Carbon Trading Under Scrutiny
Alternatives to Political Systems, DVDs/Books, Economics, Ethical Investment, Global Warming/Climate Change, People Systems, Society, Village Development — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor June 1, 2010
People for or against carbon trading would do well to download and read these two excellent new publications
There are a great many Joe Publics out there naively hand-wringing and even taking to the streets to protest over their government’s inability to implement carbon trading. But I’d propose they take a good look at the documents featured here, and consider the old proverb: "Be careful what you wish for, because you may get it."
I’ve personally been watching the carbon trading shenanigans for several years now, and from the earliest days it was clearly a case of obfuscation, delays and trying to get out of a mess using the same thinking that got us there in the first place. Rather than the systemic economic rethink we require, carbon trading is an attempt to patch the gaping holes in neo-liberal capitalism, to keep it afloat a little longer, whilst allowing those causing the greatest destruction to continue reaping the greatest rewards. Carbon offsetting concepts are based on the assumption that perpetual growth, consumer-based capitalism is our only option and must be preserved at any cost. It’s an attempt to bypass reality.
Comments (1)FRESH Movie Screening: Sydney May 28th
Community Projects, Consumerism, DVDs/Books, News, Social Gatherings, Society, Village Development — by Milkwood Permaculture May 13, 2010
Milkwood is hosting a screening of new documentary FRESH at 7pm on Friday, May 28th, at Alexandria Park Community Center in Sydney. The screening is free and everyone’s welcome. Directions to the venue are here.
Regeneration – an Earth Saving Evolution
Compost, Conservation, DVDs/Books, Food Shortages, Fungi, Irrigation, Regional Water Cycle, Rehabilitation, Salination, Soil Biology, Soil Composition, Soil Conservation, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Structure, Water Contaminaton & Loss, peak oil — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor May 8, 2010
 Regeneration – an Earth Saving Evolution How biological farming builds healthier soils, healthier plants, healthier animals and certain hope in an uncertain world. |
In a kind of army style ‘about-face’, society is increasingly turning away from the reductionist, extractive agriculture that rushed onto the world after WWII. Today people are, thankfully, realising that you cannot convert biodiverse natural systems into monocultures – into a factory floor environment – and expect success. With the soils that support all life on this planet getting rapidly eroded and diminished in critical organic matter, people are realising that farming is far more about biology than it is about chemistry, more about feeding the soil than feeding the plant, and are realising that our futures, our very survival, depends on our coming to grips with biological processes and learning to harness them.
I’ve just uploaded the new Regeneration – an Earth Saving Revolution DVD to our online store. This DVD examines the thoughts and work of some of the many individuals who are now leading the way forward in farming techniques that are simultaneously highly productive and entirely sustainable. It’s an inspiration-packed DVD that’s worth circulating to all.
Our survival now truly depends on how fast this kind of information can be made to pervade society at all levels, and how rapidly we can rebuild society to accommodate, integrate and harmonise with it.
Trailer to follow:
Permaculture Design Certificate Course DVD Collection
Courses/Workshops, DVDs/Books, For Sale, News — by Tagari April 28, 2010
with Bill Mollison and Geoff Lawton
Join Bill Mollison and Geoff Lawton for an entire PDC lecture series in the comfort of your own home.
Refresh your experiences from the course or use this collection as an exceptional resource tool for any future projects you may have.
Be one of the first to own this incredible power house of information.
The DVD collection is suitable for use with NTSC systems and is region free. Some MacIntosh computers may have trouble playing these discs but suitable software upgrades may assist with this issue.
“Can you imagine a Design Course in every home?” Lisa Mollison, 2010
Click here for more info and to purchase.
Comments (33)The Calgary Permaculture Community Group Presents, An Evening of Permaculture with Geoff Lawton
Community Projects, Conferences, Courses/Workshops, DVDs/Books, Social Gatherings — by Rob Avis April 14, 2010
The newly formed Calgary Permaculture Community group is proud to be screening Geoff Lawton’s Introduction to Permaculture DVD followed by a Q&A session with Geoff Lawton of the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia. The event will be held on April 17th at 6:00pm at the John Dutton Theatre. After the screening of Introduction to Permaculture, Geoff Lawton will be skyping in from Australia to answer all of your permaculture related questions.
Click here to open a 390kb PDF of details.
For more information please contact calgarypermaculture (at) gmail.com
Permaculture Calgary website: www.permaculturecalgary.org
Comments (0)Tagari Photo Competiton for New Intro to Permaculture Book Cover
DVDs/Books — by Tagari April 13, 2010
Tagari Publications are presenting an outstanding opportunity to see you and/or your permaculture project on either the front or back cover of Introduction to Permaculture. We are reprinting this very popular book and would love to incorporate photos you have taken of permaculture in practice. We will be selecting several images from different locations around the world to create a photomontage and yours could be a part of it.
