Clear Cut Remediation

Walking along the barren clay and churt of a clear cut ridge in middle Tennessee looking out over Ledbetter Hollow on the Southern Highland rim, Matthew English, Cliff Davis and I started the survey process for our upcoming Advanced Permaculture Design Course focused on clear cut remediation techniques using a combination of earthworks, swales and ponds applied according to the keyline technique pioneered by P.A. Yoeman in Australia.

The challenges for our design process include poorly placed logging roads, poor soil and steep hills. Creating a viable system to catch and store water on the land scape and facilitate the re-vegetation of the property with a diverse and resilient ecosystem of beneficial species is our goal.
Towards that end we wandered through the alternately sparse and lush vegetation battling ticks and the heavy humid air of Tennessee in late July.

The site is amazing, with creaks surrounding two sides, a nice cool spring and a small strip of forest left uncut next to the streams, but most of the property has been hacked to pieces and erosion is pulling down top soil from the ridge and flushing it down the stream and eventually out to sea.

This is a scenario playing itself out around the world as unconscious and improper land use techniques strip the earth of its ability to produce the vital functions of a thriving ecosystem: food, water, and oxygen.

So our talk, and the task of any sentient being on our planet, is to garden. To re-mold the earth in places it has been scarred so that water does not sweep the soil down to the sea and new trees can take hold. To heal.

In practical terms we hope to teach people who are interested in this healing change the tools they will need to implement clear cut remediation of any scale.

These tools include:

*Project management

*Site Analysis

*Site Design

*Keyline theory and practice

*Mulched Swales

*Earthen Ponds

*Cover Cropping

*Low Tech Cartography,

*Low - Medium Tech Survey Equipment

Our hope is to remediate a piece of land near to our home and make it a better place for future generations to live, and also be able to teach others this skill so that the same story of healing can unfold in other places around the continent and world.

If your interested in learning more, check out our course description at nemwashi permaculture

Business of Community

In our ecovillage design course here at the Ecovillage Training Center we have reached a surprising conclusion: Community is business.

To most new communitarians, who are idealistically joining or forming a community, business is the enemy, the driving force behind the destruction of culture and ecosystems across the globe...
But as it turns out, business is an essential tool for forming a sustainable community.
Diana Leafe Christian, our exuberant teacher and the author of several books on communities and a new news letter called the Ecovillages Newsletter, told us that her experience studying the success and failure of ecovillages all over the world has shown that three of the most important roles to be filled in a community are accounting, entrepreneurial ability and organization. Oddly enough these are the very same abilities needed to start a successful business.

So, we might ask, what is the different between the corporations ravaging the world and the groups of people forming in communities around the globe to heal themselves and the planet?

To me the difference is intention, transparency and inclusiveness.
To run any enterprise, be it an ecovillage or a large transnational corporation, organization is important, but how that power of human imagination and action is being used is the largest question.
In the case of an ecovillage the intention of the people is to create a safe and healthy space that allows for the growth of the human spirit and fosters cultures grounded in sustainable practices. In the case of the transnational corporations the intention is to make profit...

so, whether crafting a culture of justice and sustainability, or making massive amounts of money...there are similarities: Organize! EDUCATE!

This idea can be rejected by activists who shy away from management and leadership, preferring to focus on the big picture....but this only serves to disempower us from actualizing our visions of a better world.

The integration of inclusiveness, tolerance, and participation into organizations brings forth a new type of management: group facilitation. The balancing act between consensus and other quicker methods of decision making allows any group to create their own method of policy governance that meets all of the needs of each individual and each group. With the advent of information technology and the internet these self organizing groups have the ability to attract individuals resonant with the group vision to come and lend hearts and hands to the vision of shared enterprise that has been articulated by the founders. Tools like Financial Permaculture will help weave together the intelligence and hope of communities small and large to optimize our ability to create positive change.

The subtle shift from being a community of business, to learning the business of community will be essential to create the future we want to see.

