[Terrapreta] expansion

[lou gold]

Hi Kurt,

There's a line from "The Man From LaMancha" where Pablo says to Don Quixote,
"When the glass and the rock have a fight, it's going to be bad for the
glass." If we see this as a simple carrying capacity issue -- people versus
nature with inelastic limits -- then Malthus was right and we are in for a
die-off just like the off-observed natural population dynamic of bloom and
bust. As an ecological and environmental storyteller, I used to believe in
this narrative.  Seeing what appeared as the futilty of the human condition,
I retired from activism into a delicious life of nature and spirit and
beauty in Brazil.

Now I am getting pulled back.

The single thing that was the difference that made the difference  for me
was not the growing statistics of catastrophe but, rather, the discovery of
the terra preta story which strongly suggested that there once was a people
that had achieved 100s to 1000s of years of living in balance with their
niche in the Amazon basin. No western civilization can make a claim of such
harmony or longevity without spoiling the nest. It seemed that the TP trick
was one of turning waste into resource and thus building an agriculture of
reciprocity with the earth -- a way for waste to increase ambundance.

I know that much of this is speculative but I'm a "vision-guy" and the draw
of this possibity was too great for me to ignore. The possibilty of moving
from the technologies of depletion toward the technologies of restoration
may be the harbinger of moving from the age of scarcity into an age of
abundance. I know that we have a long way to go. I know that this is not the
history of the industrial age nor the history of the triumphant
civilizations of conquest. But I nevertheless hold an ancient-future dream
that, once we see beyond the filters of the cheap fossil-fueled industrial
age, we will see that Malthus was wrong and that humans can discover a
healing and harmonious connection with nature.

That's my schtick.

hugs and blessing,

lou

On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 10:23 AM, Kurt Treutlein <rukurt at westnet.com.au>
wrote:

> lou gold wrote:
> > After reading this Greg ...
> >
> > / So on one hand, we have you claiming extinction levels of 95%+ of
> > all known species ( including plants ) due to global warming, caused
> > by CO2 in the atmosphere due to the actions of man, and on the other
> > hand, we have record of known extinction events, that never exceed
> > aprox 80% in a worst case situation ( few of which involve plants ),
> > and most of which account for <60% of species. /
> >
> > Somehow, I just can't help noting the obvious that we and other
> > sentient beings are not plants and that losing up to 60% of us may be
> > more than a yawn.
> >
> > hugs,
> >
> > lou
> >
> The thing is Lou, that what some are saying is that with economic
> collapse and fuel becoming less and less available, for one reason or
> another, something like that is going to happen anyhow. Humanity is
> exceeding the carrying capacity of our planet and the earth will likely
> cull us.
>
> Considerably fewer people on earth pouring considerably less fossil CO2
> into the atmosphere should make Sean happy anyhow.
>
>
> Kurt
>
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>



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