do the real work to pay it back.

So, thinking money, I did a little web research of how much "we" have spent so far. I usually précis guided tours of my holding with the words "Don't believe a word I say," or rather, "Don't just believe what I say; listen, ideally with an open mind but question everything I say." The same applies equally here.

The BBC web site puts the UK sum poured into the banks and economy at about £964 billion, so far. Here's the link to the article;

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7893317.stm

That's a lot of money. It seems to me both tragic and bizarre that we are spending such huge sums of money to support a financial system that is essentially unfair and has demonstrably increased the division between rich and poor, both nationally and globally. Further, the other main beneficiaries of the spending spree have been industries that are key players in generating CO2 emissions, such as the motor industry.

If we look at the estimated costs of dealing with climate change we find various figures. The European Union suggests that Britain will need to spend between £4.4 billion and £6.3 billion per year to achieve its CO2 reduction target of 80% by 2050; Open Europe, an independent think tank, suggest £9 billion per year. Going by the larger figure that gives a total spend of about £369 billion by 2050. Yet we have paid out more than twice that amount in less than six months bailing out banks. That deserves saying again:

Here in the Britain, in the last six months, we have spent more than twice what it would cost us achieve our 2050 CO2 emissions reduction target of 80%, and we've spent it on systems which generate or encourage the generation of CO2 emissions.

If we look at the international response to the financial melt down, its much the same. An article in the Guardian,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2006/oct/29/greenpolitics.politics

suggests that the price of failing to act now on climate change will be £3.68 trillion. How much have the US and UK spent on shoring up the financial system in the last six months? £6.8 trillion. Aaaaarrggghhh!!

Well, I would not be alone in suggesting that we are probably at a point where we need to carry out a complete system re-design and I don't mean of just the banks or even the economy, I mean of everything we do, our whole involvement with Earth, within whom we live and move and have our being.

Big task? Yes, as permaculture designers are heard to say, I can't do it alone, there probably needs to be at least three of us...and of course, really, there are many, many more of us and people like us and our voices are being heard more and more clearly and more loudly. And the absurdities of the current systems are becoming more and more obvious.

So, rather than prop up discredited systems, we could instead embrace the challenge of climate change. If we spend the money there, on designing and creating genuinely sustainable systems, we will generate millions of jobs and probably have a lot more fun doing it. We may even be able to avert a catastrophic temperature rise.

My strategy of choice for a major system re-design of our interaction with Earth and each other would be permaculture design. Though not necessarily perfect, I think the 72 hour permaculture design course is still about the best, most accessible, empowering introduction to positive, practical eco-social action that I've come across in the last thirty years or so. Let's do it.

I've spoken previously here (29-12-07 blog number 16) about the idea that large organisations can be seen as A.I.'s (Artificial Intelligences, although, as I said before, I'm tempted to refer to them as A.S.'s, as in Artificial Stupids). A recent documentary I watched, "The Corporation", (more info at www.thecorporation.com) confirmed some aspects of this idea and raised further interesting possibilities.

According to the documentary, a Corporation is classed in law as an individual, having much the same rights as human beings in that they (it) can buy and sell property and goods, sue and be sued, buy other corporations and such like.

During the documentary, the behaviour of corporations was compared to the behaviour of psychopaths, using criteria developed by respected bodies, such as the UN. These criteria included the following points; callous unconcern for the feelings of others, incapacity to maintain enduring relationships, reckless disregard for the safety of others, deceitfulness: repeated lying and conning of others for profit, incapacity to experience guilt and failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviour. It was not difficult to demonstrate that corporations fulfilled all these major criteria for psychopathy.

Before I pursue this idea further, I want to draw in a few more strands.

The economic turbulence of the past few months has raised a lot of questions about how such a thing could occur when we apparently have rules and regulations to govern the behaviour of financial institutions. I'm reminded here of the ant colony where individual ants follow a very limited set of rules that govern their behaviour and, lo, the ant heap arises as an emergent property of the combination of the myriad individual behaviours. No individual ant is aware of this process; there is no ant king or queen directing the individual ants. It is simply (!) a consequence of individuals carrying out their individual actions according to a set of rules.

