Primitivists and permaculture
Smári McCarthy
Hash: SHA1
After chatting with Marcin and Josef separately the other day (if you
missed Oekonux, you have failed at life) I realized that one very
annoying fact of the entire movement for sustainability is the strong
primitivist presence therein.
Permaculture has gained a reputation for being a failed concept, which
is damaging to the idea of sustainable living, but most
Permaculturalists are closet Luddites, or simply primitivists, which is
essentially why they're failing. By rejecting technologies that may be
able to turn a very difficult task such as farming into a
30-minute-per-day maintenance job they are keeping back the development
that may be necessary for long term sustainability.
Everything about primitivists bugs the fuck out of me these days because
they're causing more damage than they're worth. How can we deal with this?
- Smári
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Andrew Shindyapin
Everything about primitivists bugs the fuck out of me these days because
they're causing more damage than they're worth. How can we deal with this?
Start a robotic permaculture garden startup (http://people.csail.mit.edu/nikolaus/drg/)? It's been on my list of startups to start up for a while now...
Vinay Gupta
Bryan Bishop
> Everything about primitivists bugs the fuck out of me these days because
> they're causing more damage than they're worth. How can we deal with this?
Not knowing about permaculture, I looked it up on Wikipedia-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture
At first it was looking pretty good: "Permaculture design principles
extend from the position that "The only ethical decision is to take
responsibility for our own existence and that of our children"
(Mollison, 1990). The intent was that, by rapidly training individuals
in a core set of design principles, those individuals could design
their own environments and build increasingly self-sufficient human
settlements — ones that reduce society's reliance on industrial
systems of production and distribution .."
Then it went sour: " .. that Mollison identified as fundamentally and
systematically destroying Earth's ecosystems."
That's unfortunate. It seems to me that there is something more
fundamental than permaculture, then, that began with that interesting
part- Wikipedia doesn't mention it- it's the train of thought that
leads to saying, "the only ethical decision is to take responsibility
for our own existence and that of our children"-- is there anything
that particularly focuses on this? Morrison's conclusion above- that
taking responsibility means pointing fingers at (and destroying)
industrial systems instead of designing them to become better- is
dangerous and it tastes bad to boot.
Smári McCarthy
Hash: SHA1
performing agricultural activities cannot be ethical if the industrial
process gets to participate in the same.
It reminds me of Heinz von Foerster's "Ethics and Second Order
Cybernetics", which is an excellent talk -
http://www.stanford.edu/group/SHR/4-2/text/foerster.html
Oddly enough, just after bitching about this I stumbled upon the fact
that there's a weekend course in organic agriculture this weekend next
door to where I live, so I'm going to go and get a bit more enlightened
about this issue.
- Smári
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Vinay Gupta
Mollison is _right_ - the industrial base is eating the earth. A
_new_ industrial base which doesn't do that might be being created,
but just because you don't like the man's conclusions, don't throw
away the data.
Vinay
--
Vinay Gupta
Free Science and Engineering in the Global Public Interest
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Nick Taylor
> Oddly enough, just after bitching about this I stumbled upon the fact
> that there's a weekend course in organic agriculture this weekend next
> door to where I live, so I'm going to go and get a bit more enlightened
> about this issue.
Ask them (if you like) about Aquaponics... something that I've come
across recently that looks interesting. There's a company in Aus that
sells the bits (aka pipes, tubs etc) but here in NZ anything bio is
incredibly heavily regulated so I think we have a choice of about 3
fish, one of which is an eel (And eels are the Houdinis of the fish
world. Incredible creatures really. Live longer than we do. Can escape
from anything)
Aquaponics looks like a neat concept though - basically a fishtank who's
waste water fertilises hydroponic plants, who then clean the water for
the fish. Round and round it goes.
Nick
Chris Watkins
After chatting with Marcin and Josef separately the other day (if you
missed Oekonux, you have failed at life)
que? Meaning he uses different identities for tech & political discussions?
Hope you're well. My computer was shutting itself down due to the tropical heat - I assume you're safe from that.
--
Chris Watkins (a.k.a. Chriswaterguy)
Appropedia.org - Sharing knowledge to build rich, sustainable lives.
identi.ca/appropedia / twitter.com/appropedia
blogs.appropedia.org
I like this: five.sentenc.es
Chris Watkins
Interesting thread. Would someone like to write (or co-write) a blog post on this for the Appropedia blog? I'm thinking especially of the points made by Bryan and Vinay re improving on, rather than rejecting, industrial systems.
