Wind’s Impact is Just a Breeze

SUBHEAD: Hawaii's challenges stall wind energy source’s unlimited potential. By Sophie Cocke on 20 September 2010 in Pacific Business News (http://pacific.bizjournals.com/pacific/stories/2010/09/20/story2.html?b=1284955200%5E3963521)

Image above: Windmills at South Point on the Big Island. From (http://www.geo.cornell.edu/geology/classes/hawaii/photos/photos_2001.html).

A 100-kilowatt wind turbine will soon hover atop a 120-foot-high tower owned by the Hawaii Water Service Co. on the Big Island. Or, at least that is what’s planned.

But so far the process for the single wind turbine in Waikoloa has been far from easy. Hawaii County zoning ordinances require a use permit, which took six months to secure, planning department approval, which is ongoing, and a building permit, which is expected to take another four to six months.

“There needs to be more certainty on the county levels to streamline wind energy permits, and clarity on exactly where and what kind of wind system uses each county wants to permit.” said Leo Caires, president of Gen-X Energy Development in Haiku, Maui, which is partnering with Boulder, Colo.-based NexGen Energy Partners for the project’s financing. “Technology can be deployed only as fast as local policies are developed.”

This story’s look at wind energy and its role in Hawaii’s push for energy independence is the third in an occasional series designed to analyze the status of our state’s alternative-energy options, where the best opportunities lie and what’s needed to overcome myriad obstacles.

There are currently four operational wind farms on Maui and the Big Island, and four more in various stages of development. Currently, about 9 percent of Maui’s energy comes from wind and about 12 percent of the Big Island’s supply. First Wind is planning to expand the 30 megawatt Kaheawa Power Project on West Maui by 21 megawatts, and San Diego-based Sempra Generation hopes to begin a 22-megawatt wind farm at Ulupalakua Ranch in upcountry Maui. The Kauai Electric Utility Cooperative has signed an agreement with UPC Kauai Wind Power for a 10.5-megawatt to 15-megawatt project, and Oahu has its own plans for wind on the North Shore. Boston-based First Wind has broken ground on a 30-megawatt project in Kahuku, but the biggest plans for powering Hawaii’s most populous island with wind energy are intended for Molokai and Lanai.

Wind technology has come a long way since the first-generation wind turbines of the 1980s, and even on a small scale the energy delivered can rival the price of oil if turbines are constructed under favorable wind conditions. Small wind turbines can range from $3,000 to $5,000 per kilowatt capacity, with commercial turbines reaching more than $2 million, according to Windindustry, a nonprofit industry group.

But the permitting process has strangled businesses hoping to take advantage of Hawaii’s abundant wind resources.

“It’s a very tough hurdle to get small wind going,” said Nick Dizon of Honolulu Nidon Clean Energy, a renewable-energy design and engineering company that has been working with state and county government agencies to improve the process. “If that’s all we did, we’d be broke.”

Part of the draw of so-called “small wind” — as opposed to large-scale wind farms whose primary function is to sell capacity to utility companies — is that it can work in sync with agriculture. Farmers can get paid for selling energy from wind turbines installed on their land back to utility companies, and the process doesn’t disrupt farming practices. But difficulties with permitting remain an obstacle.

“I have farmers on Maui who tomorrow would sign a contract, but if we have to do all the land-use permitting — and investors don’t want to wait for every approval — it can seem like a very long task to do,” said Caires.

Once approved, it takes only one to three days to put up a wind turbine.

County-level proposals are currently under review for expediting the process, including an initiative on Maui that will help extend wind energy to residential areas. An unknown number of off-grid and grid-tied wind turbines power homes and businesses, particularly in remote rural regions of Hawaii, and the state Department of Transportation has installed 16 small-scale wind turbines to power its airfield along Lagoon Drive on Oahu.

As small wind struggles to get a foothold, large utility-scale projects are lumbering ahead.

In addition to their own permitting processes, big wind must also contend with the Public Utility Commission’s competitive bidding process. Implemented two years ago, the requirement pertains to projects of more than 5 megawatts on Oahu and 2.7 megawatts on Maui and the Big Island. While well-intentioned, the process has bogged down energy projects.

“It’s a three- to four-year process to get a project moving before you can even start putting a spade in the ground,” said Karl Stahlkopf, a partner at Kairos Energy Capital, a Honolulu merchant bank specializing in renewable-energy projects. Formerly, project developers could engage in bilateral negotiations with Hawaiian Electric.

The process can be a drain on investment.

“That’s got to go away,” said Stahlkopf of the bidding requirement. “Because if it doesn’t, we’re going to end up with either a lot of sub-optimal size projects — very small — or end up with no projects at all because of the difficulties in getting through all the hoops to get projects done. Capital is going to redeploy itself to places where it can be deployed quicker, more efficiently, and with appropriate rates of return having to deal with the risk.”

Despite the laborious permitting, bidding and approval procedures, Hawaii remains an attractive investment because of its high average wind speeds, the state’s aggressive clean-energy policy and high electricity prices, which can be as high as 38 cents per kilowatt hour for businesses in some parts of the state.

The state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism, and utilities, are moving aggressively to integrate utility-scale wind farms into Hawaii’s energy mix.

Oahu lacks the abundant wind of other islands, but has by far the highest energy needs. In concert with Castle & Cooke and First Wind, Hawaiian Electric hopes to lay a $1 billion cable between Oahu and two neighbor islands that will pull 400 megawatts from proposed wind farms on Molokai and Lanai. If successful, the wind energy could provide 20 percent of Oahu’s annual energy needs.

The cost of the project could total roughly $3 billion, according to Ted Peck, the state’s energy administrator. Required grid upgrades would be financed by Hawaiian Electric, and the state would be responsible for finding financing for the undersea cable. The wind farm developers would be responsible for financing their operations.

“But $6 billion is the cost of the petroleum for the next 20 years that will be displaced by these wind farms,” Peck said.

Permits for the project still need to be secured, but perhaps the largest obstacle lies in the location of the wind farms. Neither the electric grids of Lanai or Molokai can tolerate the high penetration of energy, meaning the residents of the islands will have to bear the effects of roughly 100 to 175 wind turbines blanketing their islands without reaping the benefits. On Lanai, the wind farms could cover a fourth of the island and disrupt the hunting and fishing practices of a highly sustainable population, as well as disturb cultural and archeological sites.

“It’s tough to get an appreciation of how this will affect our island,” said Butch Gima of Lanaians for Sensible Growth, a community advocacy organization. “Even residents have a hard time conceptualizing it. When we presented a 3-D model, people were just flabbergasted. People on Oahu need to understand that out-of-sight, out-of-mind does not relieve them of the responsibility to address this issue.”

Hawaiian Electric, which has been meeting regularly with residents of the islands, acknowledges the burden of the projects and the need to give something back in return, but what this would amount to remains unclear.

While major efforts are under way to secure the project, Peck said it wasn’t a done deal.

“We know that there are community concerns, and it’s critical that they are addressed,” said Peck. “The environmental impact statement is going to do a robust analysis of alternatives, and we are looking at everything to get us to a clean-energy future and get us off this drug called oil that is so dangerous to our communities.”

While Hawaii’s islands may not be dotted with wind turbines overnight, rising oil costs, national security concerns and an aggressive commitment by the state and utility companies to switch to alternatives nearly ensures that wind will play an increasing role in the state’s energy future. Though like the intermittent nature of the wind itself, the process may not always be smooth.

Current and proposed wind projects, by island, project and company

Maui • Kaheawa Power Project First-Wind: 30 mw online, A 27 mw expansion is proposed • Auwahi Wind Project Sempra Generation: 40 mw Big Island • Pakini Nui Wind Farm Apollo Energy Corp.: 20.5 mw online • Hawi Wind Farm Hawi Renewable Development: 10.5 mw online • Lalamilo Wells Wind Farm Hawaii Electric Light Co.: 1.2 mw online

Kauai Kauai Electric UPC Kauai Wind Power: 10.5 – 15 mw proposed Lanai Lanai Wind Farm Castle & Cooke: 200 mw proposed Molokai Molokai Wind Farm First Wind: 200 mw proposed Oahu Kahuku Wind Farm First Wind: 30 mw proposed

Hawaii's Farm Future

SUBHEAD: The islands' diversified farmers rise to the challenge of sustainability amid uphill conditions.

Image above: Vast farmer's market on a Saturday morning in Hilo, Hawaii, under the tarp. From (http://www.purpleroofs.com/newsletters2006/061108/hilo.html). By Dave Koga on 26 September 2010 in Star-Advertiser - (http://www.staradvertiser.com/editorials/20100926_Hawaiis_farm_futureFertile_fields.html)

Introduction

In 2008, a report from the University of Hawaii-Manoa and the state Department of Agriculture estimated that between 85 percent and 90 percent of the state's food was imported every year and concluded that there wasn't much anyone could do to change the situation.

" ... Even though Hawaii can conceivably grow anything that we consume, the quest to achieve 100% food self-sufficiency is impractical, unattainable and perhaps impossible, as it imposes too high a cost for society," the researchers said.