Ecosapien

EcoSapiens II.

(for "ecological", for "Earth", read "Creation", if you like..)

Some characteristics of ecosapiens.

-Ecosapiens thinks and acts Earth.

-Ecosapiens are grateful.

-Ecosapiens know and live these truths:

-that reality is ecologically centered, ecologically determined

(and not anthropocentrically relative);

-that photosynthesis is holy magic; and water; and sunlight; and the
residua of stars; that the life on Earth that photosynthesis, water, and
the residua of stars enables is holy magic; that spirituality and
religion come from out of Earth, serve and nurture Earth;

-that Earth/Gaia the sun driven superorganism has all the attributes
that we have historically given to God, and therefore must be defined
and treated as such;

-that they exist in the body of Gaia, as organelles of Earth, like the
cells, tissues and organelles of their own bodies; that their blood is
like the water, their veins and arteries the streams and rivers; their
bones the stones, and on…

-that they are one species among many, no lesser or greater than any
other, living in a community of life where no other species is
expendable, all are necessary, no more or less than the organs and
elements of our own bodies;

-that the reason for our existence is to with the whole of our being, to
resonate with, reflect upon, marvel at, celebrate, love, honor, actively
care for and serve the Earth/Creation – especially and particularly the
physical body of the Earth/the ecosphere -- consciously as a part of the
great Earth body and being; this is the best way to care for human
beings, humanity, who are nothing but of Earth;

-that human beings become what we know as “godly”, have extraordinary
powers, only to the degree that they - with the whole of their being -
resonate with, reflect upon, marvel at, celebrate, love, honor, actively
care for and serve the Earth/Creation, consciously as a part of the
great Earth body and being;

-that true intelligence and wisdom is Earth intelligence, ecological
intelligence that exists to serve the Earth and our purpose for being,
as above; "intelligence" apart from this is only
destructive/self-destructive cleverness, and therefore ignorance most
profound, stupidity, mental illness;

-that sanity comes from thinking and living ecologically, and is
measured by the degree that we do this; that to obsess and focus only on
our own species and its advantage is the root of collective autism, and
the end of our existence;

-that anything that is not ecologically resonant does not belong on
Earth and will not remain here long;

-that our life on Earth must be redesigned completely according to the
ecological laws and principles that gave rise to and direct all life on
Earth; Eco sapiens serves Earth, takes direction from Earth's laws and
principles in all things. Following are 29 essential ecological design
modes that already exist to enable this:

1. Ecological Economics

The Photosynthetic Economy

(Eco-Development -Business -Enterprise – eco-currencies/money)

2. Ecological Technology / Appropriate Technology

3. Ecological Energy (Solar, Renewables)

4. Ecological Politics / Political Ecology / Eco-Governance

(eco-democracy; eco-decentralism)

5. Ecological Engineering

6. Ecological Bio-Technology (as in Todd's "living machines")

7. Ecological "Waste" Management / Composting / Recycling/

Bioremediation

8. Industrial Ecology (Industrial eco-systems)

9. Ecological Restoration / Restoration Ecology

10. Ecological Agriculture / Organic Agriculture/ Permaculture

11. Ecological Forestry

12. Eco-Cities / "Green Cities" (Ecological Regional and Urban Planning)

13. Eco-Communities

14. Ecological Architecture

15. Ecological Land Tenure

16. Traditional Land Based Native/Indigenous/First People's Rights

17. Biodiversity & Genetic Diversity Preservation/ All-Species Rights

18. Eco-Theology

(Earth-Based and/or Earth-Honoring Religion and spirituality)

19. Eco-Centrism

20. Ecological Philosophy

21. Eco-Defense / Environmentalism(Environmental Defense, Conservation,
Preservation)

22. Ecological Health

(Ecological approaches to health)

23. Eco-Psychology/Eco-Therapy

24. Ecological Law

25. Ecological Auditing

26. Ecological Culture & Arts

(Earth-Based or Earth-Honoring Culture and Arts)

27. Ecological Education

(Ecological bases for general education at all levels)

29. Social Ecology

(Ecological approaches to Peace and Social Justice; generic, non-sectarian)

29. Ecological Burial/Natural Burial/Green Burial

30. Reorganization of human life under bioregionalism/ecoregionalism,
the synthesis/integration/summation of all the 29 above;

Continuing traits of ecosapiens…

Go into your ecological mind…

Ask this question:

What are ecosapiens?

