Toby Hemenway - How Permaculture Can Save Humanity and the Earth, but Not Civilization

[darthvader5300]

There are far more advanced form of permaculture like Living Machines, Solar Aquacells, Muskegon Project, Diatomaceous earth anaerobic process combined with hydroponics wt engineered marsh, etc. All of them can recycle all man's wastes into fresh air, fresh water, fresh food, jobs, medicinal herbs, etc. Cannot support civilization? What a BIG LIE!

[magicdaveable]

The is Earth has been my Mother since I was a youngster pretending to be a hunter gatherer in the woods around my hometown. Gardening in the forest meant finding what was growing that was edible. That became encouraging some plants with minimal invasion. I was just out in the woods having fun. :-) Now more than 50 years later I am headed back to my hunter gatherer days at the end of my life.

[darthvader5300]

Because they have already acquired the natural immunity of the Old World diseases it is just a matter of reviving their abandoned ancient agricultural techniques that their population will increase in the hundreds of millions again just as before the Spaniards arrived. Combined with modern medicine, rock dust remineralization, new agricultural techniques, etc they can support present day modern civilization.

[darthvader5300]

Permaculture cannot support civilization? That is a BIG LIE! The Amazon vast terra-preta farmlands and the Inca and Mayan chinampas farmlands has supported huge civilizations but were only wiped out when the Spanish Conquistadors came in bringing with them unknowingly their old world diseases to which they are already immune but the native Indians are not immune to it. The present Indian population has already acquired the required natural immunity over the centuries.

[nomennudum00]

that`s good because nobody want to save civilization, just humanity.

[AbattoirDream]

There are cave paintings found that are dated at 600,000 years old.. art is older than we are told

[dontholdback1]

@AbattoirDream - Were you there 600,000 years ago? Or you rely on false Carbon dating method which some living creatures were dated 9,000 years old?

[peaceinstead]

This is an Excellent video and Message! Thank you for this video!!!! The time is now to make the change!!

[dontholdback1]

God made our planet around 6000 years ago- not millions.

[SimpleManY2X]

@dontholdback1 --if i find god, i request him to grant me a gift to have sex with natalie portman all my life, i want to donate all my sperm to her, so that she can feed on my juice

[dontholdback1]

@SimpleManY2X-- God is not Genie in the bottle to do your requests. Jesus loves you but if you reject him with your sex obsessed desires like you expressed out of marrige- he will crush you like we do an ant . He is Creator and you are his creature. He has a right to tell you what to do but the best part - he does not enforce it in your earthly life. He wants to be loved back out of adoration not out of fear.

[saifoda]

@dontholdback1 Yes! Allah Ackbah!!!!!

[saralovemassage]

What an informative lecture Toby! I am a member of a group creating an eco village where we are demonstrating "blueprints for a sustainable civilization" and a whole new way to live. Please check out our project at One Community Ranch (dot) org and feel free to use any info that will forward your cause- as it is all open source. The time is now that we get to create a new paradigm that truly works for everyone! Thanks for being a fellow advocate for our precious mother earth and for all you do!

[peaceinstead]

@saralovemassage Sounds AWESOME !!!!!!!!!!! What a fantastic website!!:)

[saralovemassage]

@peaceinstead Thank you!!! :)

[wheelori814]

add alternative housing like cobb to this and oh yea baby!

[darkchocolate100]

The only critism I have to say is be careful of the use of the word "horticulture". Just before college I was really into Permaculture but was relatively unfamiliar with the word "horticulture". I read an article that used horticulture in the same setting & assumed it had 2 do w/ permaculture. So I chose that as my major assuming the 2 would be very similar. But how wrong was I. The horticulture industry is just in it for the $, & manipulates & diverts natural processes in every way possible.

[lovelovinghorses]

Brilliant lecture, so informative. Thanks for posting x

[MsPersimmons]

Toby is an amazing teacher - I had the pleasure of earning my Permaculture Certificate in his class at PSU. So glad to see his name continue to grow. Toby has a lot to offer, and we can all use "guiding principles" to live by.