Hawaii's relatively small farms could never match the output or efficiency of the vast mechanized farms on the mainland, the report said. Island products would always be more expensive to grow and buy.

Still, the report was more a call to arms than a dark prophecy.

Pointing out that Hawaii's geographic isolation left its food supply vulnerable to disruptions caused by forces and events beyond control, such as fuel costs, shipping strikes and farm production fluctuations, the report said it was of vital importance that the state not overlook the value of a small but thriving home-grown market.

A healthy agricultural base not only serves as a buffer against outside forces, it provides residents with fresher, tastier, healthier food and could put millions of dollars back into the island economy, the report said.

"I think we are at the crossroads," says Dr. Matthew Loke, administrator of the state's Agricultural Development Division and a co-author of the 2008 report with Dr. PingSun Leung of UH-Manoa's College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources. "Whether we can seize those opportunities or not, that's our challenge."

"Sustainability" drives today's farmers

They came from around the state: ranchers and farmers gathering to hear about the latest techniques and technology, to show their products and to network at last week's Hawaii Agricultural Conference at the Ihilani Resort in Ko Olina.

They listened to speakers such as Kyle Datta, a founding partner with Pierre and Pam Omidyar's Ulupono Initiative, which will be investing in sustainable agricultural projects; learned how M&H Kaneshiro Farm on Kauai speeds composting by using green waste as bedding in its pig pens; and munched on a "Gourmet Locavore Lunch" based on Kanu Hawaii's Eat Local Challenge.

This was the new face of agriculture in Hawaii: smarter, more streamlined and focused.

"Agriculture's not dead here, it's just different," says Jim Hollyer, program manager of UH-Manoa's Agricultural Development in the American Pacific Program. "There's a huge collage of opportunities out there."

That's a stark contrast to island agriculture's not-too-distant past.

Once, a lot of working people in Hawaii knew the fields. Knew hoe hana.

In the 1930s, more than 50,000 from a population of 370,000 worked the flumes and furrows of 254,500 acres of sugar cane.

In 1959, it was said that sugar signed the paycheck of one in 12 workers.

As late as 1970, sugar and pineapple, though eclipsed by tourism as Hawaii's driving industry, still employed 76 percent of the agricultural workforce, with 9,500 laborers.

But for all that human effort and turning of land, it was a one-sided partnership.

For a place that had come to be defined by agriculture, Hawaii saw virtually nothing in kitchen-table returns for the massive investments of money, machinery and manpower over the years. The harvests were always meant for others.

Folks could put sugar in their coffee. They could slice a pineapple now and then. But day to day, it was largely subsistence gathering, backyard gardening and the canned goods that came off the barges that filled stomachs.

"Twenty, 30 years ago, we didn't even think about where our food was coming from," Hollyer says. "We just brought in whatever we ate. It wasn't a priority to be self-sufficient."

These days, with "sustainability" a buzzword, the emphasis has shifted toward feeding Hawaii.

Diversified crop operations are producing a variety of fruits and vegetables such as cabbage, onions, eggplants, string beans, tomatoes, sweet corn, sweet potatoes, broccoli, bananas, watermelon, cantaloupes and honeydew melons.

Smaller specialty farms are growing hydroponic lettuce, vanilla beans, heirloom tomatoes, strawberries and herbs.

"It's not so much a matter of whether we can grow stuff," Hollyer says. "We can grow almost anything here. It's just, how do we grow it cheaply enough?"

Easing the islands' dependence on imported food, even on a modest scale, figures to be a huge task.

Farmers here face unique hurdles, foremost being the acquisition of large parcels of land.

Where many mainland operations are family farms that have been passed from generation to generation, almost all of Hawaii's farmers lease because of the price of land and have no guarantees of longevity.

"Landowners are developers," said Milton Agader, who leases 300 acres and specializes in asparagus at Twin Bridge Farm in Waialua. "They're always going to be looking to get the most for their buck. That's how all the ag lands have disappeared.

"The end of our farm is going to be when the land is sold."

Agader would like to see the state become more involved in protecting agricultural lands.

"They say the state doesn't have any money, but I think they have a lot of expensive zoned land in Kakaako that businesses would love," he says. "Maybe they could make a trade -- one acre for 300 acres."

Then there is labor.

The National Agricultural Statistics Service says Hawaii's paid agricultural workforce is down to an estimated 6,250.

Recent headlines suggest that might be a factor in some disturbing revelations.

Brothers Alex and Mike Sou, who operate 3,000-acre Aloun Farms in Kapolei, go to trial in November on charges related to human trafficking. They are accused of tricking 44 workers from Thailand into coming to Hawaii and then essentially enslaving them.

The workers say they each paid $20,000 for the chance to earn $9.42 an hour at Aloun Farms. Once here, they say, they were forced to live in storage containers and were threatened with deportation if they complained.

The Sous, using a recruiter, were able to import the workers under the U.S. Department of Agriculture's H-2A program, which allows employers to hire immigrants at lower costs if they anticipate a shortage of American workers.

The Hawaii Farm Bureau Federation has said that many farms are looking to outside labor because island residents no longer want to work in fields.

"I think, more accurately, there is a shortage of people living in Hawaii now who want to fill existing job openings on Hawaii farms at the wages offered," says Hollyer.

"Ag wages are not minimum wage," says Dr. Matthew Loke, the state's Agricultural Development Division administrator and co-author of a 2008 agriculture report with UH-Manoa's College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources. "On average it's about $11.40 an hour.

"But you have to work all day in the sun. It's hard work. Kids today would rather work in the mall where there's air conditioning.

"So to feed expectations, maybe $11.40 is not enough. Maybe it needs to be $14.40. But in order to pay workers $14.40, you have to really be selling some high-end stuff. You can't do that with watermelons."

Not all farms are struggling. Some have found comfortable niches.

In Aiea, siblings Barbara and David Sumida produce 5 tons of watercress a week, or 70 percent of the state's supply, at their 10-acre, 11-employee Sumida Farm, which has been in the family since 1928.

"It's a lot of hard work," David says, "and the demand is always greater than the supply.

"But we feel fortunate. We wanted to keep the farm in the family, so it's like we're the keepers of the flame."

Sumida says that while specialty farms will always fill needs in Hawaii, it will be the larger, diversified crop operations like Aloun Farms and Larry Jefts Farm in Kunia that will boost self-sufficiency.

"They're going to have to grow our basic necessities, like cabbage, tomatoes, onion, corn," Sumida says. "They're the ones with the big ideas."

In the end, the question comes down to whether island residents are willing to pay more for food in tough times.

The state Department of Agriculture has been trying to brand local foods with its Hawaii Seal of Quality push -- so far with limited success.

"On the high end, yes, it's worked," Loke says. "Last May we did a retail event at Whole Foods. Just one afternoon, you know, where we had chefs come in to prepare food with local produce. And then we tracked sales for three months after the event.

"On average it went up 37 percent. So it was really good for us and really good for Whole Foods. But that's Kahala.

"A lot of our farmers are so busy farming they don't even have a brand. And if you don't have a brand, how do you tell if it's a local product or not?"

Loke says most consumers can't even distinguish between local and imported eggs ("If it's stamped, it's imported") so education has to be key.

"You have two products. One's a dollar a pound, one's a dollar quarter. If people train themselves, they'll say, 'Hey, I'll buy local,' " Agader says. "But sometimes when huge quantities of mainland products are just dumped on the market at really low prices, there's just no way you can compete."

Monty Richards, the straight-talking, suspender-wearing chairman of the Big Island's Kahua Ranch, asks, "Do you realize that the milk you buy in the supermarket has been double-pasteurized and that it comes from California in big tanks?

"They re-pasteurize it and put it into your nice containers and you take it home and wonder why you don't get much shelf life. Well, it's because it's old milk before you ever got it! Same thing with fruits and vegetables. But they've done such a hell of a good job advertising that people just don't realize it."

Loke sees change coming in small increments.

"Think about it," he says. "If you talk about pumpkins ... before Aloun (Farms), we were importing all of our pumpkins. Now I think we may be 80 percent self-sufficient. Watermelon? I'm sure we're at least 75 percent. We could be totally self-sufficient in pineapples and papayas. Chinese cabbage and head cabbage? Definitely. Sweet potatoes? Definitely. Herbs, for sure.

"It will take time, but I think we can get there."

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Hooser for BLNR Chair!

SUBHEAD: Join our campaign to promote Gary Hooser as Board of Land and Natural Resources Chairperson.

Image above: Gary Hooser advocating beach access in Hawaii. From (http://galfromdownunder.blogspot.com/2008/02/aloha-but-not-in-my-backyard.html).

