Three Seeds Make a Sustainable Future
What the Blue Marble, Limits to Growth and Permaculture Can Teach Us
Let’s explore together how three events in the 1970s have lain in waiting as seeds in the soil. Now, nearly 50 years later, these seeds are germinating and showing their little vulnerable heads. Their leaves still in buds, spiraling into the unknown space of freedom.
Three seeds joining forces to be earth shepherds, a team of changemakers. Our history defines our future. And I am convinced that these three seeds of the 1970s will become the blooming rebels of the 2020s.
Blue marble
The first event I refer to is the publication of the ‘blue marble’ picture, the first photograph of the full earth taken from space. On 7 December 1972, the astronauts of Apollo 17 took this picture at a distance of 45,000 km.
The image of this ‘blue marble’ touches people in their hearts. Oh, how beautiful she is! And she’s our home, GAIA. Never before had the fragile beauty and vulnerability of the earth been captured so vividly.
Due to this widespread picture, something shifted in people’s awareness. Astronauts talk about the overview effect. Many of them say that the view of the earth from space changed them. It gave them new insights on “who we are” and how “everything is connected to everything else”. Edgar Mitchell said: “We went to the moon as technicians, we returned as humanitarians.”
Limits to growth
The second event that took place in 1972 was the publication of the report ‘Limits to Growth’ by the Club of Rome, a group of well-known scientists. The report investigated five world problems and their interrelationships: the growth of world population, food production, industrialization, depletion of raw materials and pollution.
The conclusion of the report was that the growth of the world population and material progress cannot be our main purpose without getting in trouble. We need a new main purpose.
And I want to add to this that a new main purpose can really drive our lives, make it adventurous. I myself experience the love and joy every single day!
Permaculture
The third event that took place in the 1970s is the get together of Bill Mollison and David Holmgren to work on their first permaculture design strategies and publish their book ‘Permaculture One’.
Imagine these guys, being highly inspired by the Aboriginals of Australia and other indigenous people, sitting on a porch and discussing how to translate nature’s wisdom into a rational approach to land use and human living.
We just can imagine them saying: the industrial world needs a rational approach, but let’s not forget observation. It’s what makes the feedback loops of a systemic approach work properly. In this video, they do actually say: “A sustainable system is a system that produces more energy than it costs to build and maintain it.”
Wow! Think about it. If we broaden the term energy to include labor, money, effort, etc., what does it mean for all our production processes? And our economic systems? It means ‘economies of scope’, and synergy as an economic driver instead of scale.
Thinking in more values than just money. Adding clean water to the scope, and clean air. Healthy food will be produced on living soil, restoring the water cycles. Well, that gives a whole different perspective…
Young generation
The 1970s was the decade I grew up in. I lived in a very rational world in which I had to find my way around school subjects. Adults were asking me: “What do you want to be?” And I never had the guts to say: “I just want to be ME.”
But now the world has changed. The Youth Climate Movement is asking us what we have done to prevent disaster. The earth will survive without us, but how will we, humans, survive on this polluted, exploited earth? How will we change our ways so they will have a future? They are right. We should act.
The path
The question I often get is: “Act? How?” The world is a complicated place full of opinions and dogmas and emotional turmoil. So how do we find the right direction?
Well, what if these three seeds of the 1970s are a path? They show us the way. It is not one way, it is a biodiverse way of doing and falling and standing up again. All the while asking ourselves the same question: How does nature solve this?
The seeds are connected. ‘The blue marble’ shows us why we care. ‘Limits to growth’ feed new economic models that are definitely growing, such as the blue economy, circular economy, and the donut economy. And the systemic approach of indigenous cultures, permaculture and again blue economy gives a wonderful direction on how.
A journey
If we observe nature and use it as our inspiration, restore the land and learn how to live in systemic ways, we have taken a big step in the right direction. However, it’s a journey, not a recipe with measured ingredients.
Let’s stop with dogmas about the only right path and learn together. I really believe in biodiversity and that also means diversity in solutions. Nature always has more than one solution to the same problem. It makes resilient systems.
So let’s observe the local situation, see what’s available, create synergy and added value and make sure we finance commons in the system as well. It’s a lovely journey I enjoy tremendously so far. So while you’re at it, don’t forget to enjoy the process!
If you want to connect, you can find me on LinkedIn or somewhere in a food forest putting my hands in the soil…
