As one would expect from a book as massive as this, there are too many points to highlight. Some of what personally caught my eye, however, are:

• Timelines are given as a guidance on the design; one cannot do a good garden design in one evening, and there are useful guidance figures to give an idea as to the amount of time and effort that goes into the planning process – that, as well as practical tools to help you get there.

• In permaculture, having a single systems element perform multiple functions is important; Edible Forest Garden highlights beauty and prettiness as one of these aspects, which is not just a nice touch but a really important aspect, considering beauty is the guiding principle of most gardens out there and one cannot expect for people to just disregard that in search of useful plants.

• There is heaps of practical, hands-on advice for design and building. One of the more interesting elements was the chicken moat combined with an electrical fence as a way of keeping unwanted wild animals away from the garden while providing a chicken run and vertical room for vines etc. There are also extensive site preparation and soil improvement techniques and tree planting techniques, described in enough detail that even I could to that

• A small but important point is made about the detrimental fruit perfectionism; people buy only fruits that look “perfect”, whereas one should really be more skeptical about apparent “perfection” in fruits than natural variation and visual blemishes. I am happy to report Australians aren’t quite as bad at this than the Finns, but both nations have room for improvement here.

• The approach taken is very much that of real life, not just perfectionist theory. For example, the malleable nature of one of the permaculture founding principles – zoning – in real life is well recognized and examples given of “real-life” zoning.

• Turns out each specialty has its own vocabulary; Edible Forest Garden lays out the various vocabularies needed to discuss things like landscapes in plain language, yet in sufficient detail.

• This book delivers something the majority of permaculture literature just glosses over; quantified yield figures. It also quantifies many other things as, including nitrogen needs for specific plants etc. The yield figures are, of course, guidances, but it still helps to know that out of e.g. a single mature kiwi plant you one can expect an annual yield of 50-60kg/year.

In addition to the highly practical and valuable main parts, possibly the most useful part of this book, however, can be found at the appendices – of which there are 200 pages worth. There is an incredible amount of information in the plant species matrix; habitat & growth environment tolerances, root patterns, soil needs, plant architecture, uses & functions, drawbacks (such as thorns) and so on, for hundreds of plants!

That alone makes this book an amazing resource and an extremely useful reference. Then there are species by use-tables, by-function tables, separate sections for herbs and spice plants, tea & beverage, medicinal plants, ground covers etc. Flowering times are there, as are useful indicative life spans, animal needs of selected species etc.

Personally, this book was also a little bit (a lot really!) frustrating to read, as I do not have any land of my own currently where to implement these ideas. Looking at the USDA hardiness zones reveals an interesting fact; while the book was written with North-East USA in mind (hence the “temperate” in the title), many of the species discussed can actually survive not only here in Victoria (which is USDA Zone 9 or 10) but also in Finland, which falls under USDA hardiness zone 5, the same as Maine where the authors live. I do, however, suspect more limited sunlight in Finland during the darker months may exclude some of the more borderline species.

Overall, the two-volume Edible Forest Gardens set is a highly useful, fascinating and in-depth resource for designing a forest garden / permaculture garden. I cannot think of a more comprehensive book for those wanting to design a yard that keeps on giving. Even though I have no practical experience to speak of from implementing most of the advice here, I still feel comfortable recommending the book. And even if you, too, are not in a position to actually do anything about it right now, the books make for supremely interesting reading and contain probably the most comprehensive collection of species information in the permaculture literature today.

So I set about to educate myself, and our kids, about the trees here. After some research, I concluded that the best book to do that with would be CSIRO’s publication Forest Trees of Australia by Boland et al. This is one massive text; at over 700 pages and 2+ kilograms in weight, it’s hardly a field guide – but it is, from what I can tell anyway, an extremely comprehensive text about trees in Australia. It begins with a short introduction covering the trees, climate, topography, soils, microbes, fire effects and other factors affecting trees here.

The bulk of the text consists of species descriptions, over 300 of them, each species with two pages. The left-hand page contains the common names and botanical names, related species, climate where the species lives, map of its distribution, descriptions of the bark, leaves, cones, fruits, wood etc – interestingly including points about forestry uses, such as durability, wood density and common uses. The page on the right-hand side has a dozen or so pictures of the tree bark, leaves, fruits, flowers etc. Unfortunately the vast majority of the photos in the book are black-and-white, but the photos are extremely clear and come with size guides.

Towards the end of the book there is an extensive glossary and the usual references & an index. Due to its heft, it’s a book that I will likely never read every page of, but it is absolutely fascinating reading. For example, I did not know that the Mountain Ash (Eucalyptus regnans) here is, at up to 100m in height, the second-largest tree species in the world, only exceeded in height by the California redwoods.