By Linda Pascatore on 27 September 2010 - Kauai lost a truly great resource when Gary Hooser resigned his State Senate Seat to run for Lieutenant Governor. Gary was a true champion for sustainability, alternative energy, the environment, and for what is right for our island and the state. We are hoping Gary will still play an important role in the future of Hawaii, and one way that could happen would be for Abercrombie (we assume he will be the next governor) to appoint him as the Chairperson of the BLNR (Board of Land and Natural Resources). If you agree, it is time to start lobbying now for Gary! Below is a sample letter to Neil Abercrombie (kauai@neilabercrombie.com) that I sent, and another sent by Frank Hay:

Dear Mr Abercrombie, The people of Kauai lost a great representative when Gary Hooser resigned his State Senate seat to run for Lieutenant Governor. The Democratic Party lost it’s majority leader, who very effectively worked for all the people of our state. I hope that you will find a role for this outstanding leader in your new administration. I would like to suggest that Gary Hooser be appointed as the Chairperson of the Board of Land and Natural Resources. Gary Hooser has been an outstanding advocate for the aina. He has been a consistent advocate for the environment. He has supported land and shoreline conservation, preservation of agricultural lands, and public access to our natural treasures for the people of Hawaii. He has an impeccable environmental record, and has been endorsed by the Sierra Club and other environmental organizations. Since you are a champion for the environment as well, I am sure you can appreciate Gary’s skills in this area. I congratulate you on your primary win, and have confidence that you will win the governor’s seat. Please consider Gary Hooser when you do. Sincerely Yours, Linda Pascatore

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Dear Mr Abercrombie, The people of Kauai lost a great advocate when Gary Hooser resigned his State Senate seat to run for Lieutenant Governor. The Democratic Pary lost its majority leader, who very effectively worked for all the people of our state. I hope that you will find a role for this outstanding leader in your new administration. I would like to suggest that Gary Hooser be appointed as the Chairperson of the Board of Land and Natural Resources. I worked closely with Gary from 2000 to 2008 on the issue of the Koke'e recreation residence leases. The former DLNR chair, Peter Young, as well as the current chair, Laura Thielen, were both adamant in maximizing income to the State. They apparently believed that yet another public auction would serve Hawaii's interests. This was despite the precedent of losing almost half the community and at least seventeen historic cabins in three days of open auction in the summer of 1985 - the first such auction in then 75 years of Kokee history. I had not seen such a bitter confrontation since my service in combat in Viet-Nam. Gary listened to the community and found a better way - direct negotiations with existing leaseholders [HRS 171-44]. He sponsored a bill authorizing DLNR to carry out the provisions of existing law. The leasehold community was offered leases at what we believed were generally fair prices and remained intact. I congratulate you on your primary win, and have confidence that you will win the governor’s seat. Please consider Gary when you do. Me ke aloha, Frank O. Hay A proud Koke'e leaseholder and Hawaii resident since 1963

[Publisher's note: After his defeat in the primary we spoke with Gary on this issue and he was interested in the idea. He said it would be like taking the lemon of losing to Shatz and turning it into lemonade. So many of Hawaii's problems go back to the mishandling of our resources by the DLNR. On Kauai that includes PMR, GMO and Kokee land leases as well as Kalalau and Napali Trail land management (just to name a few). We hope that Malama Kauai, the Sierra Club, Surfriders organization and others will join in urging Neil Abercrombie in appointing Gary to lead the DLNR.]

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Concepts and Themes in Design

SUBHEAD: Chapter 2. Design sustainable human systems that harmonize with the natural world.

By Jesse Lemieux on 22 September 2010 in Permaculture Research Institute - (http://permaculture.org.au/2010/09/22/introducing-the-permaculture-designers-manual-chapter-2-concepts-and-themes-in-design)

Image above: The Caugus Botanical & Cultural Garden on an abandoned sugar plantation in Puerto Rico. From (http://www.visit-the-coqui.com/2010/01/caguas-botanical-garden-where-history-and-nature-blend).

This is the second in a series of fourteen introductory articles about permaculture — one for each chapter of Bill Mollison’s “Permaculture: A Designers’ Manual.” The series was originally initiated back in March of 2010. I only managed to finish and post the first before the Canadian PDC teaching season swept me away.

With the fall slow down I am at the computer again and will get through as many of the remaining chapters as I can between now and November 21st when I start teaching a two week Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) at Zaytuna Farm this coming November. Through this series I will connect theory with practice, and share practical examples of permaculture in action.

As we understand from Chapter 1, permaculture is an ethical system of design that produces a stable and secure place for humans and all other living things. This second installment is about what inspires us and how the functions of natural systems inform the design process.

What are the principles of natural systems? What are our design directives for sustainable systems? What is a working definition of SUSTAINABLE?

Sustainable:
Is Any system which produces and stores enough energy and resources to provide for its ongoing maintenance and reproduction.

Sustainability is about energy and how it is captured, stored, and cycled within a system. Energy is in constant flow and flux moving from one place to another. Energy is always on the move. Energy is all things, continually changing from one form into another: heat, light, water, people, soil, trees, animals, wind, electricity, fuel, sound, cash…et cetera.
In the development of sustainable systems, we almost always need to make a significant investment of energy upfront. Particularly when working in degraded places such as our cities, agricultural lands and clear-cut forests. Permaculture is the design and implementation of systems that produce more resources and energy over their lifetime than was originally expended in their implementation.

This diagram illustrates the basic pattern of the industrial system. It is in constant need of resources and energy input, necessitated by the constant flow of energy and resources out. The waste stream, the net loss, is the most critical component of this system. Without this constant loss there would be no need for a continued consumption and nobody would be making any money.

In the words of Albert Einstein, “we cannot solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” While there are many great and beneficial things that have come out of the industrial pattern, it is not and never will be a pattern for sustainable society. The concept of the consumer is not part of a sustainable future. We need a different model.

There are no evil doers in this system, it’s just the way it has been designed. By our participation we continue to support this self destructive pattern. The challenge we face is the wholesale re-design of systems with out the necessity of wholesale revolution. We have experimented with bloody revolution in the past and it is not a viable option for the present.

How do we make the shift with elegance and grace?

Ecosystems
This diagram outlining the basic pattern of an ecosystem. Ecosystems use the basic energy inputs of the sun, climate and soil. So long as the sun shines this system will continue to function.

The connections between the elements of the system are both direct and indirect exchange of service. There is no free lunch–everything returns. Everything gardens, all species, ourselves included, have an impact. All species play a role in the evolution of the system. We all have a function.

Permaculture focuses on function. It is not diversity alone that generates stability and resilience. There must be functional diversity, a diversity of connections. In truth, the long term survival of a species has nothing to do with competition and brutality. Long term survival is for species that place themselves in most service to the whole. As a species of choice and innovation, we have the unique opportunity to design ourselves into a position of service to all of the natural world. In return we can expect clean air, clean food, clean water, clean communities and long term survival. We may restate the problem as follows:

How do we best become of service to each other and all other things in the biosphere?

Permaculture draws on the themes and principles of ecosystems to assemble endlessly productive and absolutely abundant human habitat. Following the ecosystem model, we have all the information required to design and implement sustainable human habitat.

Permaculture Best Practices:
Design patterns to details.

All we need is to understand the basic patterns of natural systems.
Principles of Natural systems:

• everything is connected to everything else
• every function is supported by many elements
• every element serves many functions

Simple yet profound. Are these principles useful? No. Principles are not very useful. Principles are little more than passive observation. Being people of action, we need directives. We must translate principles into directives.
Permaculture directives for real world design:

• The needs of one element must be met by the yields of another.

• Every critical function must be supported by multiple elements.
• Every element must serve multiple needs.

Our definition of sustainable made use of the term ‘resources.’ Design requires a sound understanding of what a ‘resource’ is and how it functions.
Resources fall into 5 broad categories:

1. Those which increase with modest use (pastures, wood coppice systems) 
2. Those unaffected by use (the wind, a view, water used to turn a water wheel) 
3. Those that degrade if not used (an annual vegetable crop, information) 
4. Those that are reduced by use (fossil fuels, deep aquifers) 
5. Those that degrade other resources if used (nuclear power, herbicide, insecticides, artificial fertilizers, weapons)

Design Directives for ethical and sustainable real world design:

• The majority of resources used must come from categories 1, 2 and 3.
• Use category 4 resources modestly to develop resources in categories 1, 2 and 3.
• Avoid category 5 resources at all costs.

Our design implementation options are limited by our current resource set. We cannot spend money we don’t have and we cannot eat food we have not grown. When making decisions about how to invest our resources we must have a very clear path forward. Below is a set of directives that have never let me down. Of course in the world of debt based currency and centralized global distribution networks, we can spend money we do not have and eat food we have not grown. That is why permaculture starts with the ethic. A conscious choice to divest ourselves from a destructive system, while simultaneously investing in the design of productive systems.

Directives for order of Investment :

• First, invest in elements that produce energy and resources
• Second, invest in elements that save on energy and resources
• Third, invest in elements that consume energy and resources

 Water is the foundational energy system for all life on the planet. Knowing that fact, as permaculture designers we can follow a very simple set of design priorities.

Directive of Real World Design Priority:

• water
• access
• structures

At the very least follow this progression and you will not go wrong. It does not matter what scale, location, or climate. Always think “water, access, structures”. Water and where it is coming from and where it is going are the most important energy consideration of any design. As much as 40% of all the energy consumed by cities is used to move around water.