Is a similar process applicable in our economic system? The primary goal of corporations, as defined in laws (rules) governing their existence, is to pay dividends to shareholders. This primary goal takes precedence over any other limiting factor, whether social, environmental or personal. Similarly, rules govern the behaviour of bankers, and no one, apparently, has really broken the rules.

It is important to realise that most of the people who are employed by corporations probably live decent enough lives outside of their work; with family and friends they may well be loving and generous. But within the corporate workspace, their individual, well intended actions can combine to produce extraordinarily ruthless behaviour.

There are several points here, "I'm just doing my job" being the obvious one but its also worth noting the infamous behaviourist experiment where volunteers were encouraged to give apparently increasingly powerful electric shocks to another individual at the request of an authority figure. This they did, even when they thought the other individual was suffering extreme pain. So it is ok to do something because it is my job, I was told to do it by someone important (my boss, the government etc), I had no choice, everyone else does it, its not against the rules.

A further strand to add in here is the bird of paradise evolving its hugely ornate tail. A longer, more elaborate tail was more successful at attracting a mate, thus the birds with longer more elaborate tails passed on their genes, leading to the evolution of longer and longer and more and more elaborate tails.

If we apply this to what seems to have happened in the financial system, we can see how the gradual tweaking of the limits of rules led, for example, to the steady increase in bonuses for bankers as multiples of their salaries (up to ten times a salary of £150,000 to £300,000 per year) or the increasingly risky loans that were being handed out. In the case of the bird of paradise, the limit to the maximum length and elaboracy of their tails is governed by the ability to still feed, fly, reproduce and so pass on their genes. So If an individual bird's tail is so ridiculously long and elaborate it is a physical encumbrance, they die and the genes are not passed on.

In regards to the economic system, we can see that there is a clear correspondence between the rules that govern individuals (human or corporate AI) and the behaviour of the whole system. The rules we have currently been operating by have led to the emergent property we can loosely call global capitalist consumerism. Currently governments, such as the UK and US, are looking at re-writing some of the rules governing financial institutions in an attempt to limit the bird of paradise effect (so its ok to get rich but not stupidly rich).

But it is important to remember that the economic system, human beings, human communities and the environment are all classed as complex systems and there are various characteristics that are common to all complex systems. Any changes in the rules (or starting conditions) of the system, will alter the emergent properties of the system. Very small changes can have very profound effects. Complex systems are, at some level, inherently unpredictable (think about the weather). Another way to put this rather baldly is that "we don't really know what we are doing". So be careful; we have already seen how rushing into things can actually make things worse, despite our best intentions (see my blog 18-05-07 Biofuels, the disaster, for example).

To finally return to corporations and pathology, it might be worth us thinking of corporations as artificial intelligences which are currently insane. One interesting possibility arising from this is that a keen legal eagle could take a corporation to court on the grounds of insanity, have it sectioned as criminally insane and committed to a mental institution, though what form that institution would take is another matter. A further, perhaps more positive approach may be to consider what form of therapy might be suitable for a mad corporate AI.

Over the years I have come across various utterances and exhortations as to what we should do in order to be healthy, happy, fulfilled, enlightened or whatever. Its interesting to see a number of common elements appearing and have these affirmed through my own life experience. Given that one of permaculture design's three main components is the use of principles based on the observation of nature, I now feel ready to present the following exhortations of my own except, though they are not really exhortations, only musings.

To kick off, a few years ago a Sunday newspaper here in the UK did some basic research into various countries or areas of the world where people generally seemed to live longer than average lifespans. The researchers were expecting to find something common about their diets but the eventual conclusions were quite different. The common elements were not particular foods but rather certain shared attitudes and practices, as outlined in the following list.

Cultivate life-long friendships
Lead an active life
Never stop learning

More recently I read an article in Resurgence by Brian Eno where he pointed out that there was considerable evidence that the following practices helped promote healthy, fulfilling lives;

Singing
Dancing
Camping

And even more recently I found the New Economics Foundation presenting five ways to wellbeing that struck similar chords. The whole article can be found here:

http://www.neweconomics.org/gen/neffiveadaytowellbeing221008.aspx

The gist of it is as follows with quotes from the full article by way of explanation;

1. Connect

"With the people around you. With family, friends, colleagues and neighbours. At home, work, school or in your local community. Think of these as the cornerstones of your life and invest time in developing them. Building these connections will support and enrich you every day."

