Moonrise Permaculture

PPP: Permaculture People's Party

Bill Mollison has been talking about a permaculture political party for years now and he has asked me to convene the PPP. We will be discussing the PPP in depth at APC9.
To be able to form a party in Australia, we need to get 500 members signed up. Membership is free.
The membership form is available at: http://www.aec.gov.au/pdf/party_reg/handbook/political_parties_reg_handbook_2005_app05.pdf

We also need to write a party constitution outlining the purposes of the party and rules about membership.
This could also be a manifesto.
The handbook on registering parties is at http://www.aec.gov.au/Parties_and_Representatives/Party_Registration/Handbook/index.htm

A lot of discussion has been occurring at the PRI forum. Please contribute your thoughts at:
http://forums.permaculture.org.au/forum6

Bill wrote the following articles in 2007

The Permaculture People's Party (Papers and Proposals)
The Clarion Call.

Preamble: Many of us, and all of us trained in good design for houses and farms, feel disgusted with the present political systems, which seem to prefer war to peace, and want or hunger to plenty. We feel we must act to reverse this intellectual decay and consequent global deterioration.

If we gather our friends, and students of good design, we vastly out-number the few who have joined "left right" parties. We can take control. We can legislate to restore the earth, to save and generate forests, to secure water and clean food supplies, and to live to assist all people to survive, not to war on them.

All permaculture graduates know how to design life-enhancing houses and farms. Many are involved in aid programmes, or consult with landowners and builders. We have, in effect, many thousands of people-years of experience in building sustainable systems. We have served our apprenticeship as worthy designers of living systems.

Thus, we believe it is time to take charge of legislating for sustainable living. Why should we, the majority, put up with the stupidities of the Liberal/ Labour, Republican/ Democrat, Tory /Socialist dichotomies, whose efforts are to defeat each other, not to assist all people?

No, we must now vote them all out, and start the urgent repair of society and the earth itself. Oil men, coal miners, and wood chippers can between them destroy all of us, for greed. In this, they are assisted by "our government". To tolerate this is madness. To tolerate the use of biocides is ridiculous, and to subsidise destructive industries is stupidity. We must act for sanity and earth-care. Permaculture ethics require us to care for the earth. The permaculture lifestyle requires us to help others to care for themselves. Our ethics and lifestyle are the very best training for responsible government.

By supporting public trusts, Holland has greatly reduced and in fact largely eliminated the 'public service' (read: public stumbling block) to a very few people, thus, we must see the real function of government not to invent policies, but to discover existing policies that work well for problem solutions.

Most politicians arise from sportsmen, public broadcasters, film stars, lawyers, and businessmen. None of these can be trusted to evolve sensible policy; almost all of them operate on conviction based on personal beliefs. (no basis for sustainable society)

No, policy must be based on well-researched, extant, working models, and constantly refined by feedback from all levels of users or "consumers" of that policy. For instance, Finland is noted for the excellence of early education, Denmark for the volume of exports based on research, Sweden for developing energy systems that eliminate radio active wastes, or the risks of atomic energy. And so on...

Bangladesh has a wonderful system for lending to the poor, involving small loans, support circles for repayments, and good advice. There are very few 'bad loans'. We all need to adopt local cash management, credit unions, mini banks, economies of fair exchange of services and goods, not taxed expenditure. We do not live to support public servants and bankers in luxury, or politicians in great comfort, or C.E.Os in obscene wealth. No, it takes too much misery to keep a few manipulators too fat. We live to help our families and neighbours live a sustainable existence. This is what "policy" must be about.

Energy, Water, and Food

The forms of clean energy:

Wind power
Wind farms have become fairly common in advanced Countries. In Denmark, one large windmill is built after issuing 800 or so shares, the number of households that can be provided with power from a village machine. These shares, and up to 10m2 of solar panels providing hot water and electricity are purchased by middle-aged couples to ensure free energy in their retirement. Most connect to the grid, and buy or sell energy as they have the need, or have surplus energy. They provide for their old age.

Solar Devices
Solar panels as hot water provided to insulated tanks, or as electrical generators, are becoming routine fixtures in modern societies; again, surplus electricity is sold to the local grid, and surplus heat is 'dumped' into hot water systems.

Geothermal
Deep drill-holes, sited over areas of volcanic heat or where the earths crust is thin, convert water into steam for use in the heating of buildings, or in powering steam turbines for electrical production.

The Hydro-electrical devices
From very small to very large, the power of falling water to spin turbines has long been harvested, and supplements other energy systems.