To sum it all up, permaculture is really about our first step. If our first move is towards the benefit of living systems, which we are all a part of, all subsequent steps will follow along the same path. With clients it is often the case that they need help knowing where to start. “Here’s our 10 acres… what do we do with it?”

My duty as a permaculture designer is to give the project sustainable direction–a starting point for sustainable and emergent design as the user’s needs, experience and skill set change and develop through time. What it boils down to is energy and how it flows through the design. By examining and understanding the basic patterns of how energy and resources move through an ecosystem we gain the insight and knowledge needed to design sustainable human systems that harmonize with the natural world.

Be sure to check back for the Chapter 3 ‘Methods of Design.’

See also:

Ea O Ka Aina: Chapter 1. IntroDuction to Permaculture 9/25/10

Ea O Ka Aina: Permaculture 2 - Multiple Functions 3/28/10
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Crash Course in Resilience

SUBHEAD: Building your personal resilience will increase the chances that you can help others during difficult times.

Image above: Plains Indians campsite. Painting by Tony King, 1006. From (http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/North_America/United_States/West/Montana/Browning/photo498802.htm). By Sarah van Gelder on 17 September 2010 in Yes Magazine - (http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/a-resilient-community/crash-course-in-resilience)

To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival. —Wendell Berry

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. —Victor Frankl

Not long ago, a rocket took off from a Florida launching pad taking Americans to the moon. The moon shot signified to many that Americans could do anything we set our minds to.

Today, in another part of Florida, toxic oil is washing up on beaches. Hundreds of miles of Gulf Coast have been devastated, and people whose resilience was tested by Hurricane Katrina are being tested even more severely today. There are good reasons to believe many more of us will have our resilience tested in coming months and years.

Future historians may see this time as a turning point for Western civilization. In the popular zeitgeist, there is much discussion of end times. Millennialists await the Rapture. New Agers point to prophecies that 2012 will mark the end of the world (but perhaps the beginning of another one).

The End Of Cheap Oil

More secular folks also warn of big changes ahead. Concern about energy supplies is one reason. Author and energy analyst Michael Klare says we have already extracted the oil that’s easy to get; from here on, we’re into the “Age of Tough Oil,” and the human, environmental, and financial cost of each additional barrel of oil will be higher than the last.

Fossil fuels contain millions of years of stored sunlight. A liter of oil, according to Transition Towns founder Rob Hopkins, is the energy equivalent of five weeks of hard human labor. In a society that relies on fossil fuels for transportation, food, warmth, and light, the loss of an abundant and inexpensive form of high-quality energy is no small thing. There simply isn’t anything else out there quite like it, and many geologists believe we are at, or close to, the peak production of this powerful source of energy.

The U.S. Military agrees:

“Assuming the most optimistic ­scenario for improved petroleum production through enhanced recovery means, the development of non-conventional oils (such as oil shales or tar sands) and new discoveries, petroleum production will be hard pressed to meet the expected future demand” - says the Joint Operating Environment 2010, published by the United States Joint Forces Command.

In quiet conversations, many admit that they are learning to grow food and wondering how their children will survive life on a very different planet.

This is not to say that oil will suddenly become unavailable. It does mean getting the oil we depend on will exact a higher and higher toll on people and the environment. Just look at the devastation caused by tar sands development in Canadian forests, the oil spills in the Gulf and now Michigan, and the impact on people as far flung as the Niger Delta and the Amazon.

It also means oil prices are likely to continue rising, especially if the economy starts to expand again, and with China and India’s new energy purchasing power.

Even if we could get ever-increasing quantities of fossil fuels (by using even more coal, for example), we have the problem of climate change. World leaders meeting in Copenhagen failed to come to terms with the biggest threat humans have ever faced—the possibility that runaway climate change could make the Earth uninhabitable.

Scientists point out that the amount of carbon already in the atmosphere will cause further disruption before the climate stabilizes, and no one knows where it will stabilize­—whether the new climate will be anything like the one we count on to water our crops, maintain stable coastlines, and provide adequate supplies of drinking water.

The Economy

On the economic side, corporations have come through the global financial crisis they instigated with bigger profits than ever. But the Main Street economy of real goods and services, with jobs for ordinary people, remains stalled. Decades of tax cuts to the wealthy and the outsourcing of manufacturing have hollowed out the real economy. Our infrastructure is breaking down after years of maintenance deferred by governments starved of tax dollars.

Our military is overextended, too, in its mission to ensure U.S. access to oil and other resources. The costs to wounded and traumatized members of the military and those who care for them, to civilians caught in the battles, to taxpayers, and to future generations have yet to be calculated.

We now have diminished resources to respond to the intertwined economic and energy crises. And our democratic institutions are so compromised by big-money interests—and the media, think tanks, and politicians they control—that these foundational issues aren’t even on the political agenda.

This set of crises may be severe enough to throw our way of life into chaos and decline. We don’t know. In quiet conversations, many admit that they are learning to grow food and wondering how their children will survive life on a very different planet.

For some, of course, the chaos is already here. If you are a fisherman on the Louisiana Coast, a young job seeker in Detroit, a laid-off steelworker in the Ohio Valley, or a wounded Marine just back from Afghanistan, you may already be living in chaos. Some impoverished communities have been in crisis for decades.

The political Right frames the turmoil people are experiencing as a reason to hate immigrants, liberals, or people they say are “moving ahead of you to the front of the line.”

Building Community Resilience

But in communities everywhere, you’ll find people who are working instead to bring people together. They are building their own resilience, and that of their families and communities, so they are better able to withstand the hardships that are already here and those that may be coming. These are not futile attempts to bring back a way of life that is on its way out. Nor is this the bunker mentality of survivalists who look to save themselves regardless of what happens to others. Instead, these are creative, common-sense, low-tech approaches to meeting people’s needs now while planting the seeds of a more sustainable world for everyone.

Food is the most popular example. Across the country, a local food movement has taken off. More and more people are planting backyard gardens, building greenhouses, raising chickens and bees, and starting farmers markets—not just because fresh and local is delicious and cool. These efforts are, in some places, a response to the lack of fresh and healthy food in urban and rural “food deserts.” Food self-reliance is one way people are seeking security and community in an uncertain world.

Those looking for a more direct response to the dual crises of climate change and peak oil are turning to the Transition Town movement. Started by Rob Hopkins, a permaculture activist in the United Kingdom, this movement has spread to hundreds of communities in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, South Africa, Spain, and Sweden, and more than 70 communities in the United States (where hundreds more are, in Transition parlance, “mulling” it over). People are joining who might not have signed up for an environmental or social justice project, but do want to build greater resilience to make it through tough times. Each Transition initiative is autonomous; each is engaged in studying what it means to move to a post-petroleum world; and most are creating spaces for skill-sharing, food production, and various experiments in resilience.

Other efforts do not explicitly link themselves to concerns about peak oil and climate change. But the goals of community resilience and a sustainable future are often in the background as people start up bicycle repair co-ops, neighborhood energy projects, building materials re-use centers, DIY skill-sharing gatherings, swap meets, and eco-villages. Like Transition initiatives, these projects meet immediate needs, raise spirits, and increase people’s chances of thriving during hard times.

Does working locally mean giving up on national policy change?

Community resilience projects can actually help build the political will to move society in more sustainable directions. They remind us that we can make history—starting where we live—and not just be subjected to the decisions of those in power.

As we learn to work together, learn what works, and learn that we have power, we are better able to insist on larger-scale change.

And we need that political clout to divert highway dollars to bicycle paths and efficient mass transit, and to put a halt to sprawl and build smart, walkable communities instead. We may even be able to bring back the American can-do spirit that made that moon shot possible. The new Apollo Alliance aims at making the transition from oil-addicted to clean and sustainable through massive investment in clean energy, green jobs, and energy efficiency.

Three Places to Start

Where do you start to build resilience? The YES! team identified three concepts that we believe can guide a no-regrets approach:

1. Build skills. Many transition initiatives start with learning and teaching skills that are valuable to yourself and others, and that can be practiced without harm to people or nature. If you can repair something, make something, or grow something, offer first aid or do low-tech mechanics, raise farm animals or rig up a solar oven, you can meet some of your immediate needs and swap with neighbors.

Many people had these skills in our grandparents’ generation. Consider drawing on elders to teach the practical skills they know, perhaps swapping for the skills young people know.

Also essential are the interpersonal skills that help people work together to get things done and to resolve conflicts.

2. Learn to live within local means. Work toward replacing products and services brought in from long distances with things you can do, make, harvest, or repurpose locally. Consider introducing small-scale animal husbandry, nut and fruit trees, and food processing facilities. Develop local, clean sources of energy. Help restore natural systems so they can be productive and resilient into the future. Use resources frugally and efficiently, and design things to last and to be reused or repurposed.

Encourage imagination and creativity. Have parties. Create liberated spaces. Celebrate at the drop of a hat.

Include culture and entertainment, and provide opportunities for local artists and performers.