Photos must be images that you have taken and in digital format that are suitable for high quality print reproduction – JPG, TIF and PDF formats are preferable (maximum file size 4mb). We also require that each person in the image must sign a “talent release” form (PDF) which transfers ownership of the image to Tagari Publications and allows us to reproduce it.
We are seeking several images and whoever gets chosen will receive one copy of the newly printed book and a $100 gift certificate to use at our online store.
Be quick as we would like to reprint the book as soon as we can so this offer ends Wednesday, April 29, 2010.
Please send images and signed talent release form to: production [at] tagari.com. We look forward to seeing your photos and good luck.
Comments (0)The Calgary Permaculture Community Group Presents, An Evening of Permaculture with Geoff Lawton
Community Projects, Conferences, Courses/Workshops, DVDs/Books, Social Gatherings — by Rob Avis March 31, 2010
The newly formed Calgary Permaculture Community group is proud to be screening Geoff Lawton’s Introduction to Permaculture DVD followed by a Q&A session with Geoff Lawton of the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia. The event will be held on April 17th at 6:00pm at the John Dutton Theatre. After the screening of Introduction to Permaculture, Geoff Lawton will be skyping in from Australia to answer all of your permaculture related questions.
Click here to open a 390kb PDF of details.
For more information please contact calgarypermaculture (at) gmail.com
Permaculture Calgary website: www.permaculturecalgary.org
Comments (1)Introducing the Permaculture Designers’ Manual, Chapter 1: Introduction to Permaculture
DVDs/Books — by Jesse Lemieux March 24, 2010
This is the first in a series of fourteen introductory articles about permaculture — one for each chapter of Bill Mollison’s “Permaculture: A Designers’ Manual.” Through this series I will connect theory with practice, and share practical examples of permaculture in action.
Permaculture design is a system of assembling conceptual, material and strategic components in a pattern which functions to benefit life in all its forms. It provides a sustainable and secure place for living things on earth. While each component is important, permaculture is less about the things themselves and more about how the things fit together.
Permaculture does not dwell on the negative. While we maintain a healthy awareness of present day problems, we are more focused on the positive, continually asking the question "what do we want?"
Few people would argue that our global and local environments are on the down-hill slide, but it is important that we cut clearly through the mass of misinformation and half-truths that exist. Only by getting to the heart of the matter can we reasonably design a plan to change things.
Comments (12)Resources for Herbs, Sprouts and Survival Foods
Consumerism, DVDs/Books, Food Forests, Food Plants - Annual, Food Plants - Perennial, Food Shortages, Medicinal Plants, peak oil — by Isabell Shipard February 2, 2010
When Derrick, Isabell, and children Angela, Vicky and RIcky, shifted to Nambour in the hinterland of Queensland’s Sunshine Coast over 30 years ago, our desire was have land to grow our own food and be as self-sufficient as possible. We bought an acre of land and soon realized that a bigger block of land would be the way to go, so that we could have our own milk, meat and eggs. We purchased a larger 20 acre block, with approximately 10 acres of cleared land on the outskirts of Nambour.
It was about this time, that we heard Bill Mollison speak on Permaculture, with zones, to encourage a design plan that integrates the environment, plants and people with a vision of possibilities.
Vegetable and herb gardens were started and fruit trees were planted. Poultry, dairy goats, pigs and milking cows were added. Derrick being very gifted with skills of building fences, sheds, and as ‘a fix-it man’ was able to do many and varied tasks on the farm. Derrick, being a butcher by trade, was also able to turn the animals into cuts of meat for the freezer, mince into sausages, meat into smoked hams.
Comments (8)Bill Mollison’s 1981 Permaculture Lecture Notes: New Edition
Courses/Workshops, DVDs/Books — by Thomas Fischbacher January 20, 2010
Bill Mollison teaching with Geoff Lawton at Trinity College, Melbourne, 2009
Photo © Craig Mackintosh
In 1981, Bill Mollison gave a Permaculture Design course for which Dan Hemenway produced lecture notes. While these originally were made available as a set of pamphlets for a small copying fee, they have been available on the web for quite some time, in PDF form, like here (3.5mb PDF), for example.
While the social and cultural context has changed quite dramatically in the last 30 years, and this material hence does not reflect that change, these pamphlets still provide quite a useful free resource that explains permaculture in detail. While the Permaculture Designers’ Manual certainly presents many ideas in a more accessible way than these transcripts of Bill Mollison’s lectures, they nevertheless are an often quite useful complementary resource. This holds in particular for a few issues which are presented in a slightly cryptic way in the Permaculture Designers’ Manual and benefit from an alternative explanation.
