Permaculture as a Guide?

Found another beauty of an article to share with you. Comes from The Oil Drum, who's mission is to, "...facilitate civil, evidence-based discussions about energy and its impact on our future."

The discussion in question on this occassion was from George Mobus, Associate Professor of Computing & Software Systems at the University of Washington, Tacoma, who asked, "Can we solve two problems at once - unemployment and preparing for power down?"

I draw this to your attention as Permaculture gets quite a mention in the arguments made:

"Over the next twenty years the US and the world will need to transition from an industrial agriculture model to one based on permaculture and more organic, labor intensive approaches to growing food. Oil is going to decline, meaning that diesel fuels to run tractors and combines will become increasingly costly. And natural gas, meaning fertilizers, will also go into decline. The era of agribusiness is coming to a close sooner than anybody might have imagined. And we are not prepared for what follows."

"Agribusiness has relied so heavily on the elements of the so-called Green Revolution, fertilizers, irrigation, and pesticides along with massive and complex delivery vehicles, all made from or run on fossil fuels. At the same time, the very use of these elements has depleted the natural capacities of regional soils. In some cases it has killed off soil microbes that are essential for natural ecosystems to survive and thrive. And that is the way we will need to understand our food production, as a natural, though assisted, ecosystem (the whole point of permaculture). Now that the soils have been so badly damaged it will take years of careful management to rebuild the natural capacities of these soils. And it won't be done with tractors so much as with compost, shovels, and horse-drawn wagons and plows"

"As another, even more valuable benefit to young workers in such a program, we could provide a free education in the technical and principled basis of permaculture. Our future society will depend on permaculture for not just sustenance but for intellectual guidance in how to live in the natural world."

I don't need to add anything really!

http://campfire.theoildrum.com/node/6877