[permaculture-oceania] Re:A Must See - An Inconenient Truth -More Ways Than One

[Tom Duncan]

Hi Ian,
Yes I think we need to challenge ourselves in order to grow as a movement 
and individually, this is a prerequisite for growth, struggle, 
intellectually, physically and emotionally. For some it is a spiritual 
struggle, additionally. I have been struggling with the technological 
difficulties of sustainability, and have over the last 6 years spent a lot 
of time researching biodigesters, aquaponics and what integrated biosystems 
that George Chan has designed can offer permaculture and the sustainability 
movement in general here in Austraila and globally. They are radically 
efficient energy conservers and transformers with systems of abundance.

There are many challenges each individual faces, aside from what challenges 
communities, societies, species, and the planet.

Ian, I really like your idea of having a website documenting the success 
stories of permaculture, ecovillages, eco-neighbourhoods, and packaging the 
information so that a body of knowledge and the designers behind these 
success stories are able collectively to attract ethical investment to 
propagate more success stories, as success requires committment with land 
and money. Plenty of people are willing to put their money into ethical 
investment, but there are few real sustainable investments for them..... You 
cannot create an ecovillage or eco-neighbourhood or a Living Neighbourhood 
as Chris Alexander of "Pattern Language" puts it, on a rental property. Its 
worth is wiped off as soon as you have to move or the rent is hiked.  Check 
out Living Neighbourhoods - a great read. 
http://www.livingneighborhoods.org/ht-2/home.htm I have attached an 
Australian Greenhouse text below about "Living Neighbourhoods" case study 
done in SA. It would appear a good match, to get Govt Greenhouse Funding and 
Ethical Investment for Relocalisation activties such as eco-neighbourhoods 
and ecovillages where water, power, fuel, and food self sufficient if 
designed correctly. I am thinking that Adam at Energy Bulletin who has 
helped put together the EDAP-Primer is a great website designer and might be 
up for such a project. Adam an comments? I know your pretty busy these days 
but I think there is a synergy here.

Australia has plenty of coal and natural gas to keep living the fat cat life 
for a long time. I guess it is when the sea levels change drastically and 
those whom are most vulnerable such as the Tuvalu and other communities in 
oceania, Bangladesh, the Chinese river deltas.... that others start to feel 
the pain. Theres already a world of pain out there... and permaculture can 
be a force for practical reconciliation with earth systems, in a timely 
fashion, bringing together practical solutions, bringing in radical science 
that now shows real systems of abundance and energy, food and fuel freedom 
(cite Dr Mae Wan Ho of the Institute for Science in Society UK and her Dream 
Farms project with George Chan, biodigesters and Integrated Farming and 
Waste Management System progenitor) and positive community development 
approaches can be a powerful force.  I'm guessing many people on this list 
feel empathetic with those environmental refugees whose lives and 
communities will be torn apart and already have been in Tuvalu.

I know that permaculturists are up to the challenges and have been at the 
cutting edge of intellectual, practical, experimental and experiential 
fields of the broader field of ecological sustainability, and I don't think 
Al Gore's movie is fear mongering. I think it is timely education about the 
facts. If people feel negative about it, that is an emotional reaction. A 
rational response when supplied with such information, is that disaster 
proofing your bioregion is a good place to start...... thats why I admire 
the EDAP - Energy Descent Action Planning Process that folks are doing 
http://www.eatthesuburbs.org/edap-primer here in Australia and have already 
done one in Kinsale, Ireland.

It is becoming clear that at a certain point, the oceans become a net carbon 
source, not a sink as it is now. And that is the problem, along with 
Greenland iceshelf melting and messing with the major ocean currents that 
regulate wheather and climate stability that we have enjoyed for 10,000 
years or so.