A re-edited version of this material, both in the form of HTML web pages as well as a PDF (using LaTeX-based typesetting which, hopefully, should be more homogeneous and easier to read than the original) is now available here: http://www.soton.ac.uk/~doctom/teaching/permaculture/PDC/index.html
This also provides a number of explanatory footnotes that should help to both provide more background on some ideas, and put them into more recent context.
Comments (1)Farmers’ Handbook
Courses/Workshops, DVDs/Books — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor January 6, 2010
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. – Chinese Proverb
Worldwide, mainstream aid projects tend to deal with the symptoms of problems, rather than the problems themselves. In fact, often aid projects actually exacerbate the root issue, by supply free food and clothing that undermines the ability of people on the ground to make a living. In other words, we put them out of their low carbon business, forcing them off the land into cities where they must become part of the consumer treadmill, or perish.
But, sometimes, people with clear heads and unselfish hearts manage to help in much more substantial ways. The links to follow are to individual chapters of a Farmers’ Handbook created by Chris Evans (UK) and Jakob Jespersen (Denmark), who have spent considerable time in Nepal, helping to develop locally appropriate methods and technologies that can help the people of Nepal live better lives, and sustainably so.
Although the information is specifically tailored for Himalayan conditions, almost everyone will find some useful ideas and information in this comprehensive work. The whole handbook is 50 chapters in 5 volumes – a total of 792 pages, including 170 pages of colour photos and illustrations.
Aside from gleaning valuable ideas for your own region, I post this work, with permission, in the hope it will inspire others to do likewise for their own region and climate zone. This is the kind of information sharing that will move humanity onto a sustainable platform of peace and low carbon prosperity.
Please note: These files are free for personal use and circulation (please just link to this page), but can not be used for commercial purposes. They are copyright of Chris Evans and Jakob Jespersen. The Farmers’ Handbook is also still in a draft form and any suggestions of improvement are welcomed. Chris has the original editable version – if people are interested to translate this production into another language, or offer other suggestions, please contact Chris on: cevans (at) gn.apc.org
All files to follow are PDFs.
Comments (25)In Transition – the Movie
Alternatives to Political Systems, Community Projects, Consumerism, DVDs/Books, Eco-Villages, Economics, Food Shortages, Global Warming/Climate Change, People Systems, Society, Urban Projects, Village Development, peak oil — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor December 15, 2009
In Transition 1.0: from oil dependence to local resilience, available now!
The title says it all. Sit back and enjoy the latest work from the Transition Towns movement. You can watch in parts via YouTube below, or if you prefer, catch the whole thing in one hit on Vimeo.
‘In Transition’ is the first detailed film about the Transition movement filmed by those that know it best, those who are making it happen on the ground. The Transition movement is about communities around the world responding to peak oil and climate change with creativity, imagination and humour, and setting about rebuilding their local economies and communities. It is positive, solutions focused, viral and fun. – TransitionCulture.org
Part I
Discounts on Our Most Popular DVDs
DVDs/Books — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor December 4, 2009
We’re currently running a special on the following selected DVDs:
- Introduction to Permaculture Design DVD
- Food Forest DVD
- Water Harvesting DVD
Regardless of the mix of the above three DVDs, orders of 10-19 DVDs attract a 10% discount. Orders of 20 or more attract a 20% discount.
Discounts are applied automatically within the ordering system.
Head to our online store to find out more about the DVDs and to order.
Comments (1)Greening the Desert II Video – Greening the Middle East
DVDs/Books — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor November 17, 2009
Sorry, this video has moved. Please go here instead.
Comments (16)
The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice and Sustainability
DVDs/Books — by Rhamis Kent October 11, 2009
 The Vegetarian Myth |
We’ve been told that a vegetarian diet can feed the hungry, honor the animals, and save the planet. Lierre Keith believed in that plant-based diet and spent twenty years as a vegan. But in The Vegetarian Myth, she argues that we’ve been led astray–not by our longings for a just and sustainable world, but by our ignorance.
The truth is that agriculture is a relentless assault against the planet, and more of the same won’t save us. In service to annual grains, humans have devastated prairies and forests, driven countless species extinct, altered the climate, and destroyed the topsoil–the basis of life itself. Keith argues that if we are to save this planet, our food must be an act of profound and abiding repair: it must come from inside living communities, not be imposed across them.
Part memoir, part nutritional primer, and part political manifesto, The Vegetarian Myth will challenge everything you thought you knew about food politics.
