Organic Landscape Design

Designing the Future – Presentation

 

Introduction Frame

 

Good evening and welcome. Thank you for coming out to hear me “shine a light on the pathway to an abundant future”.

 

What I want you to take away from this presentation is a different focus – a change in point of view. To illustrate what I mean by that, I ask you to take the green piece of paper we handed out labeled “Evaluation Form”. Now imagine the world you would like to live in. Pick one feature of that world – what makes that world one you want to live in? - and write it on the top line. To help you, I'll give you an example:

 

In the world I want to live in every child born will be held, sung to, and otherwise receive the intellectual stimulation they need to be learning at capacity.

 

Does any one else have a feature they would like to include in the world we want? . . .

 

. . . can we rephrase that in the positive? . . .

 

It is difficult to maintain a focus different from the one you are used to. But, these features we want to build into our world are not things that we can accomplish by passing a law. The features you mentioned do not require some amazing advance in technology . . . In the case of children receiving the the intellectual stimulation they need, the change involves families having support from other families . . . a mutually supportive community . . .

 

When we focus on an individual problem to be solved we see the world as a set of conflicting needs. When we focus on what we would like the world to look like we see the world as an inadequate set of relationships . . . the relationships we have are inadequate to produce the world we want. But the missing relationships are also the opportunity for new relationships.

 

I will call these new relationships Community Sufficiency Technologies but they are not the kind of know how to build a machine to do our work for us technology we usually think of. They are the know how to organize ourselves so that we all receive what we need kind of technology. They are the know how to create the new relationships required to produce for ourselves what we need to thrive. They are the intentional creation of ways for more people, plants and creatures to contribute to the wellbeing of our community.

 

As we go through the presentation, I ask you to keep in mind this difference in focus – are you focused on a particular problem or are you focused on what relationships produce a particular feature of the world . . .

 

I will have accomplished my goal tonight if some of you can see the power inherent in this change in focus. And for those of you who do, there will be lots of opportunities to set about building the world we want.

 

 

Opening Frame

 

You may find that this first frame is overwhelming – and I think that many people find the world overwhelming.

 

But I want you to try a little exercise – it's like those seeing eye puzzles – don't try to see the details - relax your vision and look at the patterns. The pattern is a simplified representation of the social . . . ecological . . . economic system in which we find ourselves.

 

This presentation is about how one thing is related to another and everything is related to everything else. It is not as important to understand any given detail as it is to understand the pattern of relationships. I am going to take you through how looking at things in isolation leads to the deterioration of the system and how, by looking at the relationships, we can start to build the system back up again.

 

Then I am going to give you one of my favorite examples of what that can look like. We will take you out to the desert to build photo voltaic panels and green houses that provide everything people need to thrive by integrating nature's systems with human needs and with human systems of production. This is not about a small group of people being self-sufficient. It is about new complex systems designed to have many ways for people to participate. It is about community sufficiency.

 

Finally, I am going to show you that this process of integrating systems can take place in your neighborhood. I will show you why the future could be brighter than anything you have imagined and how it is within your power to make that happen . . .

 

So – Let's get started.

 

We all know what the problems are

 

Here I have divided the different problems we face into three categories. Most of us are concerned with all of these problems but you may have a particular bent. Some of you are inclined to the interests of business, some of you are primarily environmentalists and for some the primary concern is social justice. What I want to share with you today is how all of these problems are related.

 

For that purpose, I am going to use a metaphor for how we humans interact with our systems. I am going to compare our activities to those of ants in an ant hill. We are, after all, social animals – as are ants. And in an ant hill, each ant is given a specific task and a set of skills – and without any ant deciding what the ant hill will look like – the ant hill emerges from each of the ants doing their own thing – and the ant hill that emerges determines the quality of life for all of the ants.

 

Resource Depletion

 

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All of us ants going about our ant tasks for our ant organizations is depleting certain resources. As the resource is depleted, the environment is damaged and the damaged environment provides fewer resources to people – damaging the economy. It is a self-reinforcing feed back loop.