Another revelation that the book brought with it is that there are lots of different species of trees here, many of which look very similar to each other. This makes accurate identification somewhat painful. There are a total of approximately 30 tree species in Finland – over here, just the eucalyptus genus has over 700 species. Given time, I am sure I will learn to identify some of the most common ones, but all of them? Forget it. Never going to happen. While a more compact field guide may come in handy at some point (the most compact of them all, the Leafsnap app by Columbia University, doesn’t really work well here), the Forest Trees of Australia is an indispensable reference loaded with fascinating information.

Permaculture ethics is about care of the earth (caring for the soil, forests and water), care of people (looking after self, kin and community), and fair share (setting limits to consumption and redistributing surplus) – as an umbrella, those are the themes under which the contents of the book falls. As Permaculture is a synthesis of different disciplines, the book covers an absolutely huge range of topics and has an incredible amount of information. There’s no way I remember most of it after first reading, so the book makes an excellent reference text and there’s clearly no room to cover anything but a tiny fraction of points worth mentioning in a review such as this. Permaculture is not necessarily new information as such and the introduction of the book has a thought-provoking suggestion; “Perhaps we should do nothing else for the next century but apply our knowledge. We already know how to build, maintain and inhabit sustainable systems, but in everyday life of people this is hardly apparent.”

There is a profound truth in that; too often we seek only new information, new solutions, over-analyze things, research the most trivial details and publish the results of countless useless studies just so there is something novel – all the while forgetting to apply the knowledge we have accumulated. This applies in corporate world as well as for the society as a whole; implementation is often the weakest link. We know a lot of solutions to many problems, but fail to act. All too often the academic fallacy of “I think, therefore I have acted” is apparent. And I readily admit that I, too, am guilty of that.

Mollison vocally criticizes the destruction of ecosystems, and rightly so. He points out that as we have destroyed energy-producing ecosystems and replaced them with our own energy-consuming “improvements”; “We have assumed the role of the creator, and destroyed the creation to do so.”. But 100% healthy, balanced vegetarianism in northern countries such as Finland is a tall order to achieve sustainably when fresh vegetables are imported for half the year or grown in very energy-intensive greenhouses.

There is also an interesting point made about vegetarianism;

“Only in home gardens is most of the vegetation edible for people; much of the earth is occupied by inedible vegetation. Deer, rabbits, sheep and herbivorous fish are very useful to us, in that they convert this otherwise unusable herbage to acceptable human food. Animals represent a valid method of storing inedible vegetation as food.”

Mollison doesn’t argue against vegetarianism as such, and notes it is very efficient but only under specific circumstances (locally grown easily processed food with wastes returned to the soil where the vegetables were grown). I would imagine it’s a fairly tall order to eat a sustainable, healthy, balanced, all-vegetarian diet in places like Finland where fresh veggies and fruit are imported or grown in extremely energy-intensive greenhouses for half the year.

Another interesting points also hits close to Finland; that burning peat is evil. Peat can be used for making more precious topsoil, as a great growing medium in nurseries, or as an insulator in buildings. It should, Mollison notes, only “in desperation” be used as fuel. Finland, however, produces as much as 8% of it’s electricity by burning peat – and the European Union classifies peat as a “slowly renewing” biomass fuel. The “slow” is indeed slow, with a peat bog taking 1,000-5,000 years to regrow. Additional dose of evil comes from the fact that burning peat produces even more CO2 than coal.

There is far too much practical advice in the book than one can narrate here; there are solutions from water purification to water conservation, from productive system design in various climates to strategies to increasing yields. Soil structure and improving it are given lots of coverage, up to and including how different soil types affect buildings. There’s loads of fascinating information about trees and forests – and there’s also quite a bit on different designs & theories, including an interesting chapter on patterns.

The last chapter of the book deals with reorganizing societies and nations along more sustainable lines. Considering the breadth of all this, the chapter is necessarily brief overview but even as such, it is much more detailed than discussion in the mainstream where no such alternatives are even considered (yet). A lot of facets are covered; investment, alternative monetary systems, local currencies, village development, societal structure and support structures, decision making strategies etc.

Some criticism

Obviously there are downsides to such a massive book as well. One is length and depth; it’s not an easy book to read. Some drawbacks stem from the fact that the text is now over 20 years old (it was published in 1988). While this may lead some to assume the content is outdated, I was quite surprised how up-to-date it all was; for example, there was a statement that there is “no longer any doubt” about anthropogenic climate change, way before climate change made it to the headlines. Anyhow, one of the downsides that I assume comes with the age of the book are illustrations; they are mostly black-and-white hand drawings – while impressive, some of the more complex pictures and diagrams can be difficult to decipher and aren’t all that pretty.