My key points here are:
1) Biodigesters are a key-stone technology in sustainable energy and waste 
transformation at the family unit, neighbourhood unit, town, village, city 
level and bioregion level. Lets get aquainted with them, and get on with the 
job of deploying them where possible.
2) Permaculturists have a positive role to play in being "Community As 
Developer", and having a system that works and is replicable for ecovillage 
/ eco-neighbourhood rollout. This can be invested in, rapdily. Money wants 
to find a home in environmentally, socially and economically sustainable 
structures, but there needs to be the right vehicles for this investment to 
be actioned.
3) Ian, I agree completely that the success stories and the platform for 
future growth in the ecovillage model is now appropriate, starting with a 
website. I have gone ahead and registered the domain www.ecovillagetrust.org 
so let the collaboration begin if interested. It could be a website to 
showcase all the success stories of ecovillages, and map the real potential, 
to bring ethical investment to the table in Australia and internationally...

Cheers, Tom
LIVING NEIGHBOURHOODS: Partnerships for Change
  a.. Introduction
  b.. The Living Neighbourhood
  c.. The Method
  d.. Living Neighbourhood Initiatives
  e.. Onkaparinga Opts for Living Neighbourhood
    a.. Table 1: Examples of Reduced Car Use in Adelaide June-July 1997
    b.. Table 2: Reductions in Carbon Dioxide Emissions
  f.. For more information
The following Case Study explores an innovative community engagement 
program, developed in Adelaide SA, to promote greenhouse gas reductions.

As part of an ongoing strategy to reduce the impact of the car in Adelaide, 
Transport SA commissioned a series of studies in 1996. The focus was to 
assess the usefulness and relevance of Travel Blending® - an approach in 
which change begins with Partnerships for Change Aindividuals. Two projects 
in 1997 and 1998, conducted by UK transport consultants Steer Davies Gleave, 
produced results showing a 20 per cent reduction in kilometres travelled by 
car per participant, and reductions for the population as a whole of around 
11 per cent.

So Transport SA commissioned a project on a much larger scale. The entire 
community of Dulwich and Rose Park in the City of Burnside became a Living 
Neighbourhood® in which everyone who lived, worked, played and went to 
school in the community - an estimated 1500 people - were invited to 
participate.

At the completion of the six-month project preliminary results show car 
trips in the neighbourhood have reduced by 10 per cent, and the number of 
kilometres travelled by car reduced by six per cent. Car drivers report they 
now spend five per cent less time behind the wheel and subsequently enjoy 20 
minutes more leisure time per week. Time spent walking has increased eight 
per cent.

Estimated cost of the project is $150 per household. This means that $150 
buys one tonne of reduced C02 emissions per year.

The success of the project has convinced the City of Onkaparinga, in 
Adelaide's south, to create a Living Neighbourhood at Christies Beach.

Introduction
Efforts to reduce car use often fall into two camps. There is the US 
approach of legislative and pricing measures, and the campaigns to make 
people aware of the benefits of reduced car use, pioneered in the UK.

The problem with the latter is turning awareness into behavioural change. A 
good example of the problem comes with the results of a random telephone 
survey of 1000 households conducted in 1995 in the greater Sydney area 
(Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong). Eighty nine per cent of respondents to 
this survey expressed concern or at least some concern for air pollution in 
the region. However, only 59 per cent said they take action to reduce car 
use because of the environment. It highlights the challenge of getting 
people to move from awareness to change in behaviour.

The Living Neighbourhood approach is based on the philosophy that people 
need more than simply being 'made aware'. They need to:

  a.. understand the issues so that they can make changes themselves, and
  b.. make changes that suit their own lifestyles.
The Living Neighbourhood
Living Neighbourhoods have their roots in the technique called Travel 
Blending. In a Living Neighbourhood, such as the Dulwich and Rose Park 
community, everyone who lives, works, attends school and plays in the 
neighbourhood is offered the opportunity to travel blend.

Travel blending was initially developed as part of Clean Air 2000, an 
innovative campaign to clean Sydney's air before the Olympic Games.