But since ancient times, water has been used to compress and store air ("isothermally-compressed"). All water that falls carries some air bubbles, and these rise much more slowly than the water falls, so that they can be carried down and released in large storage rooms or plenums some 200 or more metres below ground.

A conical device called a trompe bleeds high levels of air into water, for escape and storage at depth in carefully plastered (sealed) rooms. From there, small diameter pipes leads compressed air to surface work shops, to farm storage tanks, and to households where compressed air operates small electric generators, refrigerators and cool rooms and the whole array of compressed-air tools (presses, vices, spray applicators, sand-blasters etc. etc.)

Given a modest stream and a trompe, or successive trompes, very large quantities of compressed air can be stored. In 1930, all cars, trams, trains, and cool rooms in Paris and Chicago, were supplied by miners with trompes, operated on compressed air. Light motor vehicles with 7 to 10 h.p. slide valve steam engines with a working pressure of 40 p.s.i., could travel 100 or more kilometres on 2 cubic feet of air at 1500 p.s.i. held in a drawn-steel cylinder below the seat.

The exhaust gas was very cold air, directed to a hamper in the boot for the preservation of cold meats, cold drinks, and the like. Unlike electricity, compressed air loses little in transport, and until the fossil fuels displaced it. It has no poisonous fumes or explosive potential.

As well, the trompes are well developed, and the uses of compressed air tools also very sophisticated. Many trompes can be built in one stream, and form many reservoirs of compressed air.

Tidal Energies
The rise and fall of tides, the power tidal current delivers over "egg-beater" turbines are all little-developed sources of clean energy. In straits running east-west, the tidal flow is constantly to the west, and operates around the clock. Sub-sea "egg beaters" will provide constant energy for the generation of electricity or for the provision of compressed air.

Powerful currents sweep by reefs and islands at the west end of straits (Bass Strait in Australia is one of many good examples). Only a very little of these energies is harvested to date, but "ducks", and compressed-air sausages for wave power are well developed, and it remains to tap the great power of confined currents for national energy grids.

Solar Energy
From modest "caravan power" for light and computers to very large static arrays of solar collectors on roof areas or as parabolic arrays for steam turbine development, solar devices are numerous; widely used, but at a small scale of the potential.

Areas of mirrors in steerable arrays one to five km. square are needed to supply national grids and state energy systems. We need to break out of the small-scale installations that have previously made all clean power "uneconomic".

Clean power is essential for life, and is only uneconomic if money is valued above life! Just as every house can harvest enough clean rainwater to supply the needs of the occupants, so every roof can collect the energy needed to fuel the house and supplement a national grid. It simply remains to make water collection and energy collection a compulsory part of architecture; to develop climate control in building using the air from earth tunnels to cool or heat rooms, and "day-night" fans to heat or cool the fabric of buildings.

In civilised societies, it is already legislated that buildings should never be permitted western windows, nor can large unshaded areas of car parks be built. Both call for too much summer heat to be offset, needlessly. It is past-time to legislate for domestic and urban energy and water storage.

Water Supply
In most countries, 80% of rainfall runs off or evaporates. Thus only 12% is available for agriculture or domestic needs. We must legislate for the construction of thousand of miles of swales on farms, as large contour ditches that fill in every heavy rain (>10mm/day). In 3 to 6 hours, such water soaks in, and is immune to evaporation or run-off! This water, over years and centuries, feeds tree roots, springs, and valley streams. Swales enable forests, and forests are both passive condenses of night air, and active cloud generators for rainfall. If we clear the ridges, 40% of orographic rain ceases. If we clear the plains, most condensation and clouds fail to form. Thus, swales precede forests. Forests precede precipitation. Again, clearing is a severely anti social act, and we must legislate for forestry, and survival. Every countryman in Australia has, all his life, used tank water from his roof. He suffers no adverse health effects, perhaps needing iodised salt to prevent goitre. It is long past time that architects and builders were required by law to build water self-sufficient houses, and energy self-sufficient houses.

All architecture students must learn the techniques of self-sufficient buildings. It remains to allow 12 - 14m2 of garden (on roofs, or at ground level), and food, water, and energy are provided by buildings! Such a society can last forever, in comfortable and clean surroundings. There is absolutely no reason to tolerate the vandalism of forest clearing, let alone support it by government subsidy. We face global death by neglect. It is not as though we do not have the skills to build to survive, we do!

Or, we could wood-chip our way to death, using present political parties as our bell-wethers, or guides to hell.

Tony Watkins, Lisa Mollison, Bill Mollison, and me.