Another problem – or rather, limitation – stems from the fact that many solutions and designs presented require a lot of space. This is understandable considering the origins of permaculture, but obviously not everyone has – or even can have – the land required for many of the solutions described. Applying permaculture principles to urban areas has received more attention recently so some of this information is available elsewhere better adapted to environments where most of us live today (see, for example, the upcoming Urban Permaculture DVD)

One of the major issues not touched by almost any permaculture work is quantifying the yields. Another well-known permaculture “guru” Geoff Lawton has made some pretty outrageous claims that are relatively easy to disprove. While Mollison does give some yield guidance figures for things like aquaculture, he also mentions that yields “have no known limits” and for the most part does not give even approximate yield expectations based on current best practices. While it’s true yield limits are not known, there certainly are limits to sustainable yields and I believe they can not be orders of magnitude more than achieved with e.g. organic agriculture. Quantification of achievable sustainable yields is something more attention needs to be paid to, and something I hope to return to later as well. The reluctance for quantifying yields in the permaculture movement is curious considering one of the most influential sources of inspiration of the permaculture concept, natural farming innovator Masanobu Fukuoka, published very precise yields for his fields. It’s time for permaculturalists to do the same.

Conclusion

Permaculture – A Designers’ Manual is not an easy read. It does, however, give so much food for thought as well as a plethora of practical tools to improve things that it’s a remarkably important book. The solutions and practices described are not given at a high, abstract level, but instead you could easily implement most with the help of just this book. Having said that, it’s also not a book many people are willing to read, if only because of it’s heft. The topic however is critically important. If you’re not quite up to devouring this much at once, consider reading a brief, free e-book “Essence of Permaculture” [PDF] – it’s only 23 pages written by the other permaculture concept co-originator, David Holmgren.

Permaculture, originally short for “permanent agriculture“, can be described in a diverse range of complementary ways. In the context of this book in particular,permaculture is a design approach to create landscapes that function like ecosystems. That short description, however, hardly does the overall concept justice. Permaculture is based on dozen or so principles which can be applied to a wide range of topics;

1. Observe and interact
2. Catch and store energy
3. Obtain a yield
4. Apply self-regulation and accept feedback
5. Use and value renewable resources and services
6. Produce no waste
7. Design from patterns to details
8. Integrate rather than segregate
9. Use and value diversity
10. Use edges and value the marginal
11. Creatively use and respond to change

Several of the above principles as well as the overall intention of permaculture appeal to me; one particularly interesting aspect that one can quickly learn to apply elsewhere is that of stacking functions; nothing in nature does just one thing, and we can learn to take that into account in non-plant things as well. To give an example from the very simplest end, a roof in a house need not be just for protection from the elements; it can also be used to capture energy, heat water and collect precious rainwater. In the garden environment, when following the principles in garden design the workload of the gardener is greatly reduced. We have come to understand “low-maintenance” gardens as consisting of few plants and lots of rock and tiles etc – not exactly conducive to having a productive garden. Other appealing features are the resilient nature of the garden created, the diversity, the different micro-climates and sustainable gardening in that permaculture eschews using any pesticides or other artificial and unnatural controlling mechanisms.

In short, there’s a lot to like about permaculture once you start understanding what it means.

The typical garden treats plants in isolation; carrots here, potatoes there, an herb in that row – not much, if any, attention is given on the interactions of the different species and how well they complement each other. Permaculture changes all that. We all know plants and other elements of an ecology have needs; things like various soil nutrients, water etc. Properly designing the ecosystem so that these needs can be met by other participants of the ecosystem as opposed to requiring human intervention is advantageous to not only the participating plants but also the gardener. As the book puts it very well;

Each clever linkage between design elements means one less job for the gardener, one less wheelbarrow load to schlep into or out of our garden. Each need not satisfied by another component of the design becomes work for the gardener; each product not used becomes pollution. The idea is to minimize both by designing wise connections.

There are many fascinating insights in the book; from the impressive recycling natural systems do to the role of trees in creating rainfall, the role of hedgerows in limiting insect outbreaks, to the numerous redundant design elements that can be used to store and hold water in the ground and many other things, I definitely learned a lot from the book. One enlightening insight was that “exotic” or “invasive” species need not be a bad thing; one can have an ecologically well-functioning system with both kinds of plants present; diversity alone limits the possibilities the invasive species have to invade too much and other techniques can be used to limit them further. Exotics, i.e. non-native plants, can also be successfully weaved into a sustainable and product garden. One thing also worth mentioning is that permaculture is not the same thing as being organic; while they are related topics, permaculture is a much broader topic, encompassing many areas and design elements not considered at all by organic guidelines. Food grown in a garden designed by adhering to permaculture-principles is organic, but an organic producer does not necessarily take into account permaculture principles.

