Subject: Industrialism?

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 21:18:28 EDT

I have a question for permaculturalists :

My understanding that "permaculture" is an attempt to create "permanent 
culture", ie sustainable cultures ...

It seems there has been a great deal of focus on sustainable homes and 
food-production, which is excellent ...

But what sorts of dialogue exist in the community regarding industrial 
production of material goods? It is very, very hard for me to imagine an 
ecologically sustainable industrialism, and this comes out of no inherent 
luddite temperament, simply an increasing awareness of what is involved in 
the process of industrialism itself.

For example, can someone create for me a model of "sustainable mining"?? On 
any scale required by industrialism? The phrase itself sounds oxymoronic! I 
think of Fukuoka, and I try to imagine the Fukuoka of mining, and it is very 
difficult .... "just let nature do the mining for you ... just leave the 
system alone and the metals will grow on their own" ... it is true for 
example that Native Americans mined some copper in Canada, but on a very 
small-scale basis, certainly not reaching the Minimum Inputs required on an 
industrial scale ... and without mining, the whole industrial system pretty 
much comes to a halt ... so has anyone thought about these questions? It 
seems as if we've built an entire culture on an infrastructure that is itself 
toxic and requires a constant input and output of toxicity ...

(un)leash

---

From: Barry Carter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 11 Apr 1999 11:24:44 -0700

Dear Friends,

These issues and more are regularly discussed on the Ecological Economics
email discussion list. Subscription information for this list can be found at:

http://csf.colorado.edu/

CSF stands for Communications for a Sustainable Future. The CSF site above
also has information about subscribing to a CSF sponsored permaculture
email discussion list.

A gentleman on the Ecological Economics list posts his "links of the month"
relating to economics and the environment. Here is a sample of these links:

NATURAL CAPITALISM
http://www.motherjones.com/mother_jones/MA97/hawken.html
This article by Paul Hawken appeared in Mother Jones March/April 1997.
"We can create new jobs, restore our environment, and promote social
stability" writes Paul Hawken. "Somewhere along the way to free-market
capitalism, the United States became the most wasteful society on the
planet. One is tempted to say that there is nothing wrong with
capitalism except that it has never been tried. Our current industrial
system is based on accounting principles that would bankrupt any
company. Conventional economic theories will not guide our future for a
simple reason: They have never placed "natural capital" on the balance
sheet. When it is included, not as a free amenity or as a putative
infinite supply, but as an integral and valuable part of the production
process, everything changes. Prices, costs, and what is and isn't
economically sound change dramatically.
To create a policy that supports resource productivity will require a
shift away from taxing the social "good" of labor, toward taxing the
social "bads" of resource exploitation, pollution, fossil fuels, and
waste. "

MEASURING  PROGRESS - By Friends of the Earth
http://www.foe.co.uk/progress/index.html
"Measuring the success of our economy is vital if we are to know what
effects our policies are having on society. However, the main
'indicator' used to measure progress, the GDP, is inadequate. It is a
brute measure of total economic activity, and a poor reflection of
people's well-being. This site looks at the strengths and weaknesses of
the most advanced alternative indicator - the Index of Sustainable
Economic Welfare (ISEW). "
The ISEW indicator shown has grown from 1950 to 1975 but has been
declining steadily since then.
A particular interesting feature of the site is, that it is interactive.
You can create your own ISEW to reflect the values you feel are
important by adjusting the 9 factors, it is composed of - some of which
are  ecological. You will find it quite sensitive to such adjustments,
raising the question, how good an indicator it is.

TAX WASTE, NOT WORK  - a report published by "Redefining Progress"
(1997)
http://www.rprogress.org/pubs/twnw/twnw_execsum.html
"Offers a new approach to fiscal and environmental policy -- a
revenue-neutral shift to resource taxes or emission permits -- which
holds the potential to strengthen the economy, protect the environment,
and encourage investment and savings -- all in a way that could attract
broad political support. It provides an analysis of the impact of
shifting some of America's tax burden away from productive activities
that should be encouraged, such as work and savings, onto activities
that should be discouraged, such as pollution, waste, and energy
inefficiency. "
An introduction to the report  was written by MIT's Paul Krugman .
It is on the site.

The Paul Hawken article is a particularly significant contribution to the
discussion of how to go about creating incentives for treating the Earth
better.

More of these links can be found on his web site at:

http://csf.Colorado.EDU/authors/Agerley.Harald/mylin/gatepage.html

--
With kindest regards,
 
Barry Carter 
<[email-masked]>
Blue Mountain Native Forest Alliance
WEB Page: http://www.triax.com/bmnfa/index.htm
Voice: 541-523-3357
Fax:   541-523-9438
 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
 Help Protect America's Heritage Forests at http://www.ourforests.org
----------------------------------------------------------------------

---

From: Barry Carter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 11 Apr 1999 12:03:40 -0700

Dear Unleesh,

>toxic and requires a constant input and output of toxicity ...

Sustainable mining might be possible using technology which is currently
available. The first requirement would be to get rid of energy mining, that
is coal, oil and natural gas. A company called Blacklight Power has the
most viable current technology in this regard. They can generate energy by
dropping hydrogen to a lower energy state. This produces a useful product
and a great deal of energy. Two utilities that have invested in BlackLight
Power are PacifiCorp of Oregon and Atlantic Electric in New Jersey. You can
read more about Blacklight Power on their web page at:

http://blacklightpower.com/index.html

Another thing which promises to change mining is the discovery of the ORMUS
elements by David Hudson. These elements include the precious metal
transition elements and, in the ORMUS form, these elements are thousands of
times more common than in their metallic forms. They are particularly
abundant in ocean water from which they can be extracted and converted to
their metallic form. What differentiates the ORMUS form of the precious
metals from their metallic form is that the ORMUS form has its electrons
Cooper paired so that they are not available as valence electrons.

More on ORMUS theory can be found at:

http://www.triax.com/bmnfa/science/ORMUS/whatisit.htm

We believe that because of this the positive shielding potiential of the
electrons is disabled and this allows one to change the nucleus using low
energy technology. In other words, if you have mercury you can convert it
to the ORMUS mercury state and in this state you can convert it to gold
simply by heating it in a kiln. This is transmutation. I believe that even
lower energy transmutations are possible. Louis Kervan discussed evidence
of transmutation at biological temperatures.

Though precious metals mining and energy mining are not all of mining,
industrial metals mining could be greatly reduced by the use of the two
technologies above. The Blacklight Power technlology would allow for power
generation on site, this would greatly reduce our use of copper for
electrical distribution. An automobile powered by a Blacklight Power cell
or a battery made using their technology would greatly reduce the weight of
the power plant in the automobile. This would mean that there would be a
corresponding reduction in the weight of metal in the rest of the car. I
would bet that combined these two reductions would allow us to make
automobiles using only three quarters to half of the metals that we now use
in them.

Of course the only way we will ever get to a permaculture state is by
getting a handle on our exponential population growth. Someone once
estimated that if we keep up this population growth rate for several
thousand years the body heat alone will melt the surface of the Earth. This
could never happen due to other limiting factors related to growth but it
is clear that there are some ultimate limits of population growth.

--
With kindest regards,
 
Barry Carter 
<[email-masked]>