Requests for David Holmgren to do interviews keep coming in following the publication of his latest essay “Crash on Demand”. He has done a couple so far, in an attempt to answer some of the questions raised by the fellow travellers. Click on the links below to listen to what he has to say.
Agricultural Innovations with Frank Aragona part 1: Crash on Demand) (Sept 29, 2014) and part 2: Pathways to intentional communities (Oct 6, 2014)
With David Holmgren on his essay ‘Crash on Demand’ with Stefan Geyer (21st century permaculture) originally broadcast on Feb 2, 2014 on London’s Shoreditch radio.
Crash on Demand with Alex Smith (Ecoshock Radio), also features Nicole Foss.
In the follow up email exchanges, Alex Smith from Ecoshock Radio raised a further question which was not covered in his interview.
Is David saying that the system will crash anyway and by scaling up permaculture activities will fasten the inevitable, or is he really calling for non-violent efforts to crash the economic system, to save the planet, or is not calling for that? To answer that, he has compiled what could be termed as a concise summary of “Crash on Demand”. You can download the text here. We recommend you to read the whole essay first, though.
Crash on Demand, a concise version
See also the following video filmed for Pip Australian permaculture magazine, “How you can change the world with permaculture”. It shows David presenting a more positive take on what is essentially the same message as “Crash On Demand”.
4 thoughts on “Crash on Demand: interviews and a summary”
Pingback: Crash on Demand or how to opt out the corporate fascism.
In the original, it seemed like climate change was a driver for wanting to crash the system sooner, rather than later. That is missing from the concise version. Any reason?
This is basically the message I tell my volunteers at Earthway..Here we are building / doing what we want…to make good solutions..
Thanks David for all your work!
kevin
A few things should be clear by now, thanks to David H., Bill M., and many others:
1. Because it pays no heed to limits or destructive consequences, growth-addicted globalized industrial civilization is already changing and transitioning–with or without conscious design–in different ways, at different rates, in different places, with different amounts of pain for the creatures involved. Call it variations of overreach and “collapse,” for all the well-known reasons, of which energy descent and climate are only two. (See the writings of Lester Brown, and the book, “Something New Under the Sun,” and consider the fragile money-financial system.)
2. This chaotic socio-ecological turbulence is bound to increase before any of it settles into more stable patterns–i.e., conditions of life will probably get much worse for most ecosystems/creatures/people before they get better…if they get better at all in the near term.
3. The specifics–the times/locations/variations of this chaotic global transition process and its eventual settling states–are largely unpredictable. Some changes will be ecological, some financial/economic, some political. Some will be rapid and some will be slower, some for the better and some very bad.
4. Smart people are adapting to these changing and challenging realities as rapidly as reasonably possible by choosing a PLACE to LIVE and LOVE and RECONFIGURE/transform/regenerate COLLABORATIVELY, according to permaculture principles, into long-term healthy ecosystems for humans and other creatures–aiming, of course, for self-reliance and resilience and equity.
5. Best to begin at the household level and build outward from there, using all available resources.
6. Economically speaking: the basic move is to reduce consumption and INVEST the savings in a COLLABORATIVE PROCESS of whole-system HOUSEHOLD TRANSITION, for increased REAL (and tax-free) income from improved water, energy, shelter, plant-animal, and social systems.
Aside from multitudes of devlish design details/questions/decisions, is there really much more to be said before we GET ON WITH IT? Talking/reading/writing can be productive, but sometimes it saps energy and delays the demanding work of reconfiguration.
NOW is the time to BEGIN with serious COMMITMENT to place and people, for fruitful, whole-system TRANSITIONS of households, communities, and regions.