One thing that the book does not cover in any significant detail is the role of domesticated animals and how those can be linked with the design. There is discussion about the wild animals’ roles, but useful multi-purpose animals like chickens are not, I think, given the coverage they would deserve. So it’s worth keeping in mind that Gaia’s Garden is predominantly a book about plants; it doesn’t provide much guidance in the (domesticated) animals-department. For plants, however, it has an extensive list of examples and lists of plants that can be used as well as example guilds (a collection of plants in a mutually beneficial relationship when planted close to each other). Being a book geared towards the US, not all of them are obviously applicable everywhere else, but it does provide an excellent start.

As an introductory book to permaculture as well as a design manual for your garden design, I can highly recommend Gaia’s Garden. Given all this new information, I’m of course itching to put some of it into practice. That will, however, have to wait for a while as our current “garden” is a “low-maintenance” piece of tile-dominated terrace-type of arrangement with room for not much at all.

In this post, I will make the argument that the world should organize for a large-scale switch to organic agriculture – as much and as soon as possible. This is somewhat at odds with how many think the food production problems should be approached, and also with the excellent recent Economist special report on food production that argued that GM crops and other sophisticated methods are necessary to feed the increasing world population.

If there’s one country ahead of others in the transformation, it’s Australia – it has a disproportionately large share of organic food production. Measured in terms of acreage, Australia has as much as 38% of the entire worlds’ organic agricultural production. Even compared to Europe – a very health-conscious continent in terms of food, and the only one having banned GM crops – this is a 57 times more organic production per capita. Quite amazing, really.

Of course globally organic agriculture accounts for only a tiny fraction of total production. And that needs to change.

Why go organic?

There are several reasons why organically grown food products are better than “traditional”, or conventional, methods. First there’s the consumer-side of the equation; while scientifically proven results on organic foods being healthier than non-organic foods are still relatively few, some organic foods (such as tomatoes and milk) have already been proven to be better in their nutritional values. Organic milk, for example, has more anti-oxidants, omega 3, CLA, and vitamins than non-organic milk.

Then there’s also the taste-factor; it has for example been shown that the use of hormonal growth promotants have “a negative influence on the tenderness and eating quality of beef”, i.e. organic beef tastes better.

Then there’s the production-side of things, with organic farming resulting in at least 50% lower expenditure on fertilizer and energy and 97%-100% less pesticide usage. With many modern fertilizers being produced from petrochemicals, inevitably increasing oil prices will affect conventional agriculture more – and not only from the fertilizer-perspective, but also because the transportation distances involved in the industrial agricultural production tend to be far longer than with organic products. With organic methods, the soil also remains healthier and has less erosion compared to conventional methods.

What about yields?

On a global scale, all talk about health benefits, improved soil conditions, better taste or reduced pesticide/fertilizer use is eclipsed by yield – if organic agriculture cannot achieve sufficient yields to feed the world, it’s clear the world can never entirely transition to it.

This – low yields – is precisely the claim that is often made; that industrial agriculture is needed to feed the world because organic farming cannot achieve similar yields. If organic agriculture produced much lower yields than other methods, that would indeed be a big problem given that most of the productive land is already cultivated and deforestation is a major problem globally. But does it?

Luckily, a number of scientific studies have investigated this very issue. A Cambridge University meta-study of 293 data sets concluded that:

organic methods could produce enough food on a global per capita basis to sustain the current human population, and potentially an even larger population, without increasing the agricultural land base

It has been shown that organic systems on average produce 92% of the yield produced by conventional agriculture in developed countries. While this represents a modest yield reduction, organic methods have also been shown to produce 80%-300% more than conventional farms in developing countries. Globally, therefore, the effect of shifting to organic production would mean significantly increased yields. This is also important in the sense that many Western countries have no problems producing enough – indeed, more than enough – calories for their needs, whereas many developing countries are struggling to produce sufficient amount of calories for their population.

Resilience

Even in developed countries, the equation may not be so simple. Climate change is expected to make extreme weather events such as droughts and hurricanes more frequent and more severe, so it is worth asking whether the organic and conventional systems differ under stressful situations.

Interestingly, the difference between organic and non-organic production under such adverse conditions is quite dramatic; organic farms are far more resilient to adverse weather conditions, yielding up to 70-100% more than conventional farms during drought conditions. Furthermore, a study after Hurricane Mitch showed that organic farms retained 20-40% more topsoil after the hurricane than conventional farms, enabling them to recover much faster. So with advancing climate change, it can be expected that the yields-scale will tip in favor of organic farming.

Win-win?

Taking into account all the points above, it should be fairly clear that organic agriculture should have a bright future – and the growth is rapid, but more needs to be done to ramp up organic production. One challenge is that where traditional industrial agriculture is pesticide- and fertilizer-intensive, organic farming is knowledge-intensive – and training farmers in organic farming practices takes longer than shipping them a bag of fertilizers or a barrel of pesticides along with instructions on how much to spread.

