Well, of course, it doesn’t say that. In fact, I doubt those who are arguing for the GND have ever heard of permaculture. Nor, if Mike Adams is right, have they really understood the implications of the GND for our eating habits in the U.S.A. And by that, I’m not just talking about all the soft drinks that seem to line every supermarket basket hauled by obese folks looking for their next sugar or fake sugar fix (this image is fresh in mind, having just gotten some organic veggies from a local supermarket and followed an obese couple’s basket loaded with soft drinks and processed “food” through the line); I’m also talking about the way food — both organic and poisoned — is hauled across the country in big trucks. In fact, it’s that fact, the way food production and distribution works here in the U.S., that first put me on the track towards permaculture, having watched the movie, The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil in 1991, when the trucks and tractors and cars all stopped moving due to the oil tankers from the former Soviet Union no longer reaching that island.
That was in 2003. I started to look around, and realized what Mike Adams outlines in his fear-mongering post:
ANALYSIS: How AOC’s Green New Deal would unleash a catastrophic food collapse and Venezuela-style mass starvation across America
He’s right. Everything depends on cheap fossil fuels. At least now it does, and for the foreseeable future. Mike has great fun talking about how many solar panels it would take to power one of the giant tractors currently used by Big Ag. Those panels would take 70 square feet, and tip the whole contraption over in the slightest wind.
But Mike doesn’t know about permaculture either, apparently. He just makes fun of the GND without offering the obvious alternative: scale down Big Ag to small farms, in fact to tiny, intensively cultivated plots, the kind of farming I remember seeing from my train window in Thailand six years ago. The kind that used to percolate throughout this country. Mom and Pop farms.
But then, how do we scale down? Confiscate the land now owned by Big Ag? Have Big Socialist/Communist Government move in and just take the land over? I imagine that AOC, if she knew about permaculture, would salivate over this idea, say say yes, that’s what to do! After all, that’s what Communist China did, remember? And confiscated people from their usual occupations — academic, medical, artistic, and so on — as laborers for big collective communist farms. How well did that work out, eh?
I think not. Instead, what we need is real life education, at all levels, starting with little kids, and we need many more small experimental templates for how we could be doing things differently, if we scale down to our own localities. Many more places like Green Acres Village, for example, which practices both social and land-based permaculture; we need much more support for farmers markets, CSAs, urban farms, back and front and side yard gardening. Food stands on every block. Zoning changes to encourage these transformations. And especially, we need to both change our food habits, to focus on what’s fresh and local, and learn how to live together again, rather than so separately. Cooperatively, rather than in competition. And to do this voluntarily. Get to know our neighbors! Start cultivating the land between our houses together. Start seeing green lawns as poisoned wastelands, ripe for planting! Start eating together once in a while — without cell phones! Real food, food that we grow. On and on. There’s so much ferment in the air right now, and it’s high time we started to act on our desires for local autonomy, local authority, local sovereignty.
I write this on Valentine’s Day. Happy Valentine’s Day! And you know? The strangest thing happened to me last night: A dream, of a man, grey haired, wrinkled, average stature, and with a calm, wise, precise nature that is thoroughly compatible with my adventurous spirit; in fact, he knows me, and I know him! How? I can see and feel him dear and clear as day, even now. And yet I have never met this man in waking life. So Happy Valentine’s Day to me! For, like all of us, I inhabit many realms, one of them in the dreamtime, where my Valentine appeared!
But I digress. What I really wanted to mention was the fact that Chiron, the wounded healer, after a long sojourn through soft, dreamy Pisces — that began in February 2011 and offered either compassion or escapism and distraction as the antidote to the rough and tumble of the Uranus/Pluto square that dominated this era — will now cross into action-oriented, wham-bang Aries, on February 18, to remain there until April 2027. That’s over eight years!
During these eight years, Pluto will move back and forth over its own natal place in the U.S.A. chart for the very first time, so you know damn well that we’re going to have to learn how to work with Power in a whole new way. Rather than lording it over others, the swaggering, forever adolescent hegemon, I suggest we recognize the immense power buried in the land, and buried in our own bodies’ connection to the land. Pluto rules the primal life force that powers both, and with Uranus about to move into earthy Taurus in early March for seven years, this human connection to Mother Earth herself will become more and more blatant, especially as Earth begins to move and sway and erupt with her bottom up Uranian power that can also move through us. Bottom up power of and through We the People. We are the ones we have been waiting for.
Okay, now that we see the larger picture, with the new Uranus sojourn in Taurus coupled with Pluto about to engage in a process of conjuncting the U.S.A. natal Pluto for the very first time, let’s go back to Chiron.
Remember, Chiron’s cycle is slightly over 51 years. So if you haven’t lived that long, then you have no idea what Chiron is about. However, if you have lived that long and longer, then try to remember back to that time: what wound that had been festering for years — maybe even since you were a kid! — actually began to heal then? Not because you did anything drastic about it, though you might have, but because you began to see it differently, feel it differently; even, to take responsibility for your part in whatever went “off” so long ago, and with that enlarged understanding, slowly began to heal.