Set it up so people with little cash are included from the start. Develop means to barter, swap, and share. This will help restore your community’s economy, keep the flow of wealth local, and include the unemployed and low-wage workers.

This is a good time to look around and notice who your neighbors are, and to begin building systems of mutual support. This collaboration doesn’t need to be framed by dire warnings about the collapse of civilization. It can be as simple as sharing tools, planting a garden together, or holding a neighborhood potluck. If you start by reaching across class and race lines and across “culture war” divides, you will build a strong foundation for action. When things get difficult, the person who can offer the most may be the guy you argue with about politics but who knows how to fix things. Or it could be the young woman who knows how to bring people together in a song, or the grandmother who remembers how things used to be made by hand.

3. Imagine, adapt, celebrate. Building your personal resilience will increase the chances that you can help loved ones and the broader community during difficult times.

Get physically fit and healthy, and minimize dependence on high-tech medicine and pharmaceuticals.

Get out of debt.

Hone your ability to observe and think for yourself—turn off the pundits, talk to your neighbors, and make up your own mind.

Build a tolerance for uncertainty. A spiritual practice or a calming practice can help you remain centered in times of rapid change.

This may be a time of change, but it needn’t be a time of despair. After all, the enormously expensive (and destructive) way of life we have been living did not bring much happiness or health. By putting life-giving values first, we could well find more rewarding ways of living.

You can begin building more joyous ways of life by making the resilience work itself come alive. Encourage imagination and creativity. Have parties. Create liberated spaces. Celebrate at the drop of a hat. Communities throughout the world share music, dance, and storytelling, in secular and sacred contexts. From Appalachian square dances to Mardi Gras parades, from Native American Sun Dance to holy communion, gatherings and celebrations are the glue that hold a community together.

No Regrets

We don’t know what the future holds. Maybe in our lifetimes, nothing much will change. Although it’s unlikely, maybe offshore drilling, tar-sands oil, energy efficiency, and coal mining will keep our fossil fuel-based economy chugging along, and climate change will be mild enough that we can adapt.

The “no regrets” actions in this issue are worth taking in any case. They are already helping rebuild abandoned communities, like Detroit, as well as those newly devastated by foreclosures and joblessness. They minimize our reliance on natural resources found under other people’s soils and in other people’s rainforests, thus reducing the need to maintain the world’s most costly military empire. They contribute to an economic renewal based on systems that provide things people actually need, instead of throwaways that we only want because of ads. And these initiatives will make us healthier, more connected to other people and to the Earth, and probably happier. There is nothing here you would regret doing. You can think of this as an insurance policy that pays you premiums.

If things do fall apart, taking these actions could mean that people in the future will find the seeds of a new future already planted, literally, in the form of diverse crop strains and livestock, bees, and fruit and nut trees. Local renewable energy sources may not be able to support an energy-extravagant lifestyle, but they may be enough to light the nights, warm us through winter, and keep people in communication with one another and with the vast knowledge commons humanity has built over generations.

We may not have high-tech derivatives trading and landings on the moon. But people may develop greater wisdom along with skills for meeting family and community needs, for getting along, and for exchanging fairly, so that everyone’s gift is welcomed, and everyone has enough.

With that as a foundation, the decline of the industrial/oil era need not mean catastrophe. Instead it could mean we work together to build a wiser era, rooted in place and founded in community.

Hawaii Ahupuaa

SUBHEAD: Traditional Hawaiian land divisions of the Big Island. About 3.5 minutes load.

HAWAII•MAUI•MOLOKAI•LANAI•KAHOOLAWE•OAHU•KAUAI•NIIHAU  

---

For background see also:

Ea O Ka Aina: Mokupuni O Hawaii 9/25/10 

Ea O Ka Aina: Na Mokupuni O Maui Nei 7/31/10

Ea O Ka Aina: Mokupuni O Oahu 11/16/10

Ea O Ka Aina: Na Mokupuni O Kauai Nei 7/31/10  

For downloads of latest Ahupuaa-Moku Maps see:
http://www.islandbreath.org/mokupuni/mokupuni.html

.

Mokupuni O Hawaii

SUBHEAD: The island of Hawaii has been examined for its historical ahupuaa land divisions.  
Image above: GoogleEarth screenshot of Hawaii ahupuaa divisions. Created by Juan Wilson.  

By Juan Wilson on 25 September 2010 for Island Breath -  
(http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2010/09/mokupuni-o-hawaii.html)  

Author's Note on 2/1/12: To obtain the most recent ahupuaa and moku maps of Hawiian islands in PDFs of 24x36 plots, PNG files for publication, KMZ files for GoogleEarth or SHP files for GIS systems visit (http://www.islandbreath.org/mokupuni/mokupuni.html)

Links to the the island's Hawaiian land divisions for Google Earth is now available. Download the zip file below and expand it to a KML file. Open the resulting KML file with Google Earth to see the Ahupuaa and Moku of the island. The data includes elevation contour lines and all streams and rivers. The file is large for Google Earth and can take some several minutes to be up and running. Place this file in "MY PLACES" and save to disk:

Mokupuni O Hawaii
(http://www.islandbreath.org/2010Year/09/100925Hawaii/100925Hawaii.zip) 
 If you do not have GoogleEarth you may also view this ineractive map with your web browser. Note you may be asked to download a GoogleEarth browser plug-in for your browser. The link to the embedded browser is below and has access to all other islands:
 Ea O Ka Aina: Ka Mokupuni o Hawaii 9/25/10  

For the last few years I, with the help of others, including Jonathan Jay and the late Jean Ileialoha Beniamina, have been trying to identify the names and locations of the historic land divisions in Kauai Nei used by Hawaiians to sustainably manage land for centuries. Since this spring that work has been expanded to include all the eight main islands in the Hawaiian chain. The Western Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Council has contracted with IslandBreath.org to map the moku (bioregional) and ahupuaa (watershed) divisions throughout the state.

 On June 1st, 2010, we completed a submission that included the latest version of our maps of Kauai and Niihau. Since then we have been working on Maui Nei (Maui, Molokai, Lanai, Kahoolawe). On August 1st we will deliver that submission with a newly revised version Kauai and Niihau. We are scheduled to submit the Big Island of Hawaii on October 1st 2010, and Oahu on December 1st 2010. We will share the results on this website. An interactive GoogleEarth website embed of each island will be provided as well as a reproducible image.

Research indicates that historically there have been changes in the mapping of ahupuaa. It depended not only on the cultural, historic and geographic knowledge of the cartographer, but the motivation behind doing the map. It is likely that the need to manage resources increased as they were utilized by an expanding population.

Certainly, over the centuries how they were managed changed. In time kapu (taboo laws) were enacted and taxes based on ahupuaa resources were collected. After European contact, in the mid 19th century, the concept private property was accepted and it soon secured a foothold for widespread plantation agriculture.

Water was diverted out of the valleys and the ahupua land use concept fell into disuse. In some places, like Maui's Hamakuapoko Moku (From the airport near Kahaluhi harbor to Haiku) the land was so aggressively managed by western plantation owners that ditches dams and reservoirs completely erased original streambeds. Hawaiian place names disappeared and subsequent maps of Maui had no Ahupuaa names.

Instead we have Sprecklesville and Baldwin Avenue. I have attempted to create a set of maps that have moku and ahupuaa covering all of each island. I have tried to use the earliest printed source material available as a foundation. I have tried to eliminate the distortions caused by conquest and war. The boundaries for the land divisions is strictly based on topological features of the land: shorelines, streambeds, and mountain ridges.

Like the informer Deep Throat advised Woodward and Bernstein to the bottom of Richard Nixon's machinations; "Follow the money!" In the case of Ahupuaa that advice would be "Follow the water!" Note: Depending on the island, it may take several seconds to a minute for the data to load. The following is the content of the "splash" page for the Kauai Nei GoogleEarth Maps.

Ka Mokupuni O Hawaii Big Island

AHA KIOLE ADVISORY COMMITTEE of the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council All rights reserved. © 2010 by the Aha Kiole Advisory Committee & www.IslandBreath.org

• Revision 1.0.0 on 1 October 2010 These Kauai land identifications were delineated and converted to GIS and GoogleEarth KMZ format by: Juan Wilson - Architect/Planner with the assistance of Jonathan Jay

Criteria: Samuel P. Kalama Maps (1837, 1838) of moku and ahupuaa were used as a foundation for these map boundaries. All moku and ahupuaa shown on Kalama maps are included in this project. The source for the 1837 Kalama map was the U.S. Librabry of Congress. The 1838 Kalama map was made available from the British Royal Geographic Society. Note, area names are written without traditional Hawaiian diacritical marks, as was the practice of Kalama. The divisions are based also on traditional descriptions of location, with boundaries modified to follow watershed ridges and streams/rivers from available topography.

