Great little permie/peak oil video

This was just uploaded today: a video in which Richard Heinberg explains why the end of growth could = more happiness. At the same time, there's a tour of he and his wife's permaculture property. Not a shred of lawn to be seen - what an inspiration. Anyway, there's probably not much new in it for most of the folks here, but I do like hearing what he has to say and any permie garden tour is worth the time. It's about 15 minutes. Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl8ZHDQQY7I

thanks! made me look up the Luddites.

well done back yard. If I can get mine there, that would be sweet.

Embedding for convenience.  Still a great video!

I'll throw a good followup on there to build upon the ideas even more. This is one of my very favorite TedTalks - Shani Graham talks about taking a suburban street and turning it into a community, intentionally. This is an idea she and her husband got from David Holmgren's "retrofitting the suburbs" permaculture teachings. It could be done almost anywhere, and turn suburbs into more pleasant, connected and cohesive places to live using permaculture principles.

Once, when the Earth was young, its atmosphere was a nasty mix of CO2 and Methane. No oxygen. Maybe down by a hydrothermal vent in the ocean life was stirring. Some of them got near the surface and needed pigments to protect them from the sun. So happened some of these pigments also helped absorb light and channel energy into the metabolism. So they got to eat CO2 and pollute the planet with oxygen - which was very detrimental to many other species. But these proto-plants developed into the plant kingdom, and buried all that carbon. So if you think we're a good way through the Earth's stockpile, think again: there's enough down there to really scupper the climate. It's within the ingenuity of mankind to extract it all. If we're really Homo sapiens, the wise one, we'll quit ASAP.
We have a unique role on this planet: we alone have the capacity to sense large meteors on a collision course, and we're not far off being able to deflect them, and protect all the other surviving life-forms. We may need fossil fuels to do so. And in the long distant future, the Sun will become a red giant, starting to swallow up the innermost planets. Time to go swapping solar systems - that'll be a long ride, a long time before we get there, during which the Earth would have to be coccooned to retain energy, and burn existing stocks slowly. I don't know if that'll be possible, but if we're still around, that'd be our duty to try.

Kim, thank you so much for sharing this- I think this may be my new favorite ted talk. Very inspiring, and gives me a lot of hope that these sorts of things can, and are being done.

Kim Goodwin wrote:I'll throw a good followup on there to build upon the ideas even more. This is one of my very favorite TedTalks - Shani Graham talks about taking a suburban street and turning it into a community, intentionally. This is an idea she and her husband got from David Holmgren's "retrofitting the suburbs" permaculture teachings. It could be done almost anywhere, and turn suburbs into more pleasant, connected and cohesive places to live using permaculture principles.

Sienna Scott wrote:Kim, thank you so much for sharing this- I think this may be my new favorite ted talk. Very inspiring, and gives me a lot of hope that these sorts of things can, and are being done.

Sienna, your welcome! Thank you for letting me know. I've reposted that link a lot, and I start to wonder sometimes if I will annoy people. ha!

Continuing along the lines of this thread, here is David Holmgren's book - RetroSuburbia: the downshifter’s guide to a resilient future.

[Holmgren's] 592 page manual shows how Australians can downshift and retrofit their homes, gardens, communities and, above all, themselves to be more self-organised, sustainable and resilient into an uncertain future. It promises a challenging but exciting mix of satisfying work, a more meaningful way of living and hope for the next generation.

RetroSuburbia is divided into three main sections: the Built, the Biological and the Behavioural along with the introductory section ‘Setting the scene’.

Ultimately, people will need to relearn how to cooperate, rather than compete all the time. This can be done!  People are doing it all over. Many societies are already far more cooperative than many others, take a look at the huge permaculture projects going on in India, for example.

Here is another set of favorite videos - India's Water Revolution, videos by Andrew Millison. Those are whole communities working together.  They are rural, still it very inspiring to see these sorts of transformations done by the people, for the people.  These things are happening all over the world, and thanks to the awesome people documenting them, we can all share and learn from them more easily now.

Looks like I've got a new book to read. Thanks again Kim!