Quaker-ex and Sustainability

I am a lapsed quaker, lapsed meditator, lapsed marathon runner, but I still think and feel like one. Quakerism flourished in England at an apocalyptic time in late 1700s. We are face-planted now in the mother of all apocalypses: the Climate Emergency. I muse here what quakerism as a way of life and movement could contribute to transition through social disruption created by energy scarcity, social injustice and above all, climate emergency.

20140829

Ex-Quaker's quakerly view 2014

People actually find their way to this blogspot, 5000+ todate, I can't imagine what fractal routes lead them here but good. I found peakoilitis by following the white rabbit done the hole back in 2003 or so. Led me to organize the first and only Ontario Quaker symposium on sustainable lifestyles at Waubauchene ON, Camp NeeKauNis.

Today is Friday Aug 29, 2014, last post here was Oct 2012, and I hadn't intended to come here, followed a white rabbit i guess.

Talks I have with knowledgeable people about the global problematique of climate, energy and finance are no longer about whether or why or when, they're about what do we do now, especially what do we boomers (I'm 60) do that can matter to our children, grandchildren's generations. It's the MBA training in me, still rattling around somewhere in my aging brain, that says define the problem, get on with solving it.

Permaculture still holds the largest hope for me, and it embraces several very specify methods, attitudes, tools. Today biochar is top of mind and I've been websurfing looking for ways to make it at the farm. Found one I had read in 2009, from Sweden, Folke Gunther's double barrel retort couldn't be easier.
http://www.holon.se/folke/carbon/simplechar/simplechar.shtml
But the benefits of biochar are rolling in on the research pages. Just for instance, from  Albert Bates TheGreatChange blog: http://peaksurfer.blogspot.ca/2013/10/post-modern-moonshots.html











So you see, there is much to be hopeful about. Also Holistic (farm) Management, Regenerative Agriculture, Urban gardening, and Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration. http://permaculturenews.org/2008/09/24/the-development-of-farmer-managed-natural-regeneration/ .

All great signs of the willingness of some people to innovate in the direction of a steadystate ecologically-confined human habitat. As Daniel Quinn, author of Ishmael, reminds us, "If the world is to be saved, it will not be by old minds with new programs, but by new minds with no programs."