As a consumer, I have been ramping up our organic purchases continuously, and will continue to do so. Luckily, thanks to the relatively huge organic production, it’s easy here in Australia with plenty of availability of pretty much organic anything – there are even services such as Organic Empire, Organic Direct, Organicfood.com.au and Organic Meat Supply that will bring all that organic goodness straight to your home. Couldn’t be easier.

** Update April 2nd, 2011 **

Late March 2011 saw the latest results from the Pennsylvania-based Rodale Institute’s Farming Systems Trial (FST), which Rodale calls “America’s longest running, side-by-side comparison of conventional and organic agriculture.”. Rodale has been comparing crop yields and taking soil samples on these test plots for 27 years. Their latest findings? The three systems have produced equivalent corn yields over the years, while “soybean yields were the same for the manure and conventional system and only slightly lower for the legume system.” Further, the drought resistence was confirmed again, as “In 4 out of 5 years of moderate drought, the organic systems had significantly higher corn yields (31 percent higher) than the conventional system.”

Resources:

• Vasilikiotis, C: Can Organic Farming “Feed the World”? [University of California, Berkeley]
• Hunter, R.A.: Hormonal growth promotant use in the Australian beef industry [Animal Production Science, CSIRO Livestock Industries]
• Badgley, C. et al: Organic agriculture and the global food supply [Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, Cambridge University Press]
• Rodale Institute Farming System Trial
• Lotter, D: Organic Agriculture [Journal of Sustainable Agriculture]
• University of Michigan: Organic farming can feed the world, U-M study shows
• Wikipedia: Organic Food
• Wikipedia: Organic Farming
• Health Benefits of Organic Foods

And herein lies a problem – because by the time these events can with scientific certainty be linked to climate change, it will be far, far too late to do anything about climate change. So we must look at probabilities and what the models predict; basically all climate change models agree that as climate change advances and the planet’s climate goes seeking a new balance, severe weather events will become both more frequent and more severe. So while a “100-year-event” occurring in any given year does not in and of itself indicate worsening climate change nor does it increase or decrease the probability of a similar event occurring again the following year, at some point one has to begin drawing some conclusions.

But when?

Would Australia having had two 100-year droughts in the past 100 years qualify? Perhaps the Brisbane river exceeding its ARI 100 (Average Recurrence Interval) flood levels three times in the past 100 years counts? Or what about the severe Amazon rainforest drought, the second “once in a century” drought in just six years? Or the European heat waves of 2003 and 2006, the former of which killed 52,000 people? Or the fact that the 10 warmest years on record have all been since 1998?

One would be inclined to think so. And some even in the mainstream media think so; here is Mike Carlton on Sydney Morning Herald in his article “Flat-earthers, it’s time for a cold shower”:

[lists the natural disasters from the last 12 months]

Given this catalogue of global disaster, would now be a good time for the climate change flat-earthers to shut up and listen, do you think? Just for a day or two, or even five minutes?

They won’t, of course. The global warming denialists ignore the great body of world scientific opinion. When the Queensland catastrophe leaves the headlines the local lot will be at it again, barfing up their crackpot notions.

And meanwhile in Finland, the Finnish Meteorological Institute is – I can only assume fully consciously – implementing a creeping normalcy / shifting baseline phenomenon by switching to use the period 1981-2010 as their comparison period; a period that is on average some 1.5C warmer than the true long-term average up to e.g. 1990. This is a rather dangerous exercise and will end up belittling the warming in Finland by shifting the comparison baseline to a significantly higher level.

In any case, next time there’s a severe weather event, I suggest asking your meteorologist a different question. Ask them “Is it likely that these events would have occurred at this intensity or frequency if atmospheric carbon dioxide had remained at its pre-industrial level of 280 ppm?” and the responsible answer should quite different and come with more certainty than to the first question.

A little about the book first. It’s a pretty hefty piece at some 500 pages, and covers a wide range of topics. It has been grouped in 34 chapters covering 16 topics. The topics deal with the changes going on, such as climate change, and cover most fundamental aspects of a modern society such as the challenges faced by food production, clean water availability, transportation, waste management etc, all from the viewpoint of life after Peak Oil and building a sustainable, resilient society.

The plethora of authors are simultaneously a strength and a weakness for the book. The strength comes from hearing from a number of experts in their particular field, covering each topic in a comprehensive manner. As comprehensive as is possible given the limited 10-15 pages or so per chapter anyway. The weakness comes from, despite great editorial work, the markedly different approaches and writing styles of the authors and a small amount of repeated information.

It is becoming clear that some of the fundamental trends of the coming decades will revolve around economic relocalization and rebuilding some of the lost resilience on the scale of households, communities, cities, states and countries. It is, one should point out, both a natural and inevitable trend. Continued expansion of activity requiring ever-increasing transportation of goods and homogenization of regional production is simply not an option:

Relocalization also brings ecological advantages. Local production for local consumption often has the potential to restore, at least partially, the integrity of local human-dominated ecosystems. For example, depositing urban organic compost on nearby farm- and forestland would close the nutrient cycles broken by the current spatial separation of rural ecosystems and urban populations. It also doesn’t hurt that people might once again begin to identify with nearby ecosystems from which they acquire much of their food and fiber. There can be no greater incentive for conservation than knowing one’s life depends upon it.