What is their nature?

By word, thought, action…

mutate

David Haenke

Shepherd’s Ridge ecosystem

Bryant Watershed

Ozarks Bioregion

Interior Low Plateaus

Turtle Island

Planet Earth.

Year 29, FBC

(First Bioregional Congress)


------------------------------------

Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Bioreg/

This was taken off the bioregional list serve @ bioreg@yahoo.com

It was written by David Haenke, one of the poets of the bioregional movement and an organizer of the first Bioregional Congress. I am

How Ronald Reagan Saved the World

Twenty years from now I wonder if we might look back and tell the story to our kids and grand-kids of how Ronald Reagan saved the world...

An odd thing to come from a blog focused on creating a culture of justice, peace and sustainability...and yet perhaps it is true?
The neo-liberal social, economic and political policies have perhaps planted a seed that is growing into the rise of a grassroots movement of organized, business like groups working towards a vision that is not at all driven by the profit motivation that characterized the last 30 years of economic globalization. The policy of privatization implemented during the Regan era sucked governmental funding away from social and environmental programs, forcing concerned citizens to take matters into their own hands, forming NGO's and businesses focused on filling the gapping holes left in civil society. Now, as the green movement gains steam, it is becoming apparent that the fourth sector is building momentum due to an increased organizational capacity.

This organizational capacity and willingness to use new groupware and participatory decision making processes to empower local control of resources can be seen as a direct effect of the put up or shut up consequences of Regan's neo-liberal economic policy. As an activist for social and environmental justice I fall far on the left side of the spectrum...but what I am hoping to articulate is that the left and right meet when people empower themselves to take control of their lives and create sustainable communities. In a funny way the incorporation of activist groups into business is the next iteration of neoliberal development as idealistic visionaries are forced to learn the skills it will take to manifest a vision of the world that is free of the shackles of greed, intolerance, hatred and fear.

The radical evolution of our culture away from centralization and greed towards cooperation and sustainability IS NOT taking place in the normal context of left vs. right or business vs. government...it is taking place outside of those arbitrary categories and is being spearheaded by business ventures like Solari along side NGO's like the the Center For Holistic Ecology. Solid design and models for sustainability like Permaculture and Solari circles are the lowest common denominators as we work towards creating freedom and sustainability. Empowering individuals to take back the reins of their finances is the first step in this evolution from centralized control to decentralize empowerment. Libertarians and Greens can both agree that decentralizing power is the first step towards a just and sustainable future...and quips about the half-assedness of Libertarian ideology aside I think this is an important connection to make in the build up to the november election

FOOD FOR THOUGHT:

Libertarians are just Anarchists who want police projection from their slaves.

New Green Deal same as the last

Surfing through the internet I am noticing a dual trend, indicative of the schizophrenia embedded in our frantic consumer driven plunge into the abyss of homogenized, globalized, centralized degraded and discombobulated insanity: Green Consumerism and marketing environmentalism...

Ok, so I wear my prejudice on my sleeve and my dream on my brow. Right now my brow is furrowed as I notice the news harping on Global Warming and environmental degradation pointing out the problems...and even a few solutions. Although the solutions offered seem to miss the point.
Case and point The New Green Deal, a ambitious, and perhaps noble idea to push the global economy towards environmentally friendly industry and trade in the next 100 months...