2. Be active

"Go for a walk or run. Step outside. Cycle. Play a game. Garden. Dance. Exercising makes you feel good. Most importantly, discover a physical activity you enjoy; one that suits your level of mobility and fitness."

3. Take notice

"Be curious. Catch sight of the beautiful. Remark on the unusual. Notice the changing seasons. Savour the moment, whether you are on a train, eating lunch or talking to friends. Be aware of the world around you and what you are feeling. Reflecting on your experiences will help you appreciate what matters to you."

4. Keep learning

"Try something new. Rediscover an old interest. Sign up for that course. Take on a different responsibility at work. Fix a bike. Learn to play an instrument or how to cook your favourite food. Set a challenge you will enjoy achieving. Learning new things will make you more confident, as well as being fun to do."

5. Give

"Do something nice for a friend, or a stranger. Thank someone. Smile. Volunteer your time. Join a community group. Look out, as well as in. Seeing yourself, and your happiness, linked to the wider community can be incredibly rewarding and will create connections with the people around you."

Given the Economy's demonstration of its own fallibility I am reminded that the simple things are often the most beneficial.

Here at Penrhos I started the wilderness regeneration project back in 1986, fencing off about two thirds of an acre from grazing animals and just letting it go. Back then I'd been unable to find any examples of anyone who had done it in Britain, though I'm sure people had, somewhere.  The root of the word "wild" is "willed", as in, having a will of its own; wild is not bad, it is the will of nature.

Over the next several decades the scrap of previously battered, rough grazing I called Argel (sanctuary in Cymraeg or Welsh) has been allowed to express its own will with boggling results. In permaculture design we talk about natural systems, like forests, being our universities and certainly Argel has been one of my greatest teachers during my almost daily visits over that first five year period before we got the temporary permission to live here.

I wander down from our dwelling less frequently now but every time is a combination of lesson, retreat, pleasure, recuperation, inspiration, amongst many other things. I wandered in the wilderness last week and was once again amazed at the transformations that continue to occur.  Argel's expression of the will of nature has moved through distinct stages of development or phase transitions, from the initial formation of gorse clumps into thickets with clearings to tree canopy and forest floor, to name a few. (You can find more details here www.konsk.co.uk//design/regen.htm)

Lately more grass has been appearing under the trees and I realised another phase transition has occurred. The tree canopy that formed above the gorse and bramble tangles, denying them light and effectively finishing off their stage of the development, created new, open spaces in which to walk. I assumed that this was the approach of a climax cover and marked some sort of peak. As is often the case here, my assumption has been proved wrong.

This first tree canopy was made up of mainly pioneer species, predominantly birch and willow. As they have grown up higher, they've tended to race each other for the light and the canopy has actually opened out between their nodding crowns, allowing light to once more penetrate to the forest floor. This fresh flash of light has triggered a whole new range of growth, including grasses but also encouraging slower growing oak and hazel to burst into renewed vigour.

So the gorse and thicket stage has conditioned the soil and initially suppressed grasses, allowing the pioneer trees to dart upwards. This explosion of young tree growth eventually ended the dominance of gorse and thickets but gives way in turn to the longer term, more permanent species, likely to be oak and ash as the high canopy with hazel and elder as an understory.

As always, I am inclined to transfer these environmental and ecologic patterns to the social and personal spheres. Pioneers (people and ideas) are crucial at a certain stage of development but they will inevitably give way to settlers at some point and this is only right.

I find this replicated in our current actions here, converting our barn to a dwelling that will lead at some point to the dismantling of our pioneering home of caravan and "attached timber annex" (as described by the Snowdonia national Park).  Similarly, my wild, pioneering ideas are stabilising into coherent thoughts that are easy to present to others.

I am reassured that all seems to be progressing as an expression of will, as in the return of true wilderness, to person, people and place.