 

Environmental Damage

 

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In a similar way, when our ant organizations - pursuing their individual interests - spread toxins, or cut down forests, they reduce the number of people the ecosystem can support, resulting in people unable to participate in the economy, feeding back into the economy and the pressure for more destructive use of the environment.

 

Poverty

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Deterioration of the economy results in poverty and environmental damage. Poverty produces a poor economy and environmental damage. Environmental damage causes poverty and a poor economy . . .

 

And we want someone to do something about all these problems. But, there is only us ants going about doing the best we can in the circumstances in which we find ourselves according to the rules as we understand them.

 

Because we are like ants, the condition of our system emerges from all our individual choices – as it does for the ant hill . . .

 

Most people think that governments have the power to decide these things. But, for all organizations, – government or other wise – all the power is contained in the individuals who choose to participate. And if the people choose not to participate, no organization – government or other wise – can make them participate. The best recent example of that is Somalia. Somalia is on the horn of Africa and the government there collapsed amidst fighting between the local clans. And the most powerful organization on earth – the United States Military - went in to deliver humanitarian aid. That effort ended with the humiliation depicted in the movie “Black Hawk Down” - the bodies of their soldiers being dragged through the streets.

 

. . . and our little ant hill here could be something like Somalia if we choose to continue depleting resources, damaging the environment and tolerating poverty.

 

But there, also, is the reason for hope. Because, it - IS - the individual transactions in which each of us ants choose to engage that determines the future. It – IS - the sum of these individual transactions from which the hill emerges that controls the quality of life for all the residents. And, because we are more than ants – because we can see the effects of our choices on the ecosystem, and the social system and the economy – because we can understand the feed back loops - we are in control. We just need to be looking for better ways to do things.

 

These are complex interrelated problems

 

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As if we were unconscious ants – unaware of the consequences of our choices – the blind depletion of resources damages the environment and reduces the options for people. Ultimately, environmental damage and poverty limit opportunities in the economy. The defense of the economy without regard to its impact on the rest of the system is self defeating.

 

However, the insistence that the environment should take precedence over the economy, or the insistence that social justice should take precedence over the economy is equally blind.

 

Blind action on any of these issues causes damage to the other two and reduces the resources available in the system – further damaging all three.

 

The interrelationships create a spiral

 

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The graphic I am using shows some of these connections at a given time. What they cannot show is the change over time – and we can describe that change as a spiral. The net effect of all of our individual choices today determine the characteristics of the system tomorrow . . . they determine whether there will be

 

more connections or fewer connections

 

more complexity or less complexity

 

more value retained in the system or less value retained in the system

 

more places for people, plants and creatures to fit or fewer places for people, plants and creatures to fit

 

The concept of the spiral comes from Paul Krafel's work and I highly recommend his hour long video linked on our web site and the reference card we handed out. The concept of the spiral is important because it makes clear that we cannot get to where we want to go without taking all the steps between here and there . . . because . . .

 

The problems we face are systemic and cannot be solved one at a time

 

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because we are running out of certain things that support the way we do things now it is clear that we will not be able to do those things that way in the future. And when we must stop doing one thing – all the things that are related to that are affected – and it looks like economic, and environmental, and social collapse is inevitable. But it is not true that we must necessarily do with less in the future . . .

 

Because the spiral also works in reverse

 

And this is the reason for hope. Because every one of us waking up one morning and deciding to make a new connection creates more places for people, plants and creatures to fit tomorrow, and those people, plants and creatures can then each make new connection leading to even more places the next day – and that is what we mean by an upward spiral.

 

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This presentation is just one possible example . . .

 

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But, it is complicated. If we are talking about some two billion people living in squalor and another couple of billion not much better off, solutions look daunting . . . so I suggest we start with the basics

 

What do humans need?

 

What would it take to provide what people need to thrive in a healthy environment? What does it take to provide for one person? And if we can do that, without damage to the environment, why can't we duplicate that four billion times?