...great...so what does that mean? Is there any room for local empowerment, bioregional autonomy, diversity of culture and diversity of ecosystems? Or are we just talking about megascale industrial greenwashing and a fear driven centralization and consolidation of power through legislation. This is a hanging question, and not an indictment or exercise in finger pointing.
With global warming breathing down our necks and public attention turning to climate change driven by the mainstream media, are we taking the time to ask the right questions?
Sometimes I doubt it.
The deep answer to all of the myriad of social justice, environmental justice, and resource depletion problems lies not in centralized governance, but in small solutions that fit the culture and ecosystem within which they emerge. These solutions are stable and slow, providing the foundation for a vibrant global culture where our social, cultural and intellectual capital are actively re-enforcing the natural capital of our homelands and the entire planet.

This vision starts with a movement towards Financial Permaculture. Localizing our investments and creating circles of trust and intimacy to empower local entrepreneurs. This solution, like an good permaculture design, goes not negate or deny the larger vision of homogenized vision of centralized bureaucratic technocracy of the not-to distinct future...
Instead of protesting that nightmare...this vision quietly sit watching the hubbub and then with a quirky and sly smile goes out to the back yard to pick just the right seeds to sow to create the right micro-climate to attract the individuals and species to form the optimal guilds and groups to create the system of regenerative change that unobtrusively and unpretentiously starts to weave together a tapestry of beauty and peace for all of the earth and mankind.

Whew...thanks for sticking with me through that little rant...now my plug:
Join with us to create your own solution!
I am working with Catherine Austin Fitts, Jennifer English, Thomas Hupp, Albert Bates, and local leaders to create a course the create a space to discuss and learn how to localize capital into local communities to empower local initiatives to address local issues. Strong local initiatives weave together to create global solutions. Problems disappear as people empower themselves and become enraged...

come to:

FINANCIAL PERMACULTURE:
GREENING A RURAL AMERICAN COMMUNITY
OCTOBER 24-28TH, 2008
Hohenwald, TN

Attend our 5-day regenerative business and community development course and design simulation with the citizens of Hohenwald, Tennessee.

Engage in this participatory event to develop and prototype the tools and skills you'll need to launch regenerative businesses or encourage localized investment in your community.

Our course and design simulation will be guided by leading sustainabilty entrepreneurs:

Catherine Austin Fitts, investment advisor, founder of Solari, Inc.
David Blume, permaculture designer, author and biofuels expert
Andy Langford, permaculutre designer and co-founder of Gaia University
Liora Adler, bioregional and community facilitator expert and co-founder of Gaia University
Albert Bates, ecovillage, peak oil and climate expert and founder of Global Village Institute
Jennifer Dauksha-English, permaculture designer and founder of Center for Holistic Ecology
Greg Landua, permaculture designer and director of Ecovillage Training Center
Thomas Hupp, eco-entrepreneur and founder of The Leadership School

You'll learn to:
* map the financial ecosystem of a rural community
* start and finance a regenerative business,
* attract and engage with local investors

You'll be part of:
* designing the business, plan for a local ethanol plant and station, including:
- permaculture design
- legal structure
- financing plan
* pitching the plan to the local banking and business community.

Throughout, you will integrate amazing insights on communication and collaboration:
- Across cultures
- Across disciplines
- Across generations
Who Should Attend: Course is open to students, entrepreneurs, green business owners, bankers, philanthropists, investors, permaculture designers, community organizers, social entrepreneurs, attorneys, financial planners, accountants and local officials. While Permaculture is not a prerequisite, there will be a recommended reading list for the event.

Tuition: $500 if you sign up and pay in full by September 24, 2008. After that date there is a price increase to $750. Send in a $100 deposit* to lock in your reduced rate. Tuition includes: 5-day event and lunch Friday-Tuesday.**

You can send deposit and payment to:
Center for Holistic Ecology
Memo: Financial Permaculture Event
PO Box 451
Hohenwald, TN 38462

We do accept credit cards but require a 3% processing charge.