Here's a quote from President Obasanjo of Nigeria after the 2000 G8 summit in Okinawa:

"All we borrowed up to 1985 or 1986 was about $5 billion. So far we have paid back about $16 billion. Yet we're being told that we still owe about $28 billion...because of foreign creditors' interest rates...If you ask me what is the worst thing in the world, I will say it is compound interest rates."

President Obasanjo is qoted in an article "Enlightened Economics" by Colin Tudge in Resurgence, May/June 2008. He goes on to point out that in 2000, the developing world was spending thirteen dollars on debt repayment for every one dollar it received in aid and grants.

He also describes how in Germany in 2004, 80% of people who work for their living pay out about twice as much in interest as they receive from their various investments, while about 10% pay out about the same amount as they receive.  The remaining 10% receive all the interest paid out by the 80% which in 2004 was about a billion euros every day. The equivalent rate of transfer in the UK is likely to be even higher.

Its an excellent article and clearly points out the utter absurdity of the Governments of rich nations declaring a "war on poverty" whilst presiding over an economic system in which the rich are bound to grow richer while the poor grow poorer. Basically, the current economic structure is systematic theft.

How do you feel about that, oh compassionate capitalists?

Its becoming clearer to people that mechanised, chemical farming comes with a very high energy cost. Organic farming is an improvement as there is no use of chemical fertilisers which themselves require significant amounts of energy to produce. However, the mechanised aspect largely remains and in fact, organic farming can mean an increase in the use of machinery to keep crops weed free. Then of course as the food is usually grown a considerable distance from where it is eaten, there's the energy costs of transportation and often additional costs through processing.
 
On a square metre by square metre comparison, gardening is far more productive, energy efficient and ultimately profitable than both conventional, mechanised, chemical agriculture and organic farming. For a start, even in a temperate climate, a gardener can usually get two (and sometimes three) different crops in the same square metre during the course of a year (stacking in time, in terms of permaculture principles), whereas conventional mechanised agriculture will tend towards just one, leaving the ground bare for part of the year.

A gardener can also grow two (or more) different types of crop in the same square metre at the same time (companion planting, or stacking in space). The individual yields from each species may be lower than growing them by themselves but the sum of the yields is greater. If the companions are carefully chosen to be mutually beneficial, the individual yields may actually be higher. My great friend and gardener, Mistress Lou, grows runner beans with sweetcorn and squash in the same space, for example.

And why stop at just two or three when more complex polycultures can be even more productive? If we enlarge our square metre to say five, then we gardeners can squeeze in a food tree as well and develop food forest gardens that begin to mimic the complexity of natural systems; self watering, self mulching, self fertilising. Yet all this is far too complex for mechanised agriculture to manage and harvest, so management and yield of complex food systems is intimately related to scale.

One of the mistakes made during the (so called) green revolution in our thinking on world food production was to measure only in terms of single yield systems, any comparisons always being made against mechanised, chemical, agriculture. Thus when conventional agriculturalists measured yields in “poor” countries, they measured, for example, the total yield of wheat per acre. This involved discounting the other crops that the “poor” farmers grew with their wheat; anything that wasn’t wheat was seen as a "weed", a problem.

So two or more other crops that were in there with the wheat, often other types of grain, were discounted. The resulting yield for the wheat that was left could then be declared low in comparison to mechanised, chemical agriculture. The result was that the “poor” farmers were encouraged to use chemical fertilisers to boost their wheat yield and herbicides to knock out the “weeds”.

Thus we repeated our historic simplification of polycultures, of complex systems, reducing them to monocultural, single species deserts that made the majority of people redundant and sent them off to cities looking for work while binding the remainder to chemical inputs. Bah!

I recently saw "Power in Community" as part of a local transition town initiative. The film documents Cuba's experience of the near total collapse in its oil supply that occurred as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the US trade embargo. Once cheap oil is removed from the equation, everything has to change. Food becomes local and organic, more people become involved in growing (in Cuba, up from less than 5% of the population to 24%), obesity disappears, the population becomes fitter, the status of small scale farmers (gardeners) becomes much enhanced and they become relatively wealthy.

In the future, the bulk of the food grown on the planet will be grown not on farms but in gardens and market gardens; I look forward to the time when the gardeners shall inherit the earth.

In contrast to previous entries, this is short and to the point (!).

