Tony Keyman

Sorry guys, but for me the dissonance remains. The endgame for the whole permaculture movement is to get 100% of human beings on this planet to live sustainably, right? Therefore providing the maximum amount of knowledge to the maximum number of people is the optimal startegy. That's pure logic. I'm not denying Geoff's doing great things, I'm merely pointing out that making most of your knowledge freely available is less effective than making all of your knowledge freely available.

@ Tyler, agreed about the Food Forest dvd, but there are numerous other titles produced by Eco Films and to watch them all you have to fork out several hundred dollars.

@ Paul, there is a crucial difference between me and Mr Lawton: I never claimed that I want to change the way our civilization operates, and Mr. Lawton makes that very claim. Films produced by him contain very useful knowledge and he's got every right to charge money for that knowledge. My point is, there is a major dissonance between saying "I want as many people as possible to properly apply the principles of permaculture" and then saying "I'll show you some ways to apply permaculture for free, but if you want to learn the whole thing you need to pay me"

I enjoy Geoff's videos and appreciate all the work he's doing, but the fact that he's selling those DVDs is a bit problematic. He says he wants to change the world, he wants to help people move from mindless consumption to a more meaningful and sustainable lifestyle. And then he goes on and charges money for his videos. If he's serious about changing the world why wouldn't he want to reach as many people as possible by making the videos a free download? A decent hd camera, some editing software and a pc is all he uses, this stuff is really inexpensive these days. You can host them for free on youtube and other websites, and make money on ads placed next to the video. I know he has a youtube channel but you can only view samples there.

Also physical DVDs require a significant amount of resources to produce and ship, making the stuff available on the net would surely be much better for the environment!