Richard Schulte
automate agroecological operations.
yes, there are definately a host of machines that could make it
easier. Soil blockers, OSE's future microcombine, the microtrac,
etc. Plenty of the absolutely necessary hand tools, many of the more
ingenious kind being hard to find, would be easy to produce in a
Community Supported Manufacturing facility or in any microenterprise
operations But a little hard work is good for you and is worth the
effort.
If you knew what it took to grow food, once you have gathered that
knowledge and experience and have the right tools and whatnot, it
becomes ridiculously simple to feed large amounts of people with very
little land. I can say this as someone who has a lot of experience
working on farms and who knows people who run CSAs and permaculture
style operations.
One mistaken conclusion people make about permaculture is that it is
all some kind of food forest or silvopasture. Most of the
permaculturalists I know use biodynamics in the second zone, and then
those sorts of operations in the third zone. Simple machines could be
designed to make and broadcast seedballs en masse. But having the
understanding of what kinds of seeds will grow in what kind of
succession is important, and where to broadcast them based on soil
types and meadow succession and whatnot. This is not something that
you can easily learn in a book or something that a machine can easily
calculate, this is something that takes knowledge, experience and
skill (and not even that much) to properly implement.
Im trying to imagine robots herding sheep, and its hilarious. Or what
about shearing them? I was just doing this at a friends farm and I
doubt a machine could ever shear sheep.
So where could open manufacturing become useful in permaculture, or in
the broader spectrum of agroecological practice? As above, making a
wealth of simple tools with all kinds of different uses (check out
johnnys seeds to find out more about these machines), as well as the
tools to make them (lathe, xy table, drill press, metal extruders and
benders, etc.) and a handful of more complicated machinery OSE/ factor
e style.
As well, a system using arduino processors with complex sensors posted
about an agroecological environs could be extremely useful, especially
in temperate climes. Because one of the expert capacities in
agroecology is to create microclimates to extend the growing season by
weeks or even a month, in early spring and late fall these have to be
closely monitored on an individual level to ward off frost and other
complications. Also, this microprocessor network could be used to
monitor and control various irrigation systems, to open and close cold
frames, to monitor temperatures in green houses, monitor moisture
levels in root cellars and seed storage, maybe even to move hoop
houses when necessary.
Also, machines are needed for processing. Simple appro tech for
shucking corn, milling grains, rolling oats, canning, drying,
extruding bioplastics for packaging(possibly from hemp, a lot of big
time agriculturalists are talking about the return of its industrial
variety. Much more useful than corn or soy as a fiber crop), etc. OS
versions of some small scale slaughterhouse machinery as well. Some
of these technologies already exist, they just need to be streamlined,
made simpler, more appropriate, regionally replicable. Renewed
regional distribution systems and software to manage Community Food
Systems is already being put into action.
However, the fact remains that most agroecological operations require
more than a half hour of "maintenance" a day, unless you have orchards
and wilds to provide a small part of your diet like at Factor E. But
as well, the fact remains that NOT EVERYONE HAS TO GROW FOOD. Its a
pretty simple concept and, when you leave it up to the experts and
their interns, and rural communities in general, we should be fine.
Statistically, the percentage of population that is needed to
sustainably grow food in this country (the US) is about 3%. It is
currently below 1%, and they already grow more than we need. They
just export a lot of it. Studies show that the average sustainable
agriculture operation (whether you want to call it permaculture or
not) can produce 2 times as much food as conventional operations with
2 to 3 times as much labor. Also, its easier to have a more
diversified host of enterprises on one farm. And, though automating
the process might seem nice, a little bit of human metrics is needed
here.
I think what you guys may overlook is that PEOPLE ENJOY GROWING FOOD.
And not everyone has to do it. So, while you all provide food growers
a wide array of tools and technology which they find useful, you can
get a bunch of yummy, diverse foods, high quality fibers, and
sustainable fuels. Then you don't have to worry about designing super
complicated technology thats unnecessary.
On Apr 1, 9:10 am, Chris Watkins <chriswater...@appropedia.org> wrote:
> Sorry, meant to reply off list.
>
> Interesting thread. Would someone like to write (or co-write) a blog post on
> this for the Appropedia blog? I'm thinking especially of the points made by
> Bryan and Vinay re improving on, rather than rejecting, industrial systems.
