Summary: Do we need to break the system to save the climate? Permaculture co-founder David Holmgren says "yes", in rare radio interview. Then Nicole Foss replies. Plus Alex's climate music. Last week on Radio Ecoshock we looked at a growing group of activists, authors and scientists who say only a serious economic crash could save us from climate doom. Now we'll talk with the man who started this flurry, the co-founder of the permaculture movement, Australian David Holmgren. I'll follow that up with reaction from Canadian finance and alternatives expert Nicole Foss. If you care about the future, this is radio you won't want to miss. Download/listen to this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (54 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB) DAVID HOLMGREN - DESPERATE MEASURES FOR DESPERATE TIMES Despite the hopes and warnings of the last generation, humanity is heading for the darker path of more fossil fuel development. Today's politicians are all about new pipelines, fracking, tankers, super coal mines and super coal ports, and of course endless oil. It didn't have to be that way. We had other choices, but now the co-founder of the Permaculture movement says "Welcome to the Brown Tech Future". That train to climate disaster must be derailed for us to survive, he says, in a provocative essay called "Crash on Demand". When it comes to David Holmgren you've either heard of him in an almost reverent way, or you haven't a clue. Along with Bill Mollison, David started the permaculture movement back in the 1970's. He's experimented with it ever since, from ecovillages and food forests to retrofitting suburbia. David is not a huge self-promoter. Outside of Australia, he's known mainly by people seeking alternatives to the system of endless growth, and pitiless pillage of the land. Find his web site here. Download/listen to this Radio Ecoshock interview with David Holmgren (25 minutes) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi So what are we talking about? The co-founder of Permaculture is saying we can't prevent a horrible collapse of the climate unless the current industrial-economic engine crashes. The only previous example of massive greenhouse gas reductions was when the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990's. That's what it takes, Homlgren says. This essay is part of a longer train of writings by Holmgren. He began with the book "Permaculture One" published in 1978, when David was 23, at the College of Advanced Education in Hobart, Tasmania. After experimenting with permaculture, from his own consulting firm, Holmgren updated the vision with the 2002 book "Permaculture: Principles and Pathways beyond Sustainability". That's still the best book on the subject, and fundamental to the permaculture movement world-wide. In 2007, David published a long essay, which became a book, "Future Scenarios". Based mainly on the expectation of peak oil, that work has the four descent senariois: Brown Tech, Green Tech, Earth Steward, and Lifeboats. Future Scenarios, combining Peak Oil and Climate Change, was developed into a web site which fully explains his views. It's a good place for anyone to start. Future Scenarios is also available as a book from Chelsea Green. You can buy the book "Future Scenarios" here. Or read it free online at this web site. The next link in Holmgren's deep work came in 2009, with an analysis of the fatal marriage of the financial system to the fossil fuel energy industry. Download David's 2009 essay, which is part of this train of thought, and this Radio Ecoshock interview, "Money vs Fossil Energy: The battle for control of the world" from this web page. Now we have "Crash on Demand, Welcome to the Brown Tech Future". Find "Crash on Demand" at this web site, or download it as a .pdf here. In our interview, David says he suggested the four scenarios as short-term futures, possibly covering decades. Now he finds humanity has chosen one of the paths, the most deadly for the climate and ourselves, the "Brown Tech Future". In it we find desperate measures like the Tar Sands, O