Obviously this entire resilience-oriented program flies in the face of the conventional wisdom and current trends. But that is precisely the point – the present growth-bound global development paradigm is fatally flawed, inherently unsustainable, and on track for catastrophic implosion, from which there might not be a subsequent “reorganization” phase for billions of people.

One great chapter deals with alternative energies, and the nine challenges they face. People often say that energy is no problem, we just replace it with solar power or wind or whatever – but often fail to take into account some significant challenges faced by alternative energies. They are:

1. Scalability and timing (e.g. tar sands fail this)
2. Commercialization (e.g. algae fuels fail this)
3. Substitutability (e.g. hydrogen fails this)
4. Material input requirements (e.g. fuel cells fail this)
5. Intermittency (e.g. solar and wind suffer from this)
6. Energy density (Li-Ion batteries have approximately 1/100th of the energy density of gasoline)
7. Water usage (e.g. tar sands and biodiesel production require huge quantities of water)
8. The law of receding horizons (assuming alternative sources become viable at certain oil price point, failing to take into account that production costs will also increase) and
9. Energy return on investment (e.g. ethanol has a woefully low EROI, possibly even negative)

Taken together, these challenges mean alternative energy sources, while crucially important, will not prevent a total peak energy from occurring. Energy efficiency is one critical aspect that has the potential of softening the landing, even if just a little.

For someone new to the concept of Peak Energy and related issues, this book would be a lot to take in at first – as an introduction, it’s a hefty one, but definitely a good read. Some of the chapters, inevitably, are not as good as others. Also, despite the length of the book, no one chapter goes into a great amount of detail just because so many issues are discussed – for example, entire books have been written on water-related topics such as soil salination, falling water tables, dwindling river flows etc. Post Carbon Reader compresses most water-issues to one 20-page chapter. That doesn’t mean the book’s all about breadth at the expense of depth, but it’s naturally a trade-off.

However, The Post Carbon Reader is one well-executed trade-off. It covers most of the pressing issues in enough detail to get an idea why they are important, but not too much detail. Most of the writing is excellent, and the topics are thoroughly researched and comprehensively referenced with up to 50+ references per chapter. I thus have no choice but to agree with other reviewers and give this full 5 stars and a “highly recommended”-stamp.

Nature is fragile, environmentalists often tell us. But the lesson of this book is that it is not so. The truth is far more worrying. Nature is strong and packs a serious counterpunch .. Global warming will very probably unleash unstoppable planetary forces. And they will not be gradual. The history of our planet’s climate shows that it does not do gradual change. Under pressure, whether from sunspots or orbital wobbles or the depredations of humans, it lurches – virtually overnight.

The heart of the book are the sources for those sudden changes. The IPCC in its search for consensus, it turns out, is extremely conservative and cautious in its predictions and leaves out the possibility of sudden climate change – sudden changes that the planet has undergone a number of times in its history, so there is no consolation to be drawn from history that it couldn’t possibly happen. It has happened, numerous times. To give you an idea of the speed involved, consider this: ice cores show that roughly half of the entire warming between ice ages and the postglacial world took place in only a decade. We are talking about a warming of over 4 degrees Celsius taking place in a decade – the IPCC prediction for the next 100 years or so if things go badly. Also, IPCC predicts a sea level rise of less than 1 meter this century – but about 14,500 years ago, sea levels rose at a pace of 1m per 20 years. That, in planetary terms, is overnight indeed, and makes the IPCC models look hopelessly optimistic.

There are numerous possible tipping points that could cause massive, sudden shifts – from possible methane releases to ocean circulation changes, from massive ice sheets (like West Antarctic) collapsing to runaway fires in the drying Amazon. We know that many such changes can take place incredibly rapidly – and, once tipping points have been reached, are likely to be, for all practical purposes, irreversible. As if that wasn’t bad enough, there are a few additional worrying points here: first, for most systems, we have no idea what the actual tipping point values are. You would think that alone would call for erring on the side of cation rather than trying to experimentally find those limits. Second, many of the systems are already exhibiting signs of increasingly fast change, suggesting the tipping points might be close. Third, reaching any of these tipping points can lead to massive climate changes.

So how lucky are we feeling, continuing to pump increasing amounts of carbon and methane into the atmosphere? Quite lucky, it seems. The world leaders have, in principle, agreed to act to prevent “dangerous climate change”. However, it is time to admit it’s too late for that. We are in the period of dangerous climate change, so so much for that promise. Is this disappointing? Sure. Is it surprising? Hardly – remember, mitigating actions have so far been mostly political promises, and we all know what all too easily happens to those, now don’t we?