For further information:
e-mail info@holisticecology.org
call: 888-878-2434 ext 2

* Deposit is non-refundable after September 24 and prior to that date 80% of payment is refundable.
** The course begins 10 am Friday October 24 and ends 4 pm October 28. Once registered we will send you a confirmation e-mail packet that will include transportation, lodging and meal recommendations and answers to frequently asked questions.
Gray Bear Lodge, Hohenwald, Tennessee

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Carbon Negative Energy

Let me take a moment to unpack the phrase in the title of this blog.

Carbon Negative...sounds bad...sounds negative. But counter intuitively its not...its the holy grail in energy production and the growing movement to curb greenhouse gas induced climate change.

Carbon Negative Energy are systems that create energy (work or electrical power) while actively pulling carbon out of the atmosphere and solidifying it into a state that cannot be cycled back into the atmosphere.
Carbon Negative is the opposite of the energy systems that dominate our centralized grid system. The conventional energy system takes hydrocarbons out of the earth and burns them, changing their state to a vapor, and pumping it into the atmosphere.

At first glance it almost seems impossible to create energy in any other way...we have not seen this type of energy...what would it look like?

It would look like pyrolysis....Pyrolysis mimics the natural process that take centuries where carbonaceous materials (biomass) turn into hydrocarbons.
It allows us to turn biomas into carbon, gassifying the other molecules that comprise the substance.
Using permaculture, cradle to cradle or ZERI principles, the potentials of this geomimicry (mimicing earth processes) are tremendious.
We can create pure carbon from biomass and then put it back into the earth, reversing the trend of pumping carbon into the atmosphere, and instead taking it out....and, oddly enough we can produce energy with smiple heat driven steam engines (the same technology use to turn the heat produced in a nuclear reactor into the energy that powers our grid).
And use the gases that were created in the process as stored high energy material (like propane or hydrogen) that can be burned for energy, heat, or turned into useful materials through chemistry

So...through a smiple process, already well research and used by industry for various other business ventures.

Decentralize pyrolysis units, where appropraite, can allow communities to be self suffiecient, sequester carbon the help "fight" global warming, and give us an organic fertilizer to increase food production.


Now, this is not The HOLY GRAIL of sustainability...it is A HOLY GRAIL. The real wisdom of permaculture is that there are many solutions, and the more situationaly appropriate the better...

ENTER ETHINOL, a decentralized solution to our energy and food needs....To be continued.

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Empowering Vision

Busy as a BEE

Lately it seems as though the entire universe has started conspiring to shower me with everything I have been dreaming about...be careful what you wish for!

When the whole universe comes knocking at your door, how do you make time?
My involvement planing and preparing for the Financial Permaculture course is only the beginning... I am a teacher and facilitator in the Ecovillage Design Course, Lead organizer of the upcoming advanced permaculutre course in earthworks and food foresty, as well as my role as bioregional organizer, Gaia University Associate, and NextGEN fellow...whew...deep dreath....not to mention helping to launch a 24 7 internet radio channel...
Sometimes i find myself gasping for air...
feeling totally overwhelmed, and wondering what the hell I am doing drowning an a sea of sustainability...
Can anyone say...NOT SUSTAINABLE???

Ah...but Then hope shows up in the form of self empowerment, accountability, integrity, and TIME MANAGEMENT. My dear friend, colleague and mentor, Marianne Weidlien has been helping me to learn how to juggle all my passions and dreams...One of the key learning for me recently is how to respectful put down a ball that threatens to cause my juggling act to come crumbling down to the ground.
Discernment is a key word here.
Discerning when take a rest from my juggling act, and take a break, take time to smell the flowers and take a walk...do yoga or just read a book....Discerning when to say no to an amazing and juicy project, and discerning when to tell someone I cannot follow through with something.