A relatively new permaculture designer's wiki has come to my attention and I found an excellent piece on discussion and dialogue. It relates to the ideas of one of my favourite physicists (Master Bohm) and applies to pods, forums and the like as well as "real world" interactions. Makes interesting reading and is quite short so here's the link:

http://passionatedialogue.pbwiki.com/#Articles

In 1989 I attended an advanced permaculture design course led by Bill Mollison (co-founder, with David Holmgren, of permaculture design) at Ragman's Lane Farm in Gloucestershire. It was an opportune moment and an inspiring course.

Among other things, Bill spoke about a tribal role that has no parallel in modern times that he tentatively referred to as the crop master/mistress. It fell to this person to oversee and manage tribal and environmental resources by observing and interpreting correspondences in the whole system (environment and tribe). This role was fundamental to the continued existence and well being of the tribe and the environment and involved decisions that we might see as hard in the extreme.

As an example he mentioned the Koori, the Australian aborigines, where the crop master/mistress might relate specific observations (the flowering of a particular plant, the song of a certain bird, the patterns of cloud) to longer term occurrences, such as the possibility of an extended drought. By relating the observations to the information contained in the oral tradition, various steps might need to be taken.

The crop master/mistress may then decide to remove, say, red kangaroo from the tribal menu; it was no longer to be hunted until further observations and correspondences were made that allowed hunting of the red kangaroo to begin again, even if this meant starvation for some members of the tribe. The crux being that if the red kangaroo was hunted now, population levels would fall below a certain point, or other effects would accrue through the hunting that would mean that the whole tribe would be threatened by starvation. That is, crop master/mistress would lay down rules for the benefit of the whole tribe and the environment, even if this meant that individuals might suffer unto death.

Thinking about this role has both inspired and terrified me over the years.

I have a great interest in the ancient world and being a resident of Cymru (Wales) a particular interest in the Celts and in turn, the druidic traditions. From my studies of pre-history and archaeology, it seems likely that the people who came to be known as the Celts in Europe formed from a blending of two cultures. One, a war like horse culture moved west across Europe from about 1000BC onwards, bringing masculine sky gods with them. However, in western Europe it seems they did not just conquer the mother goddess peoples who were already there but instead assimilated, or were assimilated themselves, by the existing culture. Hence the Celtic mythologies contain both the masculine sky gods and the mother goddesses and the society was notable (and unusual) for its treatment of women who could be "kings", divorce their husbands, own property, train as warriors and the like (as an aside, it was only with the growth of the Celtic church that the status of women was gradually eroded).

Like the Koori, the Celts relied on an aural tradition to pass knowledge down through time and, also like the Koori, that aural tradition was founded in song and verse, which is the easiest way to remember large amounts of information. To progress through the order of druids one was required to learn literally tens of thousands of verses; indeed, one of the three orders of the druids was the bardic order itself. Thus, knowledge of astronomy, navigation, natural history, law, geneology, prediction of future events from current observation etc.etc was all contained in verse.

It seems to me that druidic tradition relates to the role of crop master/mistress and may well have grown from that tribal role in the original mother goddess peoples of western Europe. While the Celts were strongly independent as distinct clans/families/tribes, the druids provided an overall "glue" that held the larger society together, mediating stresses that arose between the independent groups; mention is made in historical sources of druids separating fighting armies and bringing an end to conflicts that threatened the larger whole.

It is interesting in our current cultural context to consider the lack of this role. While many people are well aware of the enormous environmental and social challenges we face, many are waiting for our "leaders" to do something, to get tough  and set the rules, restrict our activities (take fossil fuels "off the menu", for example).

However, our current cultural context is radically different. In tribal times, protection of the (whole) tribe and the environment was paramount and the main focus of tribal law was concerned with this. The individual was, to an extent, expendable. For us in "westernised" cultures however, the emphasis of law moved to the protection of the individual and the individuals property and it is only relatively recently that environmental laws have appeared.

From an integral perspective it seems to me that we need to accept this role in ourselves and for ourselves. It is for us as individuals to make the hard decisions to safeguard our communities and environments. In so doing we may find that it is not so hard after all, especially if we find supportive sisters and brothers to aid us in our choices.