The only hope remains of preventing a catastrophic climate change, change that would alter our planet beyond recognition in a matter of few centuries or less – and the chances of even that measure of prevention happening don’t look particularly great. In essence, the feeling you are left with after reading With Speed and Violence is that the climate is pretty much already doomed to switch – to what, we don’t know, but it’ll be different from what allowed our civilization to thrive. So it’s safe to say this is not a particularly positive book, but it does lay out in some detail many potential systems that might “tip” to something different. There is loads of interesting and insightful information about climate systems and their feedback mechanisms. So it’s highly informative, but doesn’t hold out much hope of redemption, so to say.

End of book review.

So, considering there is now a near-zero chance of the political will to emerge in time to prevent dangerous (or worse) climate change from happening, only two possible options remain: either try to prevent disaster with geoengineering or adapt. I shall leave the geoengineering debate aside for now, but I will note that many people object geoengineering on the grounds that it’d mean deliberately tampering with a system so complex we can’t know for sure what would happen. And they’d be right. However, it’s worth nothing that we are already doing that, deliberately tampering with the climate system – and it is pretty clear what we are doing is not good for it (or us).

As for adaptation – well, since we don’t fully know what to adapt to yet, other than rising sea levels and increased extreme events, the reasonable course of action is to make the society as resilient as possible.

This is why initiatives such as the Transition movement are extremely valuable – while they may not ramp up globally in time to prevent damaging climate change to a significant degree, the building of resilience they are focused on is crucial. What we need is to remodel the societies from their current brittle nature to resilient ones. It’s quite important to realize that the reason for re-establishing resilience doesn’t really matter. To some it may be about mitigating climate change, to others prudent preparation for the energy crisis. Or it can be about surviving and even thriving in a changed world. What matters that we need to do it because – and this is of course a sliding scale – the less resilient a society is, the worse off it will be.

By “best” I mean the cheapest option that is versatile enough to create an all-around comfortable and functional indoor lighting environment. Cheapest off-the-shelf price is misleading at best so I like to instead look at the total cost of ownership-type of figures. So, let’s take a look at the long-term (25yrs) total costs (bulbs + electricity used) for different lighting types.

CFL = Compact Fluorescent lamps, LED = Light-Emitting Diodes. Assumptions used to make the above chart: average usage 4hrs/day, 365 days per year. Bulb prices from http://lightingpro.com.au/, http://www.lightbulbsdirect.com/ and http://www.lc-led.com/, electricity priced at constant $0.20/kWh, lumen efficiencies as quoted by the manufacturer / vendor or averaged from figures at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminous_efficacy where not available. Bulb prices averaged per year based on expected lifetime, future bulb purchases assumed at today’s prices. Includes only “mainstream” technologies suitable for residential indoor lighting; gas discharge and arc lamps have been intentionally omitted.

Based on this, standard (large) fluorescent tubes typically used in commercial buildings are by far the most cost-effective means of lighting a space. Residential houses usually aren’t designed to take advantage of this form of lighting (though nothing says they couldn’t be) as the primary lighting source. If one looks at the graph further, you will see that LED lights have roughly equivalent electricity costs to fluorescent lamps. Once the LED lamp costs come down – and they are continuously decreasing, unlike the mature technology of fluorescent tubes that are already cheap – LED lamps are likely to become the #1 choice in the next few years.

As the chart assumes unchanged electricity prices – which obviously is not going to be the case – it makes sense to look for the lighting type with the lowest possible “electricity cost” component. This would also point towards LED lights and fluorescents, the Top 2 in total cost as well.

In researching this, there were a couple of surprises:

• Even though the LED light efficiencies are an order magnitude more than with incandescent bulbs, their efficiency is still only a maximum of 20% or so. Considering my trusty old “chili-growing” HPS (high-pressure sodium) lamp matched that efficiency 10 years ago, I’m a bit disappointed.
• I was also somewhat surprised to discover that LED lamps are already, even at their high unit prices (as much as $80 for a “standard” lamp), very competitive. Given that long fluorescent tubes are not always an easy retrofit and not applicable everywhere, LED lamps already lead all other lighting types in terms of total costs. As residential lighting is a very new application for LEDs, this is surprising.

One should note that as this was a pure efficiency / cost calculation, no externalities were taken into account. For example, CFL tubes are hazardous waste and still take a while to reach full luminosity when turned on – both clear disadvantages.

