waking up the world to Peak Soil

Hi Patrick,

Soil is the basis of our civilisation. Yet it's done away with as if it were plain dirt. How can we make people understand its importance before it's too late?

With sense of humus,

Marc

Show dramatic before and after: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBLZmwlPa8A

Hi Tyler,

Yes, that's a start. Great documentary, by the way. It's been on Dutch television. No change whatsoever.

No wait, yes: university people start claiming that in order to feed the 9 billion in 2050, we need to intensify food production. We need to go way beyond the boundaries of our planet in order to feed the world. Someone claims there will be 9 billion people; someone else tries to work out how to create as much phantom carrying capacity as technologically possible.

The world has gone utterly mad!

With sense of humus,

Marc

Personally I think the most effective thing we can do is change our own personal ways of life as well as show other examples of people doing things a different way. Some people feel protest, even violent resistance, is effective and I think they should do that if they feel it is their way.

http://deepgreenresistance.org/

I changed my life considerably and yes, that helps a bit. People start eating organic, while you thought that they never would. But if you stop beating nature down, you start getting complaints. And there seems to be no way to get through to them; they are prejudiced beyond all hope, it would seem. How do you penetrate that?

And yes, resistance is our duty.

With sense of humus,

Marc

I haven't personally gotten complaints, so I can't give any suggestions.

Maybe someone else will have some ideas.

Hello Marc,

Sorry I haven't replied to your post before now. Somehow I didn't get the notification. I wish I could give a positive and practical answer to the question of how we alert people to the importance of soil - and many other aspects of human ecology - before it's too late. I've been wrestling with this one for 35 years and the solution just seems to fade away into the distance. We're very aware that you need to start changing before you're forced to and equally aware that the great majority of people won't change till they're forced to.

As I see it what we have to do is to focus on creating a viable alternative. This doesn't only mean the technical side of permaculture but also the human side. Here I think it's hard to overestimate the importance of working at the community level. Governments are always too little too late, as individuals it's all too daunting, but bang in the middle of the two is the community level and I there I believe the hope lies.

In fact there are some signs of hope. For example in this report to the United Nations, which states that agroecology (ie permaculture), not industrial agriculture, is the only viable way the world is going to feed itself in the future. http://www.srfood.org/index.php/en/component/content/article/1174-report-agroecology-and-the-right-to-food

Ideas and accepted wisdom can change faster than we sometimes think.

Hi Patrick,

Thanks for your reply - better late than never! I think your conclusion is the same as mine: we need a major crisis / catastrophe to wake people up. Which means we shouldn't wait for the majority but change things for them; exactly the same way multinationals do that, but in a positive, non-monetary way.

Sounds like Transition Towns are the way to go after all. Pity the Dutch are slow to pick up that; way too few people are active.

Your last remark is true, luckily. We just need to find the catalyst. But if we don't, nature will provide one. But it won't be pretty.

Thanks & keep up the good work!

Marc

Marc Siepman wrote:they are prejudiced beyond all hope, it would seem. How do you penetrate that?

A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

Max Planck

Marc Siepman wrote:I changed my life considerably and yes, that helps a bit. People start eating organic, while you thought that they never would. But if you stop beating nature down, you start getting complaints. And there seems to be no way to get through to them; they are prejudiced beyond all hope, it would seem. How do you penetrate that?

And yes, resistance is our duty.

With sense of humus,

Marc

Sharing the surplus really helps keep down complaints!

Tyler Ludens wrote:Show dramatic before and after: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBLZmwlPa8A

good
on you Jon lieu!
Did you see that guy in ethiopa wearing a Master tree growers hat!
Good on you Rowen Ried!
sureley ludi deserves an apple for that one Paul!