One could be forgiven for forgetting all about the Paris agreement of 2015, now so long ago it feels rather quaint to raise the topic. However, we must also remember the pomp and ceremony that went along with it, this was the road map of how we are going to save the world from the climate crisis over the coming three decades. Simple: collapse emissions as fast as we can, turn farming into a huge net carbon sink while the technology guys come up with carbon capture strategies that will lock away 5 billions tonnes per year and propel us in the right direction.
Emission have not collapsed, they have risen, the CCS fantasy remains a fantasy and I see precious little change in the farming and land management sector, the thing that was to stabalise the already fragile and stressed natural environment. We have failed. But way beyond that, we have instead turned to war, proxy wars, real wars, ethnic cleansing, trade embargoes and turf wars. Rather than coming together to face the biggest challenge of our times the forces of division, conflict and self interest have engulfed us. This is not good and does not bode well, and I am sure you don’t need me to point this out.
This Substack was inspired by my need to tell my permaculture story, the story of renewal, hope and optimism that is embodied by permaculture. Seeking out and finding such a beautiful and reassuring philosophy was a personal quest, one that took me half way across the world on an epic journey that lead to this incridble place, Chimanimani, it gave me hope and showed me there was a way. We have to come together around the forces that unite us, the commonality of humanity and see past everything that divides us. Religion, nationality, race, these are constructs created by us humans, none of them are actually real, whereas we are are all homo spaiens, a single species and we share one ecosystem, planet earth and this seems to be something that is beyond most people’s comprehension. The divisions that hold us back are not actually what is important, the fact is that we are all swimming in the same atmosphere, breathing the same air, drinking the same water, exchanging molecules with the natural world, the soil, plants and animals that form and maintain the atmosphere, the climate, the ecosystem that we are only a part of are actually the very things that bind us together.
The darkest hour is right before the dawn, as Dylan once sang, drawing on a much older saying, but boy did we realise it was going to become quite as dark as this? For me the rise of the ultra right, the fascists, the bullies, the deniers was perhaps an inevitability, that last gasp of greed and division before the world comes togther to heal itself, but we seem locked in a death spiral, as the media, education, governemnt and the rest is now owned by the forces that seek to destroy, just how do we get back to the garden? Is it really just too late now to address the clim\te crisis, would we rather re-start the Second World war than find a path to peace? This time we here in the over-developed West are clearly on the side of wrong, on the side of destruction, we are witnesses to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and our leaders would call us extremists for pointing out they are breaking every rule of law, of just and decent society in colluding with this horror.
I am not one for quoting the Bible, life is more nuanced than a phrase lifted from an ancient text, but the ‘Thou shall not kill’ bit stands out in my memory and I am not sure how that morphed into permission for never ending war, policial and economic interferance and the justification of genocide.
To be clear, Russia is not our enemy, Ukraine is a US proxy war long in the manufacturing, endless governments have been toppled and undermined by those who claim to represent democracy and frankly this all has to stop, and now. Real people don’t kill and murder and undermine in hateful ways, we need to observe the rules of nature as a guide to us all, to build mutually beneficial relationships, eliminate waste, catch and store energy, build soil and water storage, value every element in an ecosystem, seek balance and harmony. Follow permaculture guidelines, ethics and princicples, be self aware and self critical, whilst being supportive of others, or maybe I am the extremist for believing these things?