back to the garden - carbon and humus

permaculture is about discovering nature/god's patterns and implementing them in our agriculture, and indeed our culture as a whole. if life has a number, it's the number six: carbon.

carbon exists in many forms. of course, it is concentrated in fossil fuels, the burning of which puts carbon into the air as greenhouse gases.

but carbon is also found in living things. the burning of forests and the erosion of living soil, or humus, also puts carbon into the air.

david holmgren, in Permaculture: Principles & Pathways Beyond Sustainability, writes that a "valuable storage of carbon is created when we simply allow plant material to rot back into the soil. Organic matter, especially carbon-rich bulky plant materials, is the fuel for soil micro-organisms, which in turn are the key to the cycling and availability of plant nutrients." p. 36.

"Changing the management of farmland to use organic and permaculture strategies and techniques can rebuild this storage of carbon... It is arguably the greatest single contribution we can make to ensure the future survival of humanity." p. 37.

"Alan Yeoman ... has arguewd that loss of humus from agricultural soils is as large a contributor to greenhouse gas emissions as motor cars, and that achievable increases in humus across the world's farming soils could reabsorb the whole of the damaging imbalance of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere." p. 39

to be continued...

sustainable differences

in an open journal post, i mentioned that even within the local community there are divergent views which cause paralysis. take 'sustainability' fer instance. in my girlfriend's group, some members believe that we cannot sustain our culture at the current energy levels and we must prepare for a low-energy future. others in the group believe we'll find a technological solution that will enable us to continue our high-energy lifestyle with some degree of sustainable adaptation .

high-energy or low, even the notion of sustainability is uncertain. david holmgren writes, in Permaculture: Principles & Pathways Beyond Sustainability (p. xxx):

The lack of any reasonable definition of sustainability has left it open to inevitable appropriation by the corporate spin doctors. But even the most genuine and useful sustainability concepts including permaculture contain an ambiguity about sustainability as a state or a process. Once we accept the reality and magnitude of energy descent, we begin to ask what "sustainability", "sustainable systems" or "sustainable system design" might mean. Even the idea of permanence at the heart of permaculture is problematic to say the least.

...In articulating Permaculture as the Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability, I am suggesting that we need to get over our naive and simplistic notions of sustainability as a likely reality for ourselves or even our grandchildren and instead accept that our task is use our familiarity with continuous change to adapt to energy descent.

[emphasis is in the original]

"We are a throw-away society and that is a measure of our poor stewardship of our wealth."

Ain't that the truth.

The greater truth is that we each possess an infinite capacity to change and the ability to choose change for the better.

Day 5's post has a lot of great ideas.
Day 5: Abandon disposables
from Thirty Days Towards Sustainability

"Bruce Cockburn: Telling the Truth About the Human Condition"

E Magazine interview:

"Canadian singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn's 29th album, Life Short Call Now (Rounder) is being released this month and it continues to showcase his unique position as a sometimes-angry analyst of the world scene...

"Cockburn, a devout Christian, is a regular reader of E Magazine and a passionate advocate for environmental causes. His songs take on such challenging topics as the International Monetary Fund's lending practice and the damage caused by land mines. This interview with him took place in New York City, near the beginning of a U.S. tour that continues through September 17."


read more from Bruce Cockburn: Telling the Truth About the Human Condition. ... the last paragraph is perhaps the best part.

30 Days Towards Sustainability

A new series highlighting practical actions people can do to move towards a more sustainable lifestyle.

last night of beta

the final topic was about generosity, specifically monetary generosity. i enjoyed the nicky gumble talk vey much, and the discussion afterwards, too. our small group was even smaller tonight: six, including the two leaders. the discussion was as much about acquisitiveness as it was about generosity, and it ranged from personal experiences to global concerns, to which last night's film, an inconvenient truth, was influential.

what next? many ideas were cast about, but nothing firm because, as k pointed out, september schedules have to settle into place before we can decide; also, its a diverse group and the members will probably seek individual paths.