[lordmetroid]

When ey talks about meat, that it is not a great source of energy. Ey intentionally only inclue the muscle. Which is true, muscle is not such a good source of raw energy. However there is a lot of yummy fat surrounding the muscles on an animal which turns out to be a really rich energy source and the number one nutrient which the human body is tuned to make use of.

[parkerjwill]

@lordmetroid That's one of many reasons why cow's are so important; they produce milk, which can be turned into butter, yoghurt, buttermilk, cheese, etc.

[piisskopp]

@parkerjwill but do you NEED butter, yoghurt, buttermilk, cheese etc.? ;)

[parkerjwill]

@piisskopp I don't know if you need them or not. But I do know that pure cow's milk is extremely nutritious for the human body. key word being PURE. Cow's make human civilization so much easier; it's a divine relationship.

[greenman124]

A sustainable system is one that transduces or "creates" more energy that it consumes over the lifetime of the system and includes the energy it required to create that system.

[danfromabove]

@greenman124 Dude I'm all for sustainability but you can't 'create' energy, its a law of the universe.

[REPuck]

@danfromabove

This is a matter of semantics. Sure, we can not 'create' energy. The wind blowing through a tree moving its branches back and forth is energy, but it is not energy that is supplying us with the energy we use every day in our homes. So, instead of 'creating' energy, we are harnessing energy where it exists elsewhere and converting it to energy we can use in our homes with minimal impact on the environment.

[lordmetroid]

@greenman124 You are asking for the impossible. There is no such system, it is against the laws of physics!

[JamesTyreeII]

Love you Toby! We miss you in Portland!

[ewerbo]

.../wikipedia/en/wiki/Timeline­_of_evolution

the time machine can still work with a little recalibration...

toby is a well respected, passionate and dedicated teacher

[freezemyheaddotcom]

and the lascaux paintings are not 40-50,000 year old. jesus christ can you even check the most basic facts before you twist them??

[johan404]

@freezemyheaddotcom Troll.

[freezemyheaddotcom]

i like your yarn time machine critique of agriculture, but uhh the human species is not a million years old. kinda embarrassing to see that. do you know the difference between genus and species? so... anything hominid is an "us"?

and then you show pictures of people weaving baskets and say we have been doing this for hundreds of thousands of years? yup.. there we were... just weaving baskets.. for..how many thousands of years? oh, you know, hundreds... whatever.

[BlindWebster]

@freezemyheaddotcom No your little technical tribe doesn't have a monopoly on certain words. Language is fluid,a model. When he's speaking he's painting an abstract idea of what it means to be human. He puts up a broad group of pictures that don't necessarily correlate exactly to what he's saying at the moment. Narrowly trained nerds like yourself are the reason we're in such trouble, wasting resources on things that aren't thought through. Learn diminishing returns, ROI, etc.

[zezt]

I've learnt So much watching this video. THANKS!

[dovlinhos]

I think the title of the video is not quite right - he proposed that permaculture would bring an end to agriculture, but not civilization in general. Civilization has many more implications than food production (writing, legal system and organized education are the first ones that pop to my mind) and I don't think we need to give up on these to make a sustainable society.

[dberisford]

@dovlinhos - He is getting away from Sustainable in the first 10 minutes of the video... I think if many plots of land had permaculture food would not be a problem for the people who do education or legal work or deliver packages... Food is 50% of our society. Most things revolve around feeding ourselves. We could do ourselves a massive amount of good by these methods... like pollution.

[WhichDoctor1]

@dovlinhos "I don't think we need to give up on these to make a sustainable society."

His hole argument is that we dont need to. His point is that civilization is Independent of food production. The old idea was that we could only have a civilization because of farming but he says that's not true. You dont have to give up education, safety, art and culture just because you give up farming.

[johan404]

@WhichDoctor1 No, he said we can have culture and society without agriculture (or civilization).

[quarryjoy]

Thank you for sharing this program. ~ J.B.