 

Overview of needs

 

Humans have spent the last 400 years or so applying the scientific method to understanding the world. We know a great deal about all of the parts right down to the tiniest detail – the sub-atomic particles. And all of us ants, through our ant organizations, armed with all that knowledge, have accomplished some amazing things – all the way out to men on the moon and rovers sending pictures back from Mars. But, we have precious little knowledge of how all the parts fit together . . .

 

or we wouldn't have chosen to put our world in a downward spiral . . .

 

If we knew how all the parts fit together we would choose to put our hill in an upward spiral. And that, it seems to me, is the fun part – figuring out how to fit things together. Given the fact that we will run out of oil and given that burning fossil fuels will change the climate, how can we arrange things to be able to produce what we need to thrive? What relationships make it possible for more and more people, plants and creatures to contribute to our mutual well being?

 

What are the elements we want to include in our system – to create the kind of world we want?

 

Power

 

Humans need power to run our systems. There is a lot of sunshine in the desert - so we can make solar power there. If we need a structure to hold the solar panel what else could we do with that? If we are going to take up space for solar panels what else could be do with that space?

 

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Space

 

Humans need space to live. The cheapest land available is desert and with desert we get solar power, dry hot air, and a place to sequester carbon.

 

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Food

 

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This is my area of experience. Every garden is an ecosystem in miniature – and like ecosystems everywhere it can be in downward spiral with fewer and fewer species participating – or it can be in upward spiral with more and more species participating. The system can be increasing in fertility or decreasing in fertility.

 

We have a long way to go to fully understand how the parts of an ecosystem fit together, we have the beginnings in the practice of permaculture. Permaculture is the study of how nature wants to do things. When we try to control what nature does we deplete its resources. The really exciting thing is that, by working with nature's processes, the biological potential of the earth is greater than we can even imagine from our depleted ant hill environment.

 

For all of you who think mono-cultures – acre after acre of a single crop - are the only way to farm I recommend this five minute video called Greening the Desert – or, you are welcome to come by one of our No Weed, No Water, No Till, Deep Mulch, Drip Irrigated demonstration gardens.

 

Water

 

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We have the technical ability to make fresh water in the deserts. In places like Perth and at the end of the Colorado River, engineers talk about billions of dollars for nuclear powered desalinization plants. That is a prime example of dealing with problems in isolation – first the problems of farming in a salt rich environment and then – when we get that wrong - what to do with all the salty water that is no longer useful for people or agriculture.

 

But what if we could make fresh water as a part of living in the desert? We can do it more like the way they did it in Biosphere II – the experiment in Arizona where 6 people locked themselves in a sealed dome for two years. How cool would that be to design a simple system of evaporation and condensation that could be installed in four billion greenhouses under solar panels creating oasis across all the deserts of the planet?

Shelter

 

As you can tell, this is the part I find exciting – putting things together so that one thing supports another thing so that you get both cheaper than if you designed and build them separately.

 

Here, the solar panel is the roof so we don't need a separate roofing material . . .

 

Here, the air conditioning system produces fresh water. We design one system to do two things . . .

 

Here, the shelter for humans also produces food . . .

 

Here, all six aspects are integrated into one system and I don't see any limit to what we might be able to fit in – supporting an upward spiral . . .

 

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Ownership

 

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Owning the capacity to produce what you need is a different sort of value than the value we measure in money. If you own something useful you don't care about its market value – you just use it. And it is this ownership of the system as a whole that utilizes our more than ant characteristics.

 

How these systems are owned and managed can be designed to enable the participants to make choices that contribute to the long term well being of the system – the well being of the hill as a whole – maintaining the upward spiral.

 

Health Care

 

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If we go out in the desert and maintain good sanitation, and grow whole foods without toxins, and have clean air and clean water, and get regular exercise, then we reduce the need for medical services. Immunizations are relatively cheap further reducing the need for medical services. Beyond that, our little hill in the desert could provide a quality life style for doctors and nurses . . .