>
Chris Watkins
personally, i enjoy the hard work, and dont understand the need to
automate agroecological operations.
Personally, the only thing I love more than getting a great yield from hard work, is getting a great yield from easy work. Automation will be popular with regular folks more than enthusiasts, I'm sure.
I imagine fences, gates and those guiding channels that funnel sheep one at a time as simple technologies for guiding sheep. A lot of that could be automated.
Horses have already been largely replaced with motorbikes and helicopters (in Australia and I'm sure other places). Robots are just a few steps of automation further along.
Or what
about shearing them? I was just doing this at a friends farm and I
doubt a machine could ever shear sheep.
:-)
from http://www.abc.net.au/rural/shearhistory/story2.htm :
The ORACLE developed by James Trevelyan at the University of Western Australia makes the first shearing blow by a robot on a live sheep.
...
1990
Merino Wool Harvesting of South Australia develops a sophisticated robot to partially shear sheep as part of an automated process. Economic recession in 1993 puts the company out of business.
There's plenty more info out there - I don't think it's displaced humans yet, but the concept seems to work.
If it's really easy, I enjoy it too. I love having a garden of herbs, edible flowers and baby greens to pick from at a moment's notice, and enjoy doing a few minutes of maintenance on most days. We don't have to grow everything ourselves, but we can make it easy for people to grow something. By having more people able to do this, we increase our resilience as well as the quality of our diets and lives.
A lot of this is about technique rather than automation - it's amazing how much easier you make things with 10cm (4in) of leaf mulch and a system selected or designed so it doesn't need watering every day. Where I'd differ with Mollison's reported views is that I see automation as a good thing, as a complement to good technique.
This doesn't mean you have to use it. If you believe hard work is inherently a good thing (Bertrand Russell didn't, & I don't) or you have skills or techniques that mean you do better without automation, that's fine. But any techniques, designs and automation are fantastic when they reduce the need to work and make it easier to be thrivable - abundant & sustainable.
Andrew Shindyapin
If you knew what it took to grow food, once you have gathered that
knowledge and experience and have the right tools and whatnot, it
becomes ridiculously simple to feed large amounts of people with very
little land. I can say this as someone who has a lot of experience
working on farms and who knows people who run CSAs and permaculture
style operations.
Great! Where can I, as an amateur, get this info? What are the keywords to search? If it's not freely available, why not?
... But having the understanding of what kinds of seeds will grow in what kind of
succession is important, and where to broadcast them based on soil
types and meadow succession and whatnot. This is not something that
you can easily learn in a book or something that a machine can easily
calculate, this is something that takes knowledge, experience and
skill (and not even that much) to properly implement.
So a human can calculate this, but a machine can't? Seems to me that once the appropriate soil sensors are in place and the weather data is available, a computer should be much more accurate than a person at it.
ben lipkowitz
Richard, I think you are trolling.
> Simple machines could be designed to make and broadcast seedballs en
> masse. But having the understanding of what kinds of seeds will grow in
> what kind of succession is important, and where to broadcast them based
> on soil types and meadow succession and whatnot. This is not something
> that you can easily learn in a book or something that a machine can
> easily calculate, this is something that takes knowledge, experience and
> skill (and not even that much) to properly implement.
please explain what is so special about this particular niche practice
that makes it so easy for humans to learn and teach, yet impossible for
machines, and impossible to encode in writing or interactive media.
> Renewed regional distribution systems and software to manage Community
> Food Systems is already being put into action.
do you have examples of these to share?
> pretty simple concept and, when you leave it up to the experts and
> their interns, and rural communities in general, we should be fine.
this sounds like an excellent way to dig ourselves even deeper into a
hole. the whole point of Open* is that normal people know how to do it!
the last thing i'd want to rely on for my existence needs is a closed
society with initiation rituals, paid-for certifications, and an
artificial religion.
> Studies show that the average sustainable agriculture operation (whether
> you want to call it permaculture or not) can produce 2 times as much
> food as conventional operations with 2 to 3 times as much labor.
source please
> I think what you guys may overlook is that PEOPLE ENJOY GROWING FOOD.
> And not everyone has to do it. So, while you all provide food growers
> a wide array of tools and technology which they find useful, you can
> get a bunch of yummy, diverse foods, high quality fibers, and
> sustainable fuels. Then you don't have to worry about designing super
> complicated technology thats unnecessary.