Procedure: After identifying Kalama ahapuaa and moko locarions and names the Aha Kiole Advisary Committee Final Report was compared with State of Hawaii DBEDT GIS files (Streams, water bodies and elevation contours) and added to GoogleEarth aerial photography and 3D elevation data to determine final ahupuaa and moku names locations and boundaries. Sources: A two letter code for the sources of each ahupuaa can be seen when clicking within its boundary. They are: (sk) Samuel P. Kalama "Na Mokupuni O Hawaii Nei" maps printed in 1837 and 1838, (ak) Aha Kiole Advisory Committee Final Report 12/18/08, (gs) United States Geological Survey Maps 7.5º topographic maps), (ab) W. D. Alexander island surveys for the Hawaiian Government.

See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: Na Mokupuni O Maui Nei 8/1/10

Ea O Ka Aina: Mokupuni O Oahu 11/16/10
Ea O Ka Aina: Na Mokupuni O Kauai Nei 8/1/10

For background see: 

Ea O Ka Aina: Memories of Ileialoha Beniamina 

7/17/10 Ea O Ka Aina: Mokupuni O Hawaii Nei 6/2/10  

Ea O Ka Aina: Kauai & Niihau Mokupuni 4/16/10 

Ea O Ka Aina: Niihau & Kauai Mokupuni 3/3/10  

Ea O Ka Aina: Kauai Aina Mapping 12/21/09  

Ea O ka Aina: Kauai on GoogleEarth 12/6/09 

Island Breath: Moku-Ahupuaa Divisions of Kauai 12/2/08 I

sland Breath: Kauai Moku District Meeting 3/11/08  

Island Breath: Kauai Sustainability Land Use Plan 11/11/07 

 .

The Witch of Hebron

SUBHEAD: A review of James Howard Kunstler's new novel concerning our Post Peak Oil world in the near future.

Image above: "Herbal Godess". From (http://katybugdidit.tripod.com/id14.html).

[Editor’s note: To our surprise we received an unsolicited advance copy of James Kunstler’s just released new novel “The Witch of Hebron”. A hint as to why we were given the book was on the packaging address; ‘To: Juan WIlson - The Garden Island News”. Back in March of 2008 we reviewed Kunstler’s “World Made By Hand” as one of our bi-weekly columns in The Garden Island. We will submit this review to The Garden Island, and see if it gets printed. James Kunstler is now on a national book signing and promotional tour.] KUNSTLER’S TALENT James Howard Kunstler transformed my life with his 2005 book “The Long Emergency”. In it he laid out our fate concerning Peak Oil with precision. His realizations about the oncoming financial and political collapse and the failure of our suburban mind set to deal with the ensuing problems is playing out right now. Kunstler is a keen observer of American culture (15 years a writer with Rolling Stone) with a sharp and wicked tongue. His non-fiction style is often to lampoon and satirize our condition. Not so in his recent fiction. He has dedicated himself to writing what might be called “period” fiction. Even though that period lies in our near future, it uses a language better suited to the 19th century than the 21st. Kunstler’s interest in the architecture, crafts and trades of the pre-modern America has lead him to develop a detailed knowledge of our recently lost language. His use of vocabulary will send you off to your dictionary for the meaning of words common a century ago that are mysterious to today’s blogging generation. “The Witch of Hebron” is Kunstler’s new novel. It takes place in the Autumn after the events in his previous Post-Apocalypse adventure “World Made By Hand”. The subtitle of “The Witch of Hebron” is “A World Made by Hand Novel”. Kunstler has stated that there are four books in this series that are characterized by the four seasons of Northeast America. “World Made By Hand” took place over the summer of a year about a decade after the collapse of the industrialized world. WORLD MADE BY HAND In that summer scavenging gangs competed with residents of the small town of Union Grove, NY. The town was recently chosen as a new home by an unusual Christian New Faith sect, lead by Brother Jobe, which had moved north from a ravaged American Southland. They had purchased Union Grove’s abandoned high school and were reshaping it into an unusual new community. In the outlying country a new brand of feudalism put ex-car-dealers and insurance-salesmen to work in the fields of land owner Steven Bullock. As it turns out, the disciplined leadership of Brother Jobe and Steven Bullock produce more for their followers than the timid egalitarian townsfolk of Union Grove, or the tribal gang foraging at the landfill. Each of these four elemental groups have lead characters that play out the narrative. The result is an action adventure not unlike a period 19th century American Western. My characterization of the genre is American Eastern.

THE WITCH OF HEBRON In “The Witch of Hebron” we are again in Union Grove. Many of the same characters from “World Made by Hand” are brought back in “The Witch of Hebron”; the mayor/carpenter/fiddler Robert Earle, the reverend/sheriff Loren Holder and the town’s only doctor, Jerry Copeland. But the central character is eleven year old Jasper, the son of Dr. Jerry Copeland. A central element in the story is the degree to which the boy has learned the trade of his father, and his own natural gifts in the art of medicine. But first the boy is put in a situation in which he chooses a senseless act of revenge against the New Faith order, which results in his abandoning his family for a life on the road. He becomes the prodigal son and soon meets up with the teenage bandit named Billy Bones, and he falls under Billy’s influence and enters into a life of crime. Billy is a charming but deadly sociopath with aspirations of making himself a legend, in the mold of Billy the Kid. The book follows Jasper’s transformation from a child, to an outlaw and into a young man. This book is an epic adventure similar in some ways to “Huckleberry Finn”. As you might expect, another central character in the book is Barbara Maglie, the vital and attractive witch of the title. She lives alone in a cottage near the road leading north from the village of Union Grove to the nearest remnant of a city, Glenn Falls, NY. She has clients she heals mentally, emotionally and sexually. Perhaps more than any other character in the two books, Barbara represents the most optimistic view of our future. She has mastered the nutritional and pharmaceutical subtleties of the place she lives in. She has learned the crafts and art required to sustain our spirits in the difficult times we enter. Most important, her actions are directed by a loving heart and tolerant mind. Barbara engages with all the main characters of the narrative as if she were at the center of a web.

The books ends dramatically on Halloween night in Union Grove. POST APOCALYPSE I have been partial to Post-Apocalyptic stories. My first was almost 50 years ago when I read Neville Shute’s 1953 novel “On the Beach”. It detailed the aftermath of World War III in 1963 (it almost happened). In this story, the last of humanity finds ways to fulfill their remaining days before the radioactive clouds of death engulf them. Fifteen years later I read Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle’s 1977 book “Lucifer’s Hammer”. It follows life in the mountains of California after a comet crashes into the Pacific Ocean and destroys civilization as we know it. This is a gun toting survivalist tale that includes tsunamis, plagues, famines and battles amongst scavengers and cannibals. It ends on the "optimistic" techno-utopian note that a surviving nuclear plant will be the seed from which to regrow civilization. I recently finished Cormac McCarthy’s 2006 novel “The Road” that details the agonizing father and son journey across the dead landscape of America’s ashen remains. Across the horizon the plants are dead. People eat dusty canned food and even babies. The father's only hope is to keep walking south. Kunstler’s “World Made By Hand” series is more positive, with a more realistic perspective than the three post apocalyptic novels mentioned above. Kunstler sees a future in which life is simpler and more rewarding. It is tough, but worth living. As in the first novel, “The Witch of Hebron” has adventure and violence. Several story lines are running throughout and Kunstler cuts masterfully between them, making this a page turner. STORY CRITIQUE I have four criticisms of the book. One: The side story involving Steven Bullock is not well integrated into the narrative and seems almost like a movie trailer created to promote the book. Two: The disparate adventures of the book rely on too many coincidences to link them together and could have been avoided with better plotting. Three: The people of Union Grove are too insulated from the recent disasters of their past. It’s as though the last century never occurred and the turbulence of it’s collapse will calm quickly. Last year Kunstler staged a three act play entitled “The Big Slide” that follows the well-to-do Freeman family through an Autumn weekend in their Adirondack vacation home. The cause of their unscheduled visit is what appears to be a coup d’etat in the White House and the uprising of local militias all over the nation in response. The electricity has stopped working and the unfriendliness of the “locals”makes to dangerous to be out and about. This play fills in that time between now and the events in the “World Made by Hand”. Four: The character Jasper Copeland is too young, at eleven, to have the medical skills he possesses. Moreover, the moral and ethical context he is placed in is wasted on a pre-pubescent. I think the book would be more realistic and poignant if Jasper were a few years older. CONCLUSION I think the first two books of the World Made by Hand series are valuable in setting the tone of what we might achieve, as the old systems we have relied on fall apart and must be replaced. I know from personal conversation with Kunstler that he has cinematic aspirations for his stories. I think that they are justified. His intent to write a novel about the community of Union Grove for each season of the year is interesting. He leaves some hints in “The Witch of Hebron” that trouble is coming to Robert Earle in the next novel. Earle was the protagonist in “World Made By Hand”, and, in my opinion, the character closest to the real life James Kunstler. I suspect that next Winter in Union Grove will be long and cold. See also:

Energy Bulletin: Witch of Hebron Review 9/6/10

Ea O Ka Aina: Kunstler's "Big Slide" 2/2/10 Island Breath: World Made By Hand 3/10/08 .

Introduction to Permaculture

SUBHEAD: Chapter 1. Explore many ways to use this revolutionary system of design.