Chiron’s move into Aries will feel subtle at first. You might not even notice it, except perhaps, as an increasing willingness to take chances, to risk your reputation and your money, your stuff; to get going, off the couch, sipping your last Coke or Diet Coke and switching to something less sweet, more nutrient rich. (You might look into Cho-Wa! I’ve let go of coffee entirely due to this amazing beverage.)
What is yours to do? To start? To experiment with? What do you want to accomplish before you die? Do that, start that, now. And hopefully, many of us will start both changing our diets (i.e., taking charge of our health!) and growing our own food, and especially in community with others nearby. Now that would be the real green new deal.
11 thoughts on “Green New Deal spurs conversion to Permaculture?”
I like your description of a real GND much better. I’d send this to ‘ol yellow journalism Mikey’ if I thought there was even the slightest chance he’d read it and seriously consider it. He’s far too busy trying to make those associated with AOC’s GND look like idiots to take a more constructive approach, as you have. TBH, they dont really need his help to look like idiots much of the time, so its a lot of wasted effort on his part & exposes his agenda pretty clearly too.
Yes, the main problem is both sides are still seeing through the same old Big Ag, Big everything eyes. Don’t realize that there is an entirely other way that makes so much more sense than either Capitalism or Socialism. So all they do is try to best each other, put each other down, beat each other with clever words. Just like we were taught in school . . .
In Mike Adams’ defense, he has actually done a lot to help schools start gardening. He designed a hydroponics system meant to be as sustainable as a hydroponics system can be, able to be used in apartments, outdoors or indoors, climate permitting.
No, it’s not permaculture, but despite his more obvious agenda, if you research what Mike Adams does behind the scenes, he’s much more empowering to individuals and children than his fear porn articles would appear. He also financed his own lab to test supplements for safety, especially since the ones from China often have heavy metals in them. He’s tested different water filtration systems for effectiveness, and he’s willing to test whatever supplements people have questions about and post the results.
I don’t like his over the top, politically one sided articles, but in terms of action, he’s not all about Big Ag … and he’s not all talk, no do. He also runs his own farm, has free range chickens, and I think cows, too. Anyway, I researched him a few years ago. I don’t know who he’s working for and am not wild about his associations with Alex Jones. He’s much more complex than would first appear, speaks fluent Chinese, lived in an eco community for awhile in Ecuador.
I don’t know him and am not endorsing him … just giving a little more of the picture. I think we need to be careful about pigeon holing anyone without more research into what they do behind the scenes.
I forgot to mention that he has donated many, many of these hydroponics systems to children, and when one of the big hurricanes hit TX, he donated big pallets of organic food to victims, food from his own store’s stock, coordinating deliveries, all at his own time and expense. To me, that says a lot about character and focus on local community. He still might be controlled opposition, but he’s not one dimensional.
Yes, so glad to hear all this about him! Wish he would write an article that reflected this aspect of his work, to inspire others rather than paralyze them with fear.
He hangs with doom-porn master Dave Hodges too. I think he is controlled opposition, and he’s possibly been conscripted to play the part of one of the “White Hats” after the coming economic collapse.
Thing is, Natural News is still one of my top go-to sites for news, and I agree with about 90% of his viewpoints. He’s one of the very few putting out good articles and science re: GMO’s, vaccines, herbicides etc.
He is also not into cryptos; points out the ignorance of the LGBT/Demoncrats; embraces the 2nd amendment; calls out the Satanic pedophiles; is against the global warming carbon-tax BS; does great work with his laboratory, and he does do a lot of charitable work (as you point out).
So if he is one of the “White Hats”, I can get behind all of that stuff. I just wonder: how many of those negative things were planned and created to *cause* all of this chaos in the first place?
If and when the “White Hats” do come out, if they do bring all that good stuff with them after a collapse, what other things will we be agreeing to if they take power? THAT is what to watch for. If it includes a world government under a “reformed” United Nations and a new One World banking system that is gold-backed and/or crypto-based, with the (((same people))) in charge at the top, will things actually be better?
So yeah, he needs to be watched, but much of what he is doing NEEDS to be done.
Oh, and the Chiron thing? I am DEFINITELY feeling that right now. Some really deeply-buried father stuff that happened when I was four or so is coming up for release, and that was one whole Chiron cycle ago for me. It will be interesting to see on my chart what’s up with that!
Yay for your Chiron! And thanks for your nuanced approach to all this wild stuff that’s going on around us.
One thing I forgot to mention: Mr. Adams has written several ominous articles indicating he believes that violence will be necessary to help “heal the country”. Same stuff Alex Jones and Dave Hodges are writing, among others.
That’s why I think they are controlled opposition. They are pushing the narrative that in order to save the USA, we basically will need to have another civil war. Dangerous talk.
Just arrest the bankers and their pedophile helpers and be done with it, or this multi-millennial cycle of world wars will continue.
Terrific! Thanks for this enlarged context. However, I would say that it’s up to him to realize that his public mind operates divergently from his private actions.
Hey, I would include some of this kinda talk in your videos!!! And consider the kind of vids that allow people to chat while you are talking as well as posts….I’ve noticed lots of younguns seem to like this format…..or not, but rock the boat and show the way with your new adventure!! Lots of love to you on the commercial Vday…and always!!
Yeah, who knows where this will head. I’m open. Thanks Kama, as always for your encouragement!