I enjoy manually formatting the sectors on my hard drive, AND YOU SHOULD
TOO. Obviously this is the best way to do it, because of the flexibility,
space efficiency, and low software infrastructure requirements. All that
unnecessary high level programming stuff is just stupid and too
complicated. It only takes a half hour of manual filesystem defragmenting
a day, and you start to depend on it after a while as a sort of zen-like
meditation. I can't understand why the vast majority of computer users do
it the hard way! You can attend my two week manual formatting camp this
summer in a remote basement computer lab, for only $999 and receive your
professional disk formatter certification, which you can put on your
resume.
Herbert Snorrason
Hash: SHA1
ben lipkowitz wrote:
> the last thing i'd want to rely on for my existence needs is a closed
> society with initiation rituals, paid-for certifications, and an
> artificial religion.
Modernity is the last thing you want? Intriguing.
With greetings,
Herbert Snorrason
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Chris Watkins
On Wed, 1 Apr 2009, Richard Schulte wrote:
Richard, I think you are trolling.
Ben, there's no basis to call Richard a troll that I can see - Richard has a point of view, and some of us (including me) disagree with some of his points.
There is a part of Richard's post that I strongly agree with - that some people particularly like growing food and are especially good and it, and we don't all need to do it. Some people believe that the end is nigh, and we'll all need to grow enough to feed ourselves or we'll be among those who die in the impending crash. I think that this kind of crash is unlikely, but even if others do, that doesn't stop us collaborating on our open knowledge resources.
Systems that will work for Richard are good (whether social engineering or hard engineering - either way they need to be documented on wikis). Solutions are also good when they work for the city-dweller who wants to supplement their diet/cuisine from a balcony garden. Let's document all of those solutions.
Chris
Bryan Bishop
> On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 22:44, ben lipkowitz wrote:
>> On Wed, 1 Apr 2009, Richard Schulte wrote:
>> Richard, I think you are trolling.
>
> people particularly like growing food and are especially good and it, and we
> don't all need to do it. Some people believe that the end is nigh, and we'll
> all need to grow enough to feed ourselves or we'll be among those who die in
> the impending crash. I think that this kind of crash is unlikely, but even
> if others do, that doesn't stop us collaborating on our open knowledge
> resources.
No, it does not stop us collaborating on our open knowledge resources,
but here's what needs to be pointed out: Richard is saying that there
are some ways that plants can be grow and agriculture to occur; ok,
fine, yes- true- completely. But now apparently they can only be
learned by people instead of being encoded into knowledge? Once
encoded into knowledge we can build machines to do this- and then
ignoring this, and saying that only people are able to do this, is
probably where fenn got off that Richard was trolling, since if you
*do not* think that knowledge can be used to automate activities, then
what are you doing talking about it in a manufacturing place? The more
fundamental issue as to whether or not knowledge can or can not be
encoded into a digital representation might be an appropriate topic,
but I'm stretched to see any legitimate arguments or points within
that one.
> please explain what is so special about this particular niche practice
> that makes it so easy for humans to learn and teach, yet impossible for
> machines, and impossible to encode in writing or interactive media.
- Bryan
Chris Watkins
On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 2:28 PM, Chris Watkins wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 22:44, ben lipkowitz wrote:
>> On Wed, 1 Apr 2009, Richard Schulte wrote:
>> Richard, I think you are trolling.
>
> There is a part of Richard's post that I strongly agree with - that someNo, it does not stop us collaborating on our open knowledge resources,
> people particularly like growing food and are especially good and it, and we
> don't all need to do it. Some people believe that the end is nigh, and we'll
> all need to grow enough to feed ourselves or we'll be among those who die in
> the impending crash. I think that this kind of crash is unlikely, but even
> if others do, that doesn't stop us collaborating on our open knowledge
> resources.
but here's what needs to be pointed out: Richard is saying that there
are some ways that plants can be grow and agriculture to occur; ok,
fine, yes- true- completely. But now apparently they can only be
learned by people instead of being encoded into knowledge?
I'm in agreement with you.
Richard, I'm curious whether you've modified your position on this?
Chris
Once
encoded into knowledge we can build machines to do this- and then
ignoring this, and saying that only people are able to do this, is
probably where fenn got off that Richard was trolling, since if you
*do not* think that knowledge can be used to automate activities, then
what are you doing talking about it in a manufacturing place? The more
fundamental issue as to whether or not knowledge can or can not be
encoded into a digital representation might be an appropriate topic,
but I'm stretched to see any legitimate arguments or points within
that one.