By Jesse Lemieux on 24 March 2010 for Permaculture Research Institute -
(http://permaculture.org.au/2010/03/24/introducing-the-permaculture-designers-manual-chapter-1-introduction-to-permaculture) 

Image above: Detail of masthead of permaculture website
 (http://zone5.org/about/).  

[IB Editor's note: 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.


Just the other day I was reading an article in The Province, which took the position that we need to start investing in natural systems if we are going to maintain our precious existence on this planet. The article stated that 60 countries have lost nearly all their forests, and that 1/3 of all fish stocks, food for two billion people, were on the brink of collapse. Furthermore, due to soil erosion,we can no longer farm 30% of all agricultural land on the planet.

How did we get here? We rely on a system of economic and social organization that has seen us become less and less responsible for our own basic needs. By supporting and expanding this system, we have come to rely more and more on distant lands and resources.

Agriculture is particularly grim and is responsible for more deforestation, CO2 production, chemical pollution and soil erosion than any other activity on the planet. The sad part is we have been convinced that the only way to feed ourselves is through the destructive and highly centralized system of plow-based agriculture. This is just plain false.
Consider the following statistics:

• One billion people on the planet, 80% of whom are involved in agriculture, are malnourished and hungry.[1]
• US agricultural production produces $300/acre [2]
• Home gardeners produce over $42,000/acre, with an average of 5 hours work per week [3]

Just take a quick look around your neighborhood and you can see that home gardening gets far better production per acre than any other agricultural system.

The largest and most energy intensive agriculture on the planet is the lawn. It uses more fossil fuel, human energy and chemical fertilizer than most other forms of agriculture. What does it produce? Polluted watersheds, polluted oceans, health problems and lawn trimmings for the garbage dump.
By turning our lawns into food systems, we can immediately remove ourselves from two of the most destructive systems on the face of the planet: the lawn and plow-based agriculture.

This brings us to the “Prime Directive of Permaculture”: to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children. In other words, we need to get our house and garden in order, so that they feed and shelter us.

Very few of us living in urban areas produce enough food to meet our own basic needs. We can all use permaculture to overcome this fundamental disconnect in contemporary urban life.
When making decisions within the permaculture framework, we rely on the permaculture ethic as a tool for conflict resolution and benchmarks to measure success in our design. This ethic is simple:

• Earth Care: living, growing and promoting the function of living systems. Building biomass (capturing CO2 in living systems) is good.
• People Care: providing clean water, food and shelter, and strong communities that do not enslave people.
• Return of Surplus: all surplus generated by these systems is returned back into earth care and people care, not into the generation of more surplus for the sake of surplus. Growth is not endless, since we live on a single planet with finite resources.

Permaculture is an ethical system stressing positivism and cooperation. We use this ethic in all aspects of the design process. It is a value set that guides us. It is the ethic that makes some design strategies available to us and others not, as any design we produce must fit within the ethical criteria.
Implicit in this ethic is the Life Ethic: all living organisms are not only means but ends in themselves. In addition to having value to the human species and other living organisms, they have an intrinsic worth. All life is good.

Even though the ethic is well-reasoned, it is still somewhat subjective. It’s important to be aware of my personal biases. We are all on a continuum of understanding, and it’s not my duty to pass judgement or convince anybody of how wrong they are and how right I am. My only responsibility is to take care of my needs and be sure that my activities fall within the permaculture ethic. As I move further along the road to a sustainable lifestyle I generate a surplus of resources and information that I willingly share with others who are working towards a right-livelihood themselves.
Information is often the first resource in surplus.

So, how do we design lives to become ones of net production as opposed to ones of net consumption?

A practical application:

• Earth Care: a well mulched home garden builds soil faster than any other system. This reduces our need for plow agriculture and takes kitchen waste, paper waste and all other compostable materials out of our land fills.
• People Care: the garden provides local, clean and healthy food to the gardener, as well as a source of relaxation and contemplation.
• Return of Surplus: home gardens are usually over-productive and surplus is shared with neighbors and friends, or left to compost back into the soil.

In the words of my friend and mentor, Geoff Lawton: “All the problems of the world can be solved in a garden.” It does not stop at the garden. Permaculture is such a good-sense approach to design and problem solving that it can be applied to many other facets of human life. This is not a move backwards to feudalism and peasantry, it is an evolution towards a society and planet of absolute abundance.

Over the next thirteen months I will cover each chapter in the Permaculture Design Certificate and explore many ways to use this revolutionary system of design. I believe you will be inspired by the simplicity and the commonplace nature of the solutions to our incredibly complex set of political and environmental problems.

Check in again next month when I will cover chapter two “Concepts and Themes in Design.” This chapter looks into the nature of sustainable system, their principles and our directives as designers for positive change.
References:

1. Panel on food security, World Economic Forum, 2009
2. US Agricultural census, 2007
3. National Gardening Association, 2004

See Also:

Ea O Ka Aina: Chapter 2. Concepts & Themes in Design 9/27/10

Ea O Ka Aina: Permaculture - Growing Zones (Part 1 of 6) 3/22/10

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One and a Half Cheers

SUBHEAD: For the American empire in decline - the future’s not ours - and that’s the good news.

Image above: The American Dream. San Diego Chargers cheerleaders in action. From (http://www.desihotmasala.com/2009/03/nfl-cheerleaders-nfl-cheer-leaders.html).

By Tom Engelhardt on 21 September 2010 for Tom's Dispatch - (http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175298/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_why_the_troops_are_coming_home/#more) Compare two assessments of the American future:

In the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll in which 61% of Americans interviewed considered “things in the nation” to be “on the wrong track,” 66% did “not feel confident that life for our children’s generation will be better than it has been for us.” (Seven percent were “not sure,” and only 27% “felt confident.”) But here was the polling question you’re least likely to see discussed in your local newspaper or by Washington-based pundits: “Do you think America is in a state of decline, or do you feel that this is not the case?” Sixty-five percent of respondents chose as their answer: “in a state of decline.”

Meanwhile, Afghan war commander General David Petraeus was interviewed last week by Martha Raddatz of ABC News. Asked whether the American war in Afghanistan, almost a decade old, was finally on the right counterinsurgency track and could go on for another nine or ten years, Petraeus agreed that we were just at the beginning of the process, that the “clock” was only now ticking, and that we needed “realistic expectations” about what could happen and how fast. “Progress” in Afghanistan, he commented, was often so slow that it could feel like “watching grass grow or paint dry.”

Now, I’m not a betting man, but I’d head for Vegas tomorrow and put my money down against the general and on Americans generally when it comes to assessing the future. I’d put money on the fact that the United States is indeed “in a state of decline” and I’d make a wager at odds that U.S. troops won’t be in Afghanistan in nine or ten years. And I’d venture to suggest as well that the two bets would be intimately connected, and that the American people understand at a visceral level far more than Washington cares to know about our real situation in the world. And I’d put my money on one more thing: however lousy it may feel, it’s not all bad news, not by a long shot.

Decline Today, Not Tomorrow

Let’s start with Afghanistan. Yes, we’ve been “in,” or intimately involved with, Afghanistan not just for almost a decade, but for a significant chunk of the last 30 years. And for much of that time we’ve poured our wealth into creating chaos and mayhem there in the name of “freedom,” “liberation,” “reconstruction,” and “nation-building.” We started in the distant days of the Reagan administration with the CIA funneling vast sums of money and advanced weaponry into the anti-Soviet jihad. At that time, we happily supported outright terror tactics, including car-bomb and even camel-bomb attacks on the Soviets in Afghan cities and bomb attacks on movie theaters as well. These acts were committed by Islamic fundamentalists of the most extreme sort, and our officials, labeling them “freedom fighters,” couldn’t say enough nice things about them.

That was our expensive first decade in Afghanistan. In 1989, when the Russians withdrew in defeat, we departed in triumph. You know the next round well enough: we returned in 2001, armed and eager, carrying suitcases full of cash, and ready to fight many of the same fundamentalists we (or our allies the Pakistanis) had set loose, funded, and armed in the previous two decades.

If, back in 1979, you had told a polling group of Americans that their country would soon embark on a never-ending war that would involve spending hundreds of billions of dollars, building staggering numbers of military bases, squandering startling sums (including at least $27 billiondesertion), losing significant numbers of American lives (and huge numbers of Afghan ones), and launching the first robot air war in history, and then asked them to pick the likely country, not one in a million would have chosen Afghani-where(?). And yet, today, our leading general (“perhaps the greatest to train Afghan military and police forces whose most striking trait is general of his generation”) doesn’t blink at the mention of another 9 or 10 years doing more of the same.

After 30 years, it might almost seem logical. Why not 10 more? The answer is that you have to be the Washington equivalent of blind, deaf, and dumb not to know why not, and Americans aren’t any of those. They know what Washington is in denial about, because they’re living American decline in the flesh, even if Washington isn’t. Not yet anyway. And they know they’re living it not in some distant future, but right now.