In brief, it can be described as an approach that empowers people to reduce 
the impact of the car by making small changes from which they benefit and 
that fits their lifestyles.

Travel blending offers a way for individuals to reduce car use by:

  a.. thinking about activities and travel in advance
  b.. blending modes of transport
  c.. blending activities by doing as many things as possible on the same 
journey
  d.. blending over time by making small sustainable changes over longer 
periods of time.
Thinking about activities is, in some respects, the key to the whole 
concept. In addition to encouraging small changes, participants begin to 
think about long term changes.

The Method
Approximately 1500 people who lived, worked or went to school in the Dulwich 
and Rose Park Living Neighbourhood were asked to complete a series of travel 
diaries. These diaries recorded all their trips over a full week. The data 
was entered into a database and an automatic feedback generation system 
(based on the Expert System method) used to prepare customised feedback 
sheets. These sheets offered each household tips on how they might be able 
to reduce the number of trips they make in future. Among the suggestions 
might be using a bicycle for those trips to the corner deli, or approaching 
a neighbour who makes the same trip at the same time.

Participating households were given about four weeks to practise these 
travel blending tips. Then they were sent the next kit. This kit measured 
the impact of travel blending on the household's travel activities. The kit 
included another set of travel diaries. The household again completed these 
over a seven-day period and returned them for analysis.

Finally, the household received a summary of travel activities from the 
second set of diaries and an analysis of the changes in travel between the 
first and second diaries. In addition, participants were given tips and a 
log book so they could continue to monitor the odometers of their vehicles 
once a week.

Living Neighbourhood Initiatives
One of the characteristics of a Living Neighbourhood project is that each 
community develops its own set of initiatives.

In Dulwich and Rose Park, for example, the local primary school added travel 
blending to its curriculum for Grades 5, 6 and 7. Each student in these 
classes took home diaries. The school announced the Travel Blending and 
Living Neighbourhood program in its weekly newsletter and all parents of 
participating children received a special letter signed by the principal.

The City of Burnside Council replaced all street signs in Dulwich and Rose 
Park with new ones that included the Living Neighbourhood logo. And Council, 
of its own volition, drafted a letter to residents (under the Living 
Neighbourhood banner), asking them to cut back overhanging branches so that 
it was easier to walk along the streets.

A monthly newsletter was developed for the Dulwich Business Precinct. Its 
aim was to link businesses together and keep them informed on recent Living 
Neighbourhood developments.

Onkaparinga Opts for Living Neighbourhood
As part of its Cities for Climate ProtectionTM Local Action Plan, the City 
of Onkaparinga in Adelaide's south started a Living Neighbourhood project 
last month.

Besides reducing greenhouse gas emissions, Onkaparinga Council expects their 
Living Neighbourhood project to lead to a healthy and active community as 
residents become more aware of their community and support its local 
services.

Council selected Christies Beach as its Living Neighbourhood. This is a 
suburb with 17.4 per cent unemployment (27.6 per cent youthunemployment), 20 
per cent of households earning less than $300 per week and 16.6 per cent of 
residents without a car.

Table 1: Examples of Reduced Car Use in Adelaide June-July 1997
      Participants Diary 1 Diary 2 % Change
      Car Driver Trips 2572 1988 -22.7%
      Car Driver Kilometres 26,856 21,131 -21.3%
      Total Hours in the Car 1325 977 -26.2%
      Total People Approached
      Car Driver Trips 3089 2669 -13.6%
      Car Driver Kilometres 32,251 28,534 -11.2%
      Total Hours in the Car 1603 1310 -19.3%

Table 2: Reductions in Carbon Dioxide Emissions
      Diary 1 - Kms Diary 2 - Kms Reduction in Kms C02 reduction
      26,856 21,131 5725 1436 kg

