Episode 5: David Holmgren – Should we be running away from cities?
From the podcast website:
Joining us is none other than David Holmgren, the Aussie legend himself and co-founder of the groundbreaking permaculture movement. David’s got some practical tips up his sleeve for prepping for an uncertain future. Let’s learn about the huge opportunities of RetroSuburbia and being a ‘mobile minimalist’. And no, it’s not an interior designing trend.
Listen to it on Apple Podcasts
About the show:
Are we f#ed? How to survive a climate Shit-Show hosted By Lisa Camillo
On ‘Are We F..ed?’, we tackle the pressing challenges of climate collapse with a blend of reality-check, practicality and humor. In a world teetering on the brink of climate collapse, where hope feels like a distant memory, Italian-Australian, Lisa Camillo, award-winning filmmaker and anthropologist, wants to shines a bright light amidst the darkness and anxiety of the times we are living in. This series is not your typical doomsday podcast, it combines elements of positivity and survivalism, offering a well-rounded approach to addressing these challenges.
Interview Transcript
(00:00:00) Introduction to Mobile Minimalism
David Holmgren: I think there’s huge opportunities for what in suburbia I call the mobile minimalist of people who can have minimal possessions. Stay flexible. Go to where the opportunities to learn are to do things on a voluntary basis and contribute somewhere.
(00:00:18) Podcast Introduction and Permaculture Overview
Lisa Camillo: Hey there, Ika Warriors. Welcome back to our We F#ed How to Survive a Climate Sh*t show.
Lisa Camillo: I’m your host, Lisa Camillo, anthropologist, filmmaker, and your guide to navigate the world of sustainability or global disasters. Oh boy, do we have a treat for you today? Joining us is none other than David Holmgren, the Aussie legend himself and co-founder of the groundbreaking permaculture movement.
Lisa Camillo: Now I know what you’re thinking. What the heck is permaculture? Anyway, wealth. Think of it like nature zone design hack. It’s all about working with not against the natural world to create sustainable systems that provide for our needs while nurturing the planet, but enough of the technical jargon. Let’s get to the good stuff.
Lisa Camillo: David’s not just a permaculture pioneer. He’s also a visionaire with some serious radical ideas about the future. I’m talking about prediction that will make your head spin, like saying goodbye to jobs on OnlyFans and hello to a whole new way of living or climbing trees. But fear not dear listeners, because David’s got some practical tips up his leaves for prepping for an uncertain future.
Lisa Camillo: Who’s ready to ditch the concrete jungle and embrace a life of suburban serenity. Can I get a, Hey man. Anyone? Anyone? Hello, professor Holm Green. It’s great to have you on our podcast. Thank you so much for joining us. You are famous for co-authoring and starting the movement of perma culture. That is incredible.
Lisa Camillo: Can you tell us a little bit about your work?
(00:02:00) Permaculture’s Growth and Core Idea
David Holmgren: I suppose permaculture has grown to a worldwide movement, over the last 40 or so years around the world, focusing on positive responses to environmental crisis. In a way, permaculture has of course grown to a worldwide movement, in more than a hundred