> please explain what is so special about this particular niche practice
> that makes it so easy for humans to learn and teach, yet impossible for
> machines, and impossible to encode in writing or interactive media.
Paul D. Fernhout
> I think what you guys may overlook is that PEOPLE ENJOY GROWING FOOD.
> And not everyone has to do it. So, while you all provide food growers
> a wide array of tools and technology which they find useful, you can
> get a bunch of yummy, diverse foods, high quality fibers, and
> sustainable fuels. Then you don't have to worry about designing super
> complicated technology thats unnecessary.
I just wanted to link Richard's point with Bob Black's "ludic revolution"
idea here:
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
"""
That doesn't mean we have to stop doing things. It does mean creating a
new way of life based on play; in other words, a ludic revolution. By "play"
I mean also festivity, creativity, conviviality, commensality, and maybe
even art. There is more to play than child's play, as worthy as that is. I
call for a collective adventure in generalized joy and freely interdependent
exuberance. Play isn't passive. Doubtless we all need a lot more time for
sheer sloth and slack than we ever enjoy now, regardless of income or
occupation, but once recovered from employment-induced exhaustion nearly all
of us want to act. ...
It is now possible to abolish work and replace it, insofar as it serves
useful purposes, with a multitude of new kinds of free activities. To
abolish work requires going at it from two directions, quantitative and
qualitative. On the one hand, on the quantitative side, we have to cut down
massively on the amount of work being done. AT present most work is useless
or worse and we should simply get rid of it. On the other hand -- and I
think this is the crux of the matter and the revolutionary new departure --
we have to take what useful work remains and transform it into a pleasing
variety of game-like and craft-like pastimes, indistinguishable from other
pleasurable pastimes except that they happen to yield useful end-products.
Surely that wouldn't make them less enticing to do. Then all the artificial
barriers of power and property could come down. Creation could become
recreation. And we could all stop being afraid of each other. ...
I haven't as yet even mentioned the possibility of cutting way down on
the little work that remains by automating and cybernizing it. All the
scientists and engineers and technicians freed from bothering with war
research and planned obsolescence should have a good time devising means to
eliminate fatigue and tedium and danger from activities like mining.
Undoubtedly they'll find other projects to amuse themselves with. Perhaps
they'll set up world-wide all-inclusive multi-media communications systems
or found space colonies. Perhaps. I myself am no gadget freak. I wouldn't
care to live in a push button paradise. I don't want robot slaves to do
everything; I want to do things myself. There is, I think, a place for
labor-saving technology, but a modest place. The historical and
pre-historical record is not encouraging. When productive technology went
from hunting-gathering to agriculture and on to industry, work increased
while skills and self-determination diminished. The further evolution of
industrialism has accentuated what Harry Braverman called the degradation of
work. Intelligent observers have always been aware of this. John Stuart Mill
wrote that all the labor-saving inventions ever devised haven't saved a
moment's labor. The enthusiastic technophiles -- Saint-Simon, Comte, Lenin,
B.F. Skinner -- have always been unabashed authoritarians also; which is to
say, technocrats. We should be more than sceptical about the promises of the
computer mystics. They work like dogs; chances are, if they have their way,
so will the rest of us. But if they have any particularized contributions
more readily subordinated to human purposes than the run of high tech, let's
give them a hearing.
What I really want to see is work turned into play. A first step is to
discard the notions of a "job" and an "occupation." Even activities that
already have some ludic content lose most of it by being reduced to jobs
which certain people, and only those people, are forced to do to the
exclusion of all else. Is it not odd that farm workers toil painfully in the
fields while their air-conditioned masters go home every weekend and putter
about in their gardens? Under a system of permanent revelry, we will witness
the Golden Age of the dilettante which will put the Renaissance to shame.
There won't be any more jobs, just things to do and people to do them. ...
"""
--Paul Fernhout
Eric Hunting
probably has its roots (pun intended...) in Taoist gardening and
cultures like that of the Chagga tribes of the south-eastern slopes of
Mt. Kilimanjaro where, until recent times, the purposeful concerted co-
cultivation of nearly a thousand plant species was employed to create
one of the most remarkable agrarian cultures ever seen. Communities
that look like natural jungle but host 100,000 people in comfort.