The results from Table 1 make possible the calculation of an estimate of C02 
emission reductions. Assuming C02 emission factor of 2.26kg/L for unleaded 
petrol (BTCE, 1996) and the average fuel efficiency of passanger vehicles in 
South Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1995) as 11.11/100 Km, 
there would be approximately 0.251 kg of C02 per km travelled.
Assumimg the above figures are reductions over one week, it would mean that 
for 100 households (gross) there is an annual reduction of 75 tonnes of C02.
What Onkaparinga Council expects to achieve from the project includes:

  a.. improved air quality
  b.. an integrated transport system based at the Noarlunga Interchange
  c.. reduction in car dependence
  d.. healthier and more active residents
  e.. more awareness and better use of local services
  f.. greater mobility and access to transport options
  g.. enhanced work skills as residents are trained as data entry processors
  h.. community involvement with residents encouraged to volunteer
  i.. part of curriculum for local TAFE students
  j.. networking with Beach Road Main Street Project Inc.
Besides fitting with Council's CCP campaign and with Smogbuster's Rideshare 
objectives, the Living Neighbourhood project aims to raise awareness about 
the economic, social, health and environmental implications of transport 
use.

The Onkaparinga Council and SARTAG (Southern Adelaide Region Transport 
Advisory Group) will be jointly involved with the project.

For more information
For more details about this Case Study, please contact:

Elizabeth Ampt
Steer Davies Gleave
229 Greenhill Road, Dulwich SA 5065
08 8332 4000 (phone)
08 8332 9796 (fax)
lizampt at sdgworld.net

Ann Gibbons
City of Onkaparinga
08 8384 0630 (phone)
anngib at onkaparinga.sa.gov.au

AGO, Community Partnerships
02 6274 1597 (phone)
02 6274 1814 (fax)

CCPTM is an ICLEI Program in collaboration with the Australian Greenhouse 
Office


      Deep ice tells long climate story
            By Jonathan Amos
            Science reporter, BBC News, Norwich



            Epica drills have extracted ice from deep under the surface
      Carbon dioxide levels are substantially higher now than at any time in 
the last 800,000 years, the latest study of ice drilled out of Antarctica 
confirms.

      The in-depth analysis of air bubbles trapped in a 3.2km-long core of 
frozen snow shows current greenhouse gas concentrations are unprecedented.

      The East Antarctic core is the longest, deepest ice column yet 
extracted.

      Project scientists say its contents indicate humans could be bringing 
about dangerous climate changes.

      "My point would be that there's nothing in the ice core that gives us 
any cause for comfort," said Dr Eric Wolff from the British Antarctic Survey 
(BAS).

      "There's nothing that suggests that the Earth will take care of the 
increase in carbon dioxide. The ice core suggests that the increase in 
carbon dioxide will definitely give us a climate change that will be 
dangerous," he told BBC News.

      The Antarctic researcher was speaking here at the British 
Association's (BA) Science Festival.

      Slice of history

      The ice core comes from a region of the White Continent known as Dome 
Concordia (Dome C). It has been drilled out by the European Project for Ice 
Coring in Antarctica (Epica), a 10-country consortium.

      The column's value to science is the tiny pockets of ancient air that 
were locked into its millennia of accumulating snowflakes.

      Each slice of this now compacted snow records a moment in Earth 
history, giving researchers a direct measure of past environmental 
conditions.

      Not only can scientists see past concentrations of carbon dioxide and 
methane - the two principal human-produced gases now blamed for global 
warming - in the slices, they can also gauge past temperatures from the 
samples.

      This is done by analysing the presence of different types, or 
isotopes, of hydrogen atom that are found preferentially in precipitating 
water (snow) when temperatures are relatively warm.

      'Scary' rate

      Earlier results from the Epica core were published in 2004 and 2005, 
detailing the events back to 440,000 years and 650,000 years respectively. 
Scientists have now gone the full way through the column, back another 
150,000 years.

      The picture is the same: carbon dioxide and temperature rise and fall 
in step.