Another major negative externality has to do with halogen bulbs. I used to like halogen bulbs. I liked their compact size, relatively long lifetime (5x of incandescent bulbs) and even the modestly higher efficiency compared to incandescent. And when recessed into the ceiling, as many modern Australian houses do, they look good – and therein, it turns out, lies a major problem. Halogen lamps get exceedingly hot, meaning they need plenty of ventilation – open air around them. This means that large holes need to be cut through the ceiling insulation, often dramatically lowering the R-value of the insulation. This is a big “no no” and makes recessed halogen lighting a very bad choice, unless one uses an expensive dual ceiling construction.

In conclusion, I thought LED lamps were the future #1 choice for residential lighting. Instead it appears that for many, if not most, homes they are the #1 choice today, even at the high initial costs.

As the first resource, I chose “Green from the Ground Up: Sustainable, Healthy, and Energy-Efficient Home Construction (a builder’s guide)” by David Johnston & Scott Gibson. It proved to be an excellent in-depth introduction into the topic, covering a wide range of topics from the basics of efficiency and thermodynamics to all aspects of a house from the foundations to landscaping. It packs a whole lot of good insights and information into its 300+ pages.

It very quickly becomes apparent that most buildings built during the age of cheap energy are, to put it simply, built very badly. Not only does it make no sense for houses to look the same everywhere despite climatic differences, but just about every aspect of your typical, run-of-the-mill house is, to a greater or lesser degree, flawed.

The bad news? All this means having things such as unnecessarily high (and increasing) heating & cooling costs, poor indoor air quality and buildings that are not durable. The good news is that it doesn’t need to be like that – we know how to build good, comfortable, healthy, and sustainable homes that don’t break the bank. One just needs to put some effort into not taking the path of least resistance – a path that is often justified simply by the much-too-common phrase of “this is how we always do this”, conveniently neglecting to notice that in fact the poor building practices are a relatively recent phenomenon.

As Green from the Ground Up is a relatively US-focused book, I thought it’d be good to get some local Australian perspective into things as well. This led me to another excellent publication, “Your Home: Technical Manual – Australia’s Guide to Environmentally Sustainable Homes”. The book is a joint initiative of the Australian Government and the design and construction industries and is an already-out-of-print publication. Luckily it is accessible, for free, online at http://www.yourhome.gov.au/technical/index.html. While this publication covers many of the same topics as Green from the Ground Up, the books complement each other very well. Where one is missing details, the other comes to the rescue. And, of course, Your Home: Technical Manual brings in the valuable Australia-specific expertise and data. (Note: the Australian government also publishes the Renovator’s Guide and Buyer’s Guide that are more geared towards those renovating or buying an existing home, respectively.)

I learned a great deal reading both books; not only did I gain some vocabulary I have been missing (i.e. I now understand what lintels, jack studs, jamb studs, SHGC, R & U values etc mean), I learned a lot about building techniques, solutions and things to consider. For example, with the vast majority of houses in Australia being light timber-framed, it was enlightening to understand the other available options, from rammed earth to straw bales and AAC. Timber framing loses out to the other techniques in many respects. It was also interesting to see that many seemingly simple systems in the house are surprisingly nuanced; I did not, for example, previously know that it’s perfectly possible to have (and even retrofit) an on-demand hot water re-circulation system that returns still warming water to the tank instead of allowing it to go down the drain. Nor did I know drain water heat recovery is a relatively simple thing.

Both books are highly recommended for anyone interested in how residential houses work as a system and how to design and build houses that are comfortable, healthy, cheap to run while building them in a manner that is environmentally as benign as possible. While neither is a guide to building a ZEH (zero-emissions home) or an off-the-grid home per se, both offer invaluable advice towards achieving either goal.

As one reads such books and notices there are countless of things that could be done vastly better than they are now, it’s easy to become discouraged at the sheer extent of changes that could and should be made (just like many see fighting climate change or the energy decline as intractable problems because they are “too big” or “too complex”). There is a certain tendency to give up altogether. However, it’s important to realize that not everything has to be perfectly designed or executed for the changes to matter; the house not being perfectly aligned for the sun or lacking just the perfect bushes to direct the summer cooling breezes through the house doesn’t make the other efforts any less significant. On the contrary, the abundance of improvements possible should encourage us to give them a go, rather than to discourage.

Far too many solutions in current buildings disregard all or most “green” advice and choose form over function, cheap building costs vs cheap lifetime costs, and easy vs better. I could easily give a long list of badly designed things in our current, brand-new, compliant-with-all-new-codes home – I’ll tackle some in later posts, but it goes to show two things: first, building codes are woefully lagging behind needs and second, there are no shortage of improvement targets to start from.

Armed with all this information and with more to come, I hope I at some point get to avoid making most of at least the most common mistakes. What is exciting about green building in Australia is the huge potential; in the temperate climate of metro Melbourne, it is relatively easy to utilize methods such as passive solar heating, solar hot water heating, solar PV for electricity etc to accomplish even a ZEH. Try doing any of that solar-stuff in Finland and you’d be pretty miserable for most of the year.