 

Education

 

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And last, but not least, the system can provide for educating its members. And, as for doctors and nurses, it can provide a quality lifestyle for teachers, but, it is also an educational system in itself. Instead of teaching the participants a specific skill set to do a specific job, the system is an education in how the parts fit together – setting the stage for people educated in these systems to go out into the global economy and start upward spirals there.

 

Overview of Human Needs Frame

 

There you have it. A system designed around one thing being related to another and everything being related to everything else. A design where we can see the impact of each choice we make on the system as a whole – the whole ant hill is visible. It is a future that we can choose – instead of a future that emerges from the uncoordinated actions of all the ants . . .

 

By including many activities . . .

 

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To maintain our spiral we look for ways that one activity supports the next activity . . .

 

 

For each activity we want to produce . . .

 

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because there are two ways to improve your standard of living; 1) make more money, or 2) do more for your self. The same thing applies in business. The first approach builds economies of scale – where the company that produces something most efficiently has the lowest costs per unit and therefore the bigger market share. In this scenario we are building economies of integration – where we reduce the money cost of inputs by producing them as a part of the production and consumption cycle – integrating the production of those things we are going to consume locally.

 

Creating an upward spiral . . .

 

And instead of there being fewer places for people, plants and creatures year over year we create new places for more people, plants and creatures year over year.

 

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Creating Community Sufficiency Technologies

 

As I said, green houses under solar panels in the desert is just the one example. It is a system based on the know how to organize ourselves so that we all receive what we need to thrive. It is a system based on developing the new relationships required to produce for ourselves what we need to thrive. It is a system in which we intentionally create ways for more people, plants and creatures to contribute to the wellbeing of our community.

 

But you don't have to go out to the desert and start fresh. These same ideas can be applied in your neighborhood, and I recommend these simple rules:

 

Everyone gets to make their own decisions is just the basics of exchange. Its not a good deal unless it works for both sides of the transaction and we cannot expect people to participate in these projects unless it works better for them than what they have now.

 

That whatever we do is open to all residents of our locality is about changing our point of view from the view of our ant organizations to the view that we are all part of the hill. We want all the people, plants and creatures in our neighborhoods to be able to contribute to the well being of the whole.

 

And, finally,

 

To measure progress by the diversity of people, plants and creatures participating is to track whether or not we are building an upward spiral.

 

What can you do?

 

What I want to do is go out and build greenhouses and solar panels in the desert. But each of you can take any number of actions. This focus on the pattern of relationships is superior to the usual focus on one problem at a time. This focus on the features we want in the world leads to the understanding that life is not scarce – life in fact can be abundant if we choose to build the required relationships.

 

And the potential return on an upward spirals is more than we can imagine . . . but, here are a few of the possibilities.

 

Invest in the Demonstration

 

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I don't have a prospectus – and I am not trying to sell you anything today, but we will be developing the technology to build these systems out in the desert. When I say the potential return on upward spirals is more than we can imagine, it is about the uncertainty in the number of different activities that will eventually take place within these systems.

 

I think we can build these as retirement communities for aging baby boomers – such as myself – sort of a rock and roll Shady Nook. That would make my generation the next greatest generation - where our parents – in the words of Tom Brokaw - were the last greatest generation for defeating fascism – and we will be the next greatest generation for resolving climate change - by retiring is style . . . by retiring in an ecological and sustainable style . . .

 

I want to start the process with the equipment manufacturers because they already have research and development departments and I think they would be interested in adapting their product to fit in a system where we could build a billion units or so . . .

 

You may know some one in one of these businesses, or you might want to contribute to a specific design, or, as we progress, there may be investment opportunities for specific projects or with public companies that support this work . . .

 

Imagine the kind of world you want . . .

 

What kind of world do you want to live in – and how can we help you work toward that?

 

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Contribute to the Design

 

Each of you has an expertise to contribute to a design in which one thing is related to another and everything is related to everything else – if only for the fact that we need to know what it would take to get you involved. We are working with Nice-World.org to fund a public design process. We need engineers and biologists and agronomists and on and on and on . . . and we need to fund the sharing of information among those experts, publish the results of their work and promote the project to bring in even more expertise.

