The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. ~ Albert Einstein
Sustainability Has Been Lost
Today, far more people help most of the world’s continents than they did a thousand years ago. There was a time not so long ago in man’s history when there were just enough people to help the ground. In their own country, people ate what grew and no more than that.
For example, only around one million indigenous people have been assisted by the North American continent, although more than 300 million people are living in the same region today. At the beginning of the industrial revolution, when fossil fuels were eventually exploited, an intense population increase occurred, followed by an even more drastic development in technology. Thousands of miles away, food could come from warm places and provide hungry people with fruits and vegetables during the winter.
Mechanical devices used in farming have significantly increased efficiency. Children lived longer and grew up to have more time to pursue medical science, which has further prolonged the lives of people.
With careful planning, cities may prevent smog.
Many people would disagree about the morality of getting more kids, but that’s not the problem here. There is a high population, but it is still not unbearable or difficult to maintain. The main issue is the way developed nations live. Through agriculture, mining, forestry, oil fields, and dams, all these people take resources from the soil, and they convert these elements into something functional, by consuming large quantities of energy.
Then the waste is released into the air, thrown into the sea, or deposited in the soil after people use it. A bottle of shampoo is made of plastics and chemicals that have been mined and grown (using energy and generating waste), processed in factories (using even more energy and creating even more waste), then used to wash our hair (where the chemicals are released into our water supply), and the bottle is most often thrown into a landfill (of which a big truck uses more fuel and produces more carbon) Even the so-called “botanical” shampoos do not come from the land’s green fruits but are produced using an exhaustible supply of fossil fuels.
Consumption of energy from factory egg farming versus laying hens at home.
Just so much energy capacity on earth is available. It is a static number that will never rise or decrease unless some incredible theory is discovered that changes that law magically. For now, with the number of resources we have, we’re trapped. In the form of oil or other materials, all of the energy is stored up underground and much of it has already been used.
It is particularly worrying because most people in the world don’t use any energy to talk about it. It is used by the rest of us as if it will last forever: ineffectively and wastefully. We have no regard for the climate on top of this. In certain circles, this has become a dirty term, but the world is a place where humans work. All other species care about their habitat since it can make them sick or even kill them by carelessly polluting it.
Issues
Humans have already done this short-sightedly, and have therefore created several problems, including:
Each year, tornados are becoming more aggressive and more widespread.
- Climate Drastic temperature and weather changes result in human deaths, damage to human dwellings, and crop loss.
- Soil Depletion of soil fertility due to growth and erosion and of productive topsoil.
- The use of resources, such as oil or fish, on which humans rely.
- Breakdown of the lack of solidarity of human families and societies and assistance.
- Increase in addictive relationships and concrete attempts to replace mobile phones, television, food, shopping, and games.
- Recession, stagnation, conflicts and injustice in economic and political terms.
- National and household governments and individuals are gradually purchasing on credit until it is worth something.
In an attempt to address these issues, society has turned to technology rather than to the root cause of the problems. Instead of recognising incidents happening when the resources were obtained and modified in the first place, we strive to correct symptoms. We use technologies to minimise smog, or we create better power plants, not even thinking that even more energy, the energy that does not exist in adequate quantities, is used by this building process itself. By using non-renewable fuels, we’re buying electricity on credit.
People just like to believe that it would change everything to be more conscious about their setting.
An illusion is a belief that technology or being “healthy” can save us from our issues.
Solution
People are trapped in their high-energy systems in most developed countries, but most of us may agree at some level that this solution is just not working. Whether it’s the energy that we use in our food production, our energy supplies, our political system or our economy, the energy that we put into our food production is not sustainable. This situation has only two outcomes. Either it will proceed on a slow downhill slope in its mediocre way until it inevitably collapses, or it will cause a sudden and utter society to collapse.
Mediocrity sounds about as alarming as societal decay, based on what has been happening in the last decade.
Only one simple course of action exists. It’s time to try something different when something doesn’t work. A low-energy device is the only solution. Permaculture makes it possible without pain for humans to transition gracefully to a low-energy environment.
In reality, humans could make do with 40 percent less energy in so-called “civilised” countries without sacrificing much. At present, all of our needs are fulfilled with energy coming from somewhere else. Our food comes from faraway farms that get their fuel and nutrients from even farther away locations, the things we use, the cars we drive. There is the localization of a sustainable society. All the energy that is being used must come from under our own feet.
It is less hassle and more efficient to hassle with the terrain and current ecosystem in the long run.
Permaculture Ethics
An ethic is like an honour code, except it’s more precise. Ethics direct our actions and are how our destiny manifests itself.
Permaculture has three ethics, and they are fairly simple:
- Care Earth: There is an inherent meaning of all things, living or non-living.
- Care people: By self-reliance and community accountability, society is provided for.
- Give away: To satisfy the other two morals, the surplus must be shared.
If you still don’t know about the Permaculture, we recommend you to read What is Permaculture.
Anything is used once or twice in the new method and then thrown away into the water and air, never to be seen again. This is often called a linear structure because anything from the source to the landfill forms a straight line.
By comparison, sustainable structures are circular. The products used to go back to their source, where, using very little energy, they can go through the normal recycling phase of the earth and be used again. The same goes for the ethics of permaculture.
An abundance of resources is the inevitable outcome when and resource or living thing is respected rather than abused or killed, and people care about themselves as well as their families, and the surplus can then be used to care for the world and people again.
Principles of Permaculture
Principles are guiding any design method. For starters, there are several rules in typography that direct the typographer towards a good design. A typographer can make the letters enticing to look at, and yet still simple to read. Not only that, but the style of the letters must match the overall atmosphere of the presented document and be suitable for the audience.
Permaculture can be a very innovative and inventive way of designing and working with some highly variable pieces, but certain fundamental concepts are still followed. These concepts can be phrased differently by various permaculture organisations, but the essence is the same. Most would have twelve principles or more, but for convenience, we have combined some of these.
- It’s all linked and sponsored by everything else.
- All, or a portion, has many roles to serve. Design students typically learn to make something look good and be practical at the same time, but function alone focuses on permaculture.
- The practical design is sustainable and offers a commodity or surplus that is useful. If it doesn’t, pollution and work are made. Pollution is an overabundance of or something that is actually not used by a resource. Job occurs when another element is not supported by one element.
- Permaculture maximises (or, put another way, eliminates the loss of energy) the usable energy in every system.
- Good design meets people’s needs and offers several useful ties or diversity between components.
- Then the system goes into chaos if there is pollution.
- With chaos and opposition, cultures, systems, and human lives are wasted. To avoid this vicious cycle and establish unity (cooperation) in the functional organisation of a system, we use only what we can return to the soil.