In addition to teaching discernment Marianne's reflective questioning process has enabled me to see deep down what my patterns are, and which of them serves me, and which of them don't. Equipped with that powerful knowledge I have been able to make the CHOICE to raise my emotional frequency and stay in a productive and joyful space even when I might have been stressed out before.

It is still a process, and sometimes I still get overloaded...but I can always smile joyful and remind myself that I am choosing to say yes to all of this, and I can also choose to say no. Now I am learning to map my commitments with the flow of time, be more efficient, effective, and make the time I need to cultivate my own inner peace and strength.

Empowering Vision, Marianne's program is totally transforming my ability to manifest my dream of joyful service and abundance. A deep bow and my most profound gratitude to her for all her hard work and service to myself and other world changers. As Marianne has We need to be empowering ourselves and each other to do our best! And the change starts inside.

Linking up

After seeing my Financial Permaculture Post picked up and syndicated on Philup Cubeta's Philanthropy Blog: Gift Hub. This sparked a whole process in my head leading to a total geek out session linking, interlinking and joining all number of social networking sites and blog rolls such as Technorati.
Technorati Profile

Now I am scurrying around the web trying to get my web 2.0 credintials in order and join the blogging revolution...
que vive web 2.0 and the democratization of information!

Financial Permaculture

In the interview for Interdependent Radio, Ernest Callenbach that I wrote about in my last post, Ernest agreed that permaculture and bioregionalism offer us a unique pathway towards a vibrant and sustainable future.
But at times, as we teeter on the edge of peak everything and careen towards oblivion, the next steps to take us away from the fear and loathing of a crazy world, and towards a culture of peace justice and sustainability are unclear...shrouded in a fog of uncertainty and doubt.
Bioregionalism asks us to honor place and create cultures grounded in the ecosystems within which they reside...permaculture shows us the design science to mimic nature and provide abundance for human culture.....

But heretofore a transition grounded in the economic realities of the globalized trans-national gotterdamerung crazy world has eluded the visionaries and activists who are bustling about creating a new reality.

There have been attempts, manifestos like Bernard Lietaer's excellent treatise (ridiculously priced but revolutionary), The Future of Money and Margarit Kennedey's Interest Free Money offer us glimpses of a potential future, and principles to help organize in a new way...but no real steps forward...Paul Hawkin's Natural Capitalism offers us a less radical and more approachable model...and also a valuable view into the self organizing movement towards change, but unless we can ground green business models into sustainable communities so that they build up the social and economic equity of a place by empowering ethical investments, we will still be stuck in a crazy system designed to suck every ounce of life from the planet and convert it into wealth. How do we escape the matrix?

Catherine Austin Fitts, a storied Financial adviser and evolutionary economist offers us hope...grounded and step by step, decentralized and democratic, empowering and practical. Catherine's design for Solari circle is firmly based in the wisdom of a diverse portfolio invested in liquid and non-liquid investments that help to create localized sustainable communities based in the real economy of place. Taking us step by step through the incentives and imperatives of ethical investments in her Audio Seminar Series, Catherine then empowers people to create circles of trust and reciprocity called Solari circles, made up of individuals who educate themselves and invest as a group according to their individual vales and needs. These Affinity groups closely mirror Heart Circles, Wisdom Circles and other models of self organizing affinity groups that can empower the creation of a culture of cooperation.
Solari Circles are the intersection of cooperative culture with the competitive culture of Wall St. encouraging us to take control of our lives and our destinies...

When combined with the wisdom of permaculture Solari investing strategies offers the perfect road map towards creating a sustainable future today...no need to wait.
And the beauty is it's not just for the rich, or just for California...it is for anywhere USA...and also for anywhere .gobal
Something that is inclusive enough to empower the visions set forth by other thinkers...but not caught up in the vision, merely taking the next steps to make it possible. Making Financial Permaculture a reality. I will be writing more about what financial permaculture is and the principles and pathways towards it in upcoming posts.