 

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We are, already, all in this together

 

The sooner we can get the ants thinking in terms of upward spirals the sooner we all get to benefit from those improvements to the hill – and your tax deductible contribution to Nice World can help us reach that goal.

 

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Make New Connections

 

All of us can help change the direction of the spiral regardless of our circumstances. There is nothing wrong with liking your job, supporting your family and funding your past times. But you can also be aware of the forces playing out around and through you that either diminish the resources we retain in our communities or contribute to the upward spiral. You can keep the spiral in mind as you choose how to spend your resources – go to our web site and read the essay on living in place – join one of our gardening projects, or start one in your neighborhood . . .

 

The next steps in our local projects, once we have the gardens in place, are about extending the growing season with greenhouses and cold frames and preserving and storing what we grow, adding animals to the system, adding educational programs . . . it is about developing the capacity to produce food, clothing, shelter, education and health care for ourselves . . .

 

And, when you have a chance, help your neighbor. Helping others contribute to the social-ecological-economic system helps yourself because . . .

 

Your well being . . .

 

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. . . because we are more than ants, we can look for opportunities to help ourselves by helping find a fit for those around us.

 

(Four people in a building)

 

Each of you is already engaged in a set of relationships that provides you the necessities of life – and the ones you have are for better or worse – with more or less stress on you, the environment, society, and the rest of the economy. Picture yourself and your family in the midst of those relationships and think about what additional relationships would change things for the better and reduce the stress. And if we all do that we change the system itself – because the system we have is the cumulative result of all of our choices.

 

In addition, there is this empty room here. I left that space empty on purpose because there is a room like that for each of you in the system. That is the space for what you bring – it is for what you want to do – it is for your passion . . .

 

And that is the key to building the new relationships we need. In every thing we do we will honor the gift that each of us brings . . . the gift of the rich and powerful and the gift of the poor and powerless . . . the gift of the species we rely on and the gift of all the creatures on which they rely . . .

 

That is the key to more and more people, plants and creatures contributing to our mutual well being – the key to an emergent ant hill conducive to human life – we honor the gift of the least among us.

 

End Slide

 

And that brings us back to where we began. Some of us are focused on financial issues, some of us are concerned with species loss, some of us are worried about poverty. And we support political parties, and organizations trying to preserve habitat, and organizations feeding hungry children – all worthy and necessary activities. But, what I hope I have shared with you today, is that, so long as we focus on these problems individually, we do not address the deficiencies in the system that allow these problems to persist.

 

And I hope that I have also shared with you that we can address the systemic deficiencies. We can engage in environmental enhancements, that lead to economic opportunity, that lead to more people with the dignity of being able to provide for themselves. We can design and implement an upward spiral, and the key part of that message is the we control the direction of the spiral in our neighborhoods. We have an historic opportunity to engage in the this exciting challenge of our time – to reverse the downward spiral and start it on an upward trend.

 

And, because the world is the cumulative result of the choices we make, it is where we live, where we make choices, where we create relationships, that we exercise the power inherent in this change of focus. Once we understand our power to change the system we have the power to create the world we want.

 

If this makes sense to you, if it makes sense to you that we can develop the know how to address the system deficiencies that lead to environmental damage, poverty and economic crisis then I want your help. These new relationships will not happen by themselves. They will require individuals to go out into their communities and offer to cooperate with other members of the community – and as we discover transactions that work, we want to share that information with all the other individuals working in their communities. So if this work appeals to you let's talk – let's set up more meetings to make the presentation to more people – let's start building the relationships we need to create the world we want.

 

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And as you ponder that, I thank you for attending . . . I hope that you will take a moment to fill out and return the evaluation form . . . I hope you will post the reference card we handed out in a prominent place where people will ask you about it . . . and I will stay to answer questions as long as there are questions.