PermaDesign

“You Ain’t Gonna Learn What You Don’t Want to Know.”

What's to be found, racing around,
You carry your pain wherever you go.
Full of the blues and trying to lose
You ain't gonna learn what you don't want to know.
--From John Perry Barlow's Grateful Dead tune, *Black-Throated Wind.*

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/03/09/florida-state-most-affected-by-climate-change-reportedly-bans-term-climate-change/?postshare=5351425895882267

03/13/2015 | (0) Comments

Global Water Stress!

by Nate Downey

Here's the latest on the water crisis. Let's work for a more sustainable world with localized water harvesting and waste water treatment.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/08/how-water-shortages-lead-food-crises-conflicts?CMP=twt_gu

03/12/2015 | (0) Comments

Bill Mollison Permaculture Lecture Series

by Nate Downey

I was fortunate to study permaculture design under Mollison back in 1992 with Christopher Peck, Michael Kramer, ShannYn Sollitt, and an inspiring group of Santa Feans at Vinton Lawrence's Apache Creek Ranch. It's great that others now can experience a bit of live Bill, too, albeit virtually.

http://www.networkearth.org/perma/culture.html

03/10/2015 | (0) Comments

‘Damriddle’ Planned for Gila River

by Nate Downey

I pondered, Googled and even Facebooked it, but no synonyms for boondoggle exist. In the interest of our language and its blessed diversity, herein I hereby coin the first synonym for boondoggle...

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/life/real_estate/permaculture-in-practice-damriddle-planned-for-gila-river/article_8d7bb72e-99a8-551d-a0f1-195d1b801c85.html

03/09/2015 | (0) Comments

It’s Morning for a Living River

by Nate Downey

The New Mexican limits its choice of thumbnail pictures, but I rather like this one for my March column about about the dead body that I (almost) found in the Santa Fe River.

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/life/home/it-s-morning-for-a-living-river/article_6d56ae9a-e9ca-5b16-823e-266085a47f1a.html

03/08/2015 | (0) Comments

Support the Permaculture Activist!

by Nate Downey

Permaculture Activist, the world’s longest running permaculture journal, needs your support for a new and vibrant online presence. Please share and donate. Thanks : https://www.kickstarter.com/…/142…/the-permaculture-activist

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1425590312/the-permaculture-activist

03/06/2015 | (0) Comments

Water Harvesting is Poised to Invigorate the Job Market and Save the World

by Nate Downey

PSYCHED to be a co-contributor w/ Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (http://www.waterkeeper.org) in the March issue of *Green Money Journal*(http://www.greenmoney.com).

http://www.greenmoneyjournal.com/march-2015/water-harvesting/

03/04/2015 | (0) Comments

Responsible Landscapes

by Melissa McDonald

Great article in the the New York Times last month about our landscape designs being more than just something pretty to look at. “In the past, we have asked one thing of our gardens: that they be pretty. Now they have to support life, sequester carbon, feed pollinators and manage water.”- Douglas Tallamy

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/05/garden/at-plant-o-rama-in-brooklyn-the-message-was-that-beauty-is-no-longer-enough.html?emc=eta1&_r=0

03/04/2015 | (0) Comments

2.5 Million Gallons!

by Nate Downey

While waiting for a flight on my way to the Georgia Organics Conference I was stuck by the impermeable mass of the parking structures outside. The rooftop solar arrays are a great start, but a quick calculation using our permadesign.com Roofwater Calculator yields more that 2.5 million gallons of water potential. Think of all the thousands of such structures here in the West…

03/01/2015 | (0) Comments

Lost

by Nate Downey

They call this "breaking news," but it's a heartbreaking old story based on the confusion of two concepts: the value of a thing and things we value. We need a new ethic, or rather we need to bring back an indigenous land ethic that sees damage to land as damage to self.