Georgia Investment Network


Recent Blogs


Pitching Help Desk


Testimonials

"I wish to thank the Dealflow Investment Network for their splendid service on listing our project summary. Our entire fund raise was achieved within 5-months from China. Long flight, but well worth it. I am happy to give a recommendation."
James E. Mack

 BLOG >> Recent

Brown Tech Future? [Permaculture
Posted on January 20, 2014 @ 06:26:00 AM by Paul Meagher

If you've been following this blog you know my recent preoccupation has been with Permaculture owing to the fact that I'm working on getting my design certificate in the field. David Holmgren is one of the co-founders of Permaculture along with Bill Mollison. David was a student of Bill's and in 1978 they published the first permaculture book, "Permaculture One: A Perennial Agriculture for Human Settlements", with Bill as the lead author. Bill is generally acknowledged as the leader of the Permaculture field/movement, but David is also very influential in defining its principles, philosophy, and concerns.

David has been influential in his work on defining future scenarios that humanity might be headed towards. These future scenarios are labelled as Brown Tech, Green Tech, Earth Stewards, and Lifeboats. You might be able to get a quick sense of these scenarios by examining the axis on this diagram:


Source: http://permaculturenews.org/2014/01/16/crash-demand-welcome-brown-tech-future.

In December, 2013, David updated his work on future scenarios by publishing a provocative article Crash on Demand: Welcome to the Brown Tech Future in which he integrates his recent thinking on financial systems and current trends to warn us that the Brown Tech scenario is looking increasingly likely. This article is generating quite a bit of buzz in the Permaculture world and one of the responses worth examining is Nichole Foss's Crash on Demand? A Response to David Holmgren. There are other leaders in the Permaculture movement such as Rob Hopkins who disagree with the conclusions and suggested strategies so the article does not represent a Permaculture consensus about the future, but all agree it is a line of inquiry that needs to be explored and debated.

In this blog I want to highlight just a couple of aspects of David's article that I found interesting and useful.

One of the most useful aspects of his article was a diagram that represents each future scenario as nested scenarios that take place at different scales. So Brown Tech is how our federal governments appear to be trending, Green Tech is how our state and provincial governments are trending, Earth Stewarts is how our county and municipal governments are trending, and Life Boats is how we are trending in our households. This to me is a very insightful and integrative way to look at how the future is unfolding and is one major takeaway for me from reading the article.

Another takeaway is the main thesis of the article - that we may be headed towards a brown tech future. If this is true, we can ask ourselves what investments we might make to prepare for such a future where climate becomes more unstable while green house gas emissions stay relatively high. In general the concept of "investing" is quite difficult to pin down in the context of a future that might involve radical change so keep that in mind. In his article, David makes the suggestion that climate-controlled green houses located near major hubs might be required to maintain food supplies. On our Canadian Investment site, you can invest in such a project with Salad Greenhouse Inc. A brown tech future will also increase demand for disaster resistant buildings. On our Texas Investment site, you can invest in disaster resistant high and low end housing. These are the types of investments we need to make when the future appears to be a brown tech one requiring adaptation rather than a green tech one in which we are better able to control or reduce green house gas emissions.

In general Permaculturists are optimistic about the future and have a can-do attitude about strategies we can adopt to create more permanency and sustainability in the world. The reality in many parts of the world, however, is not that optimistic and if permaculture is to retain relevancy it has to figure out how to address the current and future fallout to be expected from a brown tech future. One person who is attempting to address that fallout is Permaculture pioneer Rosemary Morrow.

Permalink 

 Archive 
 

Archive


 November 2023 [1]
 June 2023 [1]
 May 2023 [1]
 April 2023 [1]
 March 2023 [6]
 February 2023 [1]
 November 2022 [2]
 October 2022 [2]
 August 2022 [2]
 May 2022 [2]
 April 2022 [4]
 March 2022 [1]
 February 2022 [1]
 January 2022 [2]
 December 2021 [1]
 November 2021 [2]
 October 2021 [1]
 July 2021 [1]
 June 2021 [1]
 May 2021 [3]
 April 2021 [3]
 March 2021 [4]
 February 2021 [1]
 January 2021 [1]
 December 2020 [2]
 November 2020 [1]
 August 2020 [1]
 June 2020 [4]
 May 2020 [1]
 April 2020 [2]
 March 2020 [2]
 February 2020 [1]
 January 2020 [2]
 December 2019 [1]
 November 2019 [2]
 October 2019 [2]
 September 2019 [1]
 July 2019 [1]
 June 2019 [2]
 May 2019 [3]
 April 2019 [5]
 March 2019 [4]
 February 2019 [3]
 January 2019 [3]
 December 2018 [4]
 November 2018 [2]
 September 2018 [2]
 August 2018 [1]
 July 2018 [1]
 June 2018 [1]
 May 2018 [5]
 April 2018 [4]
 March 2018 [2]
 February 2018 [4]
 January 2018 [4]
 December 2017 [2]
 November 2017 [6]
 October 2017 [6]
 September 2017 [6]
 August 2017 [2]
 July 2017 [2]
 June 2017 [5]
 May 2017 [7]
 April 2017 [6]
 March 2017 [8]
 February 2017 [7]
 January 2017 [9]
 December 2016 [7]
 November 2016 [7]
 October 2016 [5]
 September 2016 [5]
 August 2016 [4]
 July 2016 [6]
 June 2016 [5]
 May 2016 [10]
 April 2016 [12]
 March 2016 [10]
 February 2016 [11]
 January 2016 [12]
 December 2015 [6]
 November 2015 [8]
 October 2015 [12]
 September 2015 [10]
 August 2015 [14]
 July 2015 [9]
 June 2015 [9]
 May 2015 [10]
 April 2015 [9]
 March 2015 [8]
 February 2015 [8]
 January 2015 [5]
 December 2014 [11]
 November 2014 [10]
 October 2014 [10]
 September 2014 [8]
 August 2014 [7]
 July 2014 [5]
 June 2014 [7]
 May 2014 [6]
 April 2014 [3]
 March 2014 [8]
 February 2014 [6]
 January 2014 [5]
 December 2013 [5]
 November 2013 [3]
 October 2013 [4]
 September 2013 [11]
 August 2013 [4]
 July 2013 [8]
 June 2013 [10]
 May 2013 [14]
 April 2013 [12]
 March 2013 [11]
 February 2013 [19]
 January 2013 [20]
 December 2012 [5]
 November 2012 [1]
 October 2012 [3]
 September 2012 [1]
 August 2012 [1]
 July 2012 [1]
 June 2012 [2]


Categories


 Agriculture [77]
 Bayesian Inference [14]
 Books [18]
 Business Models [24]
 Causal Inference [2]
 Creativity [7]
 Decision Making [17]
 Decision Trees [8]
 Definitions [1]
 Design [38]
 Eco-Green [4]
 Economics [14]
 Education [10]
 Energy [0]
 Entrepreneurship [74]
 Events [7]
 Farming [21]
 Finance [30]
 Future [15]
 Growth [19]
 Investing [25]
 Lean Startup [10]
 Leisure [5]
 Lens Model [9]
 Making [1]
 Management [12]
 Motivation [3]
 Nature [22]
 Patents & Trademarks [1]
 Permaculture [36]
 Psychology [2]
 Real Estate [5]
 Robots [1]
 Selling [12]
 Site News [17]
 Startups [12]
 Statistics [3]
 Systems Thinking [3]
 Trends [11]
 Useful Links [3]
 Valuation [1]
 Venture Capital [5]
 Video [2]
 Writing [2]