2nd Permaculture Design Course The Village Aug 20-29th 2010 February 27, 2010
Posted by Graham in : Courses, Permaculture, Powerdown , 2commentsI have updated the Courses Page for 2010, which includes the 2nd Full Permaculture design Course at The Village, Cloughjordan.
August 20th – 29th 2010 | The Village, Cloughjordan, Tipperary | For bookings and further information contact Davie Philip davie@cultivate.ie
Enjoy a full ‘PDC’ immersed in the thriving and innovative environment of Cloughjordan’s ecovillage. Tutors include: Graham Strouts, Albert Bates of the Farm, Tennessee, and Klaudia Van Gool. Also teaching will be other leading thinkers on various sustainability issues covered on the course.
Goodbye to the Bucket Toilet February 26, 2010
Posted by Graham in : Compost, Permaculture, water , 1 comment so farFor those of you who have been thinking that your humble zone5 blogger has got his head in the toilet for much of the time, I can now offer you proof:
After many years of shitting in a bucket I am now proud to announce the opening of a brand new twin-chamber concrete block toilet which renders my bucket obsolete.
Interview with Dr. Colin Campbell February 18, 2010
Posted by Graham in : Peak Oil, Podcast, climate change , 6commentsZone5 Podcast #3 with Dr. Colin Campbell on Peak Oil, the Financial Collapse, Adaptation and What the Future May Hold
Colin Campbell, founder of the Association for the Study of peak Oil and Gas, is officially retired from his career as oil geologist and Peak Oil pundit but kindly agreed to this interview for the zone5 podcast.
Colin is the author of several books on the impending peak in world oil production and the implications for modern civilisation including the influential Oil Crisis in 2005 and most recently An Atlas of Oil and Gas Depletion
In this interview he discusses his career as an oil geologist and how this lead to an awareness of the limits to future production.
Some listeners may be surprised to hear Colin’s scepticism regarding anthropogenic climate change. When I asked him about it later he assured me that he makes no claim to know much about climate change per se, but pointed me to this important paper by Hook, Sivertsson and Aleklett, which examines the projected supply of fossil fuels in scenarios used in the IPCC Emission Scenarios.
These projections by the IPCC seem to take little if any account of the imminent peaking and decline of fossil fuels in the next few years, assuming higher production rates in some cases than even the industry expects to be feasible.
Perhaps concern about this failure by the IPCC to incorporate such essential information leads to questioning its other conclusions.
Davie Philip on Transition and The Good Life 2.0 February 11, 2010
Posted by Graham in : Transition Towns, community , add a commentMy long-time Permaculture and peak oil colleague Davie Philip gave an inspirational talk for Feasta in Dublin last summer.
He includes a nice account of the origins of the Transition movement in Kinsale with the Energy Descent Plan by Rob and his Permaculture students, and his own personal journey with Peak Oil which started even before with the Feasta conference in 2000;the influence on his thinking before that even of John Seymour; then following the story of Rob’s moving to Totnes and the movement starting in earnest from there, bringing us up to now with a discussion of some of the issues now facing Transition.
Took me back to those heady days of the first viewings of The End of Suburbia and flickerings of an awareness of oil depletion.
Davie Philip – Developing a transition mindset to overcome the inertia of the familiar from Feasta on Vimeo.
Permaculture in Belize February 8, 2010
Posted by Graham in : Permaculture , add a commentThanks for Albert Bates for sending us this uplifting snapshot of a permaculture course in Belize. Hopefully this years’ PCD in Tipperary will generate as creative cabaret as this!