            Like tiny time capsules, bubbles trap ancient samples of 
atmosphere
      "Ice cores reveal the Earth's natural climate rhythm over the last 
800,000 years. When carbon dioxide changed there was always an accompanying 
climate change. Over the last 200 years human activity has increased carbon 
dioxide to well outside the natural range," explained Dr Wolff.

      The "scary thing", he added, was the rate of change now occurring in 
CO2 concentrations. In the core, the fastest increase seen was of the order 
of 30 parts per million (ppm) by volume over a period of roughly 1,000 
years.

      "The last 30 ppm of increase has occurred in just 17 years. We really 
are in the situation where we don't have an analogue in our records," he 
said.

      Natural buffer

      The plan now is to try to extend the ice-core record even further back 
in time. Scientists think another location, near to a place known as Dome A 
(Dome Argus), could allow them to sample atmospheric gases up to a million 
and a half years ago.

      Some of the increases in carbon dioxide will be alleviated by natural 
"sinks" on the land and in the oceans, such as the countless planktonic 
organisms that effectively pull carbon out of the atmosphere as they build 
skeletons and shell coverings.

      But Dr Corinne Le Quéré, of the University of East Anglia and BAS, 
warned the festival that these sinks may become less efficient over time.

      We could not rely on them to keep on buffering our emissions, she 
said.

      "For example, we don't know what the effect will be of ocean 
acidification on marine ecosystems. There is potential for deterioration," 
she explained.

      More CO2 absorbed by the oceans will raise their acidity, and a number 
of recent studies have concluded that this will eventually disrupt the 
ability of marine micro-organisms to use the calcium carbonate in the water 
to produce their hard parts.



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ian Lillington" <livpermaculture at internode.on.net>
To: "permaculture-oceania" <permaculture-oceania at lists.cat.org.au>
Cc: "Tom Duncan" <greenheart at bigpond.com>; "David Holmgren & Su Dennett" 
<holmgren at netconnect.com.au>
Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2006 10:40 AM
Subject: RE: [permaculture-oceania] Re:A Must See - An Inconenient 
Truth -More Ways Than One


> Thanks Mitra, Tom and others for this debate. It is important, I think, 
> that
> we continue to have this level of constructive controversy.  Prof Stuart
> Hill, at APC8 in Eltham last year made very similar challenges.  I always
> hope for a great upswell of permie-activity to address such calls, but I
> think it is more in our collective nature to respond in slow steady and
> perhaps less visible ways.
>
> I appreciate Mitra's thought-provoking questions, and ask them of myself 
> as
> well.  I am not sure that we lack successful designs, farms or 
> eco-villages.
> Rather, I think we lack awareness of them.  This is partly due to us being
> busy doing permaculture, and not having enough time to produce good
> websites, books, etc; and partly because a lot of good "permaculture" work
> is either virtually invisible, or not ever called permaculture.
>
> For example, my support for my local food co-op, which in turn supports
> local growers is an important part of my 're-localisation'.  *I* think of 
> it
> as permaculture, {part of my "permaculture lifestyle"} but no one else
> credits it as such.
>
> the same story goes for a dozen commercial farms and eco-village 
> communities
> that *I* know, let alone all the others that I don't know, which are
> 'hidden' success stories.
>
> It is a universal problem that we hear the negatives.  My experience of
> Crystal Waters is overwhelmingly positive.  My experience of Aldinga is a
> bit less positive, but it is early days (I reckon every eco-village needs 
> 20
> years to settle). Given as long as Crystal Waters, Aldinga will be another
> massively successful project.  Maybe it will be called permaculture, maybe
> not.  and isn't an abandoned swale better than no swale at all?
>
> Permaculture continues to be *one* of many ways that we address a rapidly
> changing world.  What is important is that we are active in a way that we
> can be.  Meanwhile, I'd like to help get together a "success stories" book
> and/or web site...we might be surprised at how much is out there?
>
> Ian Lillington
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