Here’s a simple reality: the U.S. is an imperial power in decline -- and not just the sort of decline which is going to affect your children or grandchildren someday. We’re talking about massive unemployment that’s going nowhere and an economy which shows no sign of ever returning good jobs to this country on a significant scale, even if “good times” do come back sooner or later. We’re talking about an aging, fraying infrastructure -- with its collapsing bridges and exploding gas pipelines -- that a little cosmetic surgery isn’t going to help.

And whatever the underlying historical trends, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and company accelerated this process immeasurably. You can thank their two mad wars, their all-planet-all-the-time Global War on Terror, their dumping of almost unlimited taxpayer dollars into the Pentagon and war planning for the distant future, and their scheme to privatize the military and mind-meld it with a small group of crony capitalist privateers, not to speak of ramping up an already impressively over-muscled national security state into a national state of fear, while leaving the financial community to turn the country into a giant, mortgaged Ponzi scheme. It was the equivalent of driving a car in need of a major tune-up directly off the nearest cliff -- and the rest, including the economic meltdown of 2008, is, as they say, history, which we’re all now experiencing in real time. Then, thank the Obama administration for not having the nerve to reverse course while it might still have mattered.

Public Opinion and Elite Opinion

The problem in all this isn’t the American people. They already know the score. The problem is Afghan war commander Petraeus. It’s Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. It’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. It’s National Security Adviser James Jones. It’s all those sober official types, military and civilian, who pass for “realists,” and are now managing “America’s global military presence,” its vast garrisons, its wars and alarums. All of them are living in Cloud Cuckoo Land.

Ordinary Americans aren’t. They know what's going down, and to judge by polls, they have a perfectly realistic assessment of what needs to be done. Jim Lobe of Inter Press Service recently reported on the release of a major biennial survey, "Constrained Internationalism: Adapting to New Realities," by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs (CCGA). Here’s the heart of it, as Lobe describes it:

“The survey’s main message, however, was that the U.S. public is looking increasingly toward reducing Washington’s role in world affairs, especially in conflicts that do not directly concern it. While two-thirds of citizens believe Washington should take an ‘active part in world affairs,’ 49% -- by far the highest percentage since the CCGA first started asking the question in the mid-1970s -- agreed with the proposition that the U.S. should ‘mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own.’

“Moreover, 91% of respondents agreed that it was ‘more important at this time for the [U.S.] to fix problems at home’ than to address challenges to the (U.S.) abroad -- up from 82% who responded to that question in CCGA’s last survey in 2008.”

That striking 49% figure is no isolated outlier. As Charles Kupchan and Peter Trubowitz point out in an article in the journal International Security, a December 2009 Pew poll got the same 49% response to the same “mind its own business” question. It was, they comment, “the highest response ever recorded, far surpassing the 32% expressing that attitude in 1972, during the height of opposition to the Vietnam War.”

Along the same lines, the CCGA survey found significant majorities expressing an urge for their government to cooperate with China, but not actively work to limit the growth of its power, and not to support Israel if it were to attack Iran. Similarly, they opted for a “lighter military footprint” and a lessening in the U.S. role as “world policeman.” When it comes to the Afghan War specifically, the latest polls and reporting indicate that skepticism about it continues to rise. All of this adds up not to traditional “isolationism,” but to a realistic foreign policy, one appropriate to a nation not garrisoning the planet or dreaming of global hegemony.

This may simply reflect a visceral sense of imperial decline under the pressure of two unpopular wars. Explain it as you will, it’s exactly what Washington is incapable of facing. A CCGA survey of elite, inside-the-Beltway opinion would undoubtedly find much of America’s leadership class still trapped inside an older global paradigm and so willing to continue pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into Afghanistan and elsewhere rather than consider altering the American posture on the planet.

Imperial Denial Won’t Stop Decline

Despite much planning during and after World War II for a future role as the planet’s preeminent power, Washington used to act as if its “responsibilities” as the “leader of the Free World” had been thrust upon it. That, of course, was before the Soviet Union collapsed. After 1991, it became commonplace for pundits and officials alike to refer to the U.S. as the only “sheriff” in town, the “global policeman,” or the planet’s “sole superpower.”

Whatever the American people might then have thought a post-Cold War “peace dividend” would mean, elites in Washington already knew, and acted accordingly. As in any casino when you’re on a roll, they doubled down their bets, investing the fruits of victory in more of the same -- especially in the garrisoning and control of the oil-rich Persian Gulf region. And when the good fortune only seemed to continue and the sole enemies left in military terms proved to be a few regional “rogue states” of no great importance and small non-state groups, it went to their heads in a big way.

In the wake of 9/11, that “twenty-first century Pearl Harbor,” the new crew in Washington and the pundits and think-tankers surrounding them saw a planet ripe for the taking. Having already fallen in love with the U.S. military, they made the mistake of believing that military power and global power were the same thing and that the U.S. had all it needed of both. They were convinced that a Pax Americana in the Greater Middle East was within their grasp if only they acted boldly, and they didn’t doubt for a moment that they could roll back Russia -- they were, after all, former Cold Warriors -- and put China in its place at the same time. Their language was memorable. They spoke of “cakewalks” and a “military lite,” of “shock and awe” aerial blitzes and missions accomplished. When they joked around, a typical line went: “Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran.”

And they meant it. They were ready to walk the walk -- or so they thought. This was the remarkably brief period when the idea of “empire” or “empire lite” was proudly embraced and friendly pundits started comparing the United States to the Roman or British empires. It’s hard to believe how recently that was and how relatively silent the present crew in Washington has fallen when it comes to the glories of American power.

Now, they just hope to get by, in itself a sign of decline. That’s why we’ve entered a period when, except for inanely repetitious, overblown references to the threat of al-Qaeda, no one in Washington cares to offer Americans an explanation -- any explanation -- of why we’re fighting globally. They prefer to manage the pain, while holding the line. They prefer to leak the news, for example, that in Afghanistan no policy changes are in the offing any time soon. As the Washington Post reported recently, “The White House calculus is that the strategy retains enough public and political support to weather any near-term objections. Officials do not expect real pressure for progress and a more precise definition of goals to build until next year…”

It’s not that they don’t see decline at all, but that they prefer to think of it as a mild, decades-long process, the sort of thing that might lead to a diminution of American power by 2025. At the edges, however, you can feel other assessments creeping up -- in, for instance, former Condoleezza Rice National Security Council deputy Robert Blackwill’s recent call for the U.S. to pull back its troops to northern Afghanistan, ceding the Pashtun south to the Taliban.

Sooner or later -- and I doubt it will take as long as many imagine -- you’ll hear far more voices, ever closer to the heartlands of American power, rising in anxiety or even fear. Don’t think nine or ten years either. This won’t be a matter of choice. Our leadership may be delusional, but there will be nothing more to double down with, and so “America’s global military presence” will begin to crumble. And whether they want it or not, whether there’s even an antiwar movement or not, those troops will start coming home, not to a happy nation or to an upbeat situation, but home in any case.

It may sound terrible, and in Afghanistan and elsewhere, terrible things will indeed happen in the interim, while at home the economy will, at best, limp along, the infrastructure will continue to deteriorate, more jobs will march south, and American finances will worsen. If we’re not quite heading for what Arianna Huffington, in her provocative new book, calls “Third World America,” we’re not heading for further fame and fortune either.

But cheer up. The news isn’t all bad. Truly. We’ve just gotten way too used to the idea that the United States must be the planet’s preeminent nation, the global hegemon, the sole superpower, numero uno. We’ve convinced ourselves that neither we nor the world can exist without our special management.

So here’s the good news: it’s actually going to feel better to be just another nation, one more country, even if a large and powerful one, on this overcrowded planet, rather than the nation. It’s going to feel better to only arm ourselves to defend our actual borders, rather than constantly fighting distant wars or skirmishes and endlessly preparing for more of the same. It’s going to feel better not to be engaged in an arms race of one or playing the role of the globe’s major arms dealer. It’s going to feel better to focus on American problems, maybe experiment a little at home, and offer the world some real models for a difficult future, instead of talking incessantly about what a model we are while we bomb and torture and assassinate abroad with impunity.

So take some pleasure in this: our troops are coming home and you’re going to see it happen. And in the not so very distant future it won’t be our job to “police” the world or be the “global sheriff.” And won’t that be a relief? We can form actual coalitions of equals to do things worth doing globally and never have to organize another “coalition of the billing,” twisting arms and bribing others to do our military bidding.

Since by the time we get anywhere near such a world, our leaders will have run this country into the ground, it’s hard to offer the traditional three cheers for such a future. But how about at least one-and-a-half prospective cheers for the possible return of perspective to our American world, for a significant lessening, even if not the decisive ending, of an American imperial role and of the massive military “footprint” that goes with it.

It’s going to happen. Put your money on it.

And thank you, George W. Bush (though I never thought I’d say that), you’ve given an old guy a shot at seeing the fruits of American decline myself. I’m looking forward.

• Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His latest book, The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s (Haymarket Books), has just been published. You can catch him discussing war American-style and his book in a Timothy MacBain TomCast video by clicking here.

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