Permaculture is, essentially, the _engineering_ of artificial
ecosystems for the purpose of maximizing productivity for a diversity
of food crops. It's one of those brilliant 'lazy like an engineer'
concepts where one is trying to create a self-perpetuating system for
one's own benefit that you need put the least amount of human effort
into maintaining. It has its counterpart in polyspecies mariculture
which is, again, an attempt to cultivate a self-perpetuating ecosystem
that maximizes the production of a number of marine crops starting
with algea at the bottom of the food chain -in this way eliminating
the economic overhead of feedstocks. It's particularly important to
maximizing the economic and carbon replacement potential of the use of
OTEC power, exploiting the nutrient-rich upwelling discharge from
these systems as the base feedstock. And it's efficient. Polyspecies
mariculture can potentially yield about 5 times the protein per
hectare of any conventional form of land farming.
The thing with Mollison and other later members of the permaculture
movement is that they came out of the 1970s era split in the original
environmentalism movement between EcoTech and Soft Tech that resulted
from the emergence of an environmental fundamentalism with its origins
in 18th century Romanticism and with much influence from neopaganism.
Part of this has been the drafting of an arbitrary distinction between
'technology' and other kinds of artifice in the manner of the
distinction between the secular and the religious, the former being
characterized as profane, the latter virtuous. This relates to the
Romanticists rejection of the rationalism of the Enlightenment in
favor of the spiritual, emotional, and presumably more 'human' and
'natural'. And so it becomes 'blasphemous' to consider permaculture or
other forms of Soft Tech (a term environmentalists won't even use
anymore) a technology with both constructive and destructive potential
like any other technology because if its non-electric/electronic, non-
mechanical, primitive-seeming, and involves getting your hands dirty
and being in intimate contact with trees and plants then it somehow
means its more in-tune with the Gaian Logos.
There's no reason to this. There's no reason why biophysics should
somehow be more virtuous than any other aspect of physics. But this
isn't about reason. It's religion. Progress in permaculture has
generally been slowed by this. To be effective at permaculture means
to be a scientist and engineer with a deep comprehension of biology
and the ecological relationships between organisms. But this cultural
rejection of science and 'naughty technology' among so many of the
proponents of permaculture -this nonsense that it represents a moral
rather than practical alternative to agriculture- results in it not
getting the benefit of serious scientific research and thus never
being refined as a technique to be broadly implemented. This may be
changing with the emergence of the new Bright Green movement -a
resurgence of the EcoTech side of environmentalism coming in reaction
to the increasing plain deterioration of environmental fundamentalism
into a Malthusianist doomsday cult.
The Green movement has been like this for a while. Places like
Findhorn have done all this brilliant work in eco-community
development, permaculture, alternative energy, sustainable
architecture and so on for some 50 years but then you read some of
their literature and people are talking about how the Greek god Pan
likes to ride with them in their car -which would be really cool, but
it's nuts...
Eric Hunting
erich...@gmail.com
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> TOPIC: Primitivists and permaculture
> http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/t/aca9bbb8734cb34a?hl=en
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> == 1 of 4 ==
> Date: Tues, Mar 31 2009 5:17 pm
> From: Bryan Bishop
Nick Taylor
> The Green movement has been like this for a while. Places like
> Findhorn have done all this brilliant work in eco-community
> development, permaculture, alternative energy, sustainable
> architecture and so on for some 50 years but then you read some of
> their literature and people are talking about how the Greek god Pan
> likes to ride with them in their car -which would be really cool, but
> it's nuts...
The Green Movement is incredibly diverse - to the extent that it is (in
some ways) a misnomer to call it a "movement". It's definitely not all
moving/pulling in the same direction.
Friends of ours live quite close to Findhorn... and are of the opinion
that it is a bit of a magnet for lost souls, which wouldn't surprise me
in the slightest, based upon some of the incredibly at-odds-with-reality
folk that I came across at Friends of The Earth. Good people on the
whole, but very very understanding and accommodating so you'd get people
who refuse to have lights on in the meeting room etc... and because
everyone is so nice, they got away with it. We'd sit there in the dark.
Greenpeace is a bit more cohesive - I think because it's more
aggressive. Good to see their recommendations re: CHP power look like
they might actually be implemented in London.
The last year or so that I was with Greenpeace in Brighton UK, we didn't
get to do any local actions because every time we'd plan on targeting a
supermarket (or whatever) they'd say "ok, we agree... tell us what we
need to do"... almost like Greenpeace had turned into a de-facto
environmental consulting organisation for all of these businesses...
which I guess is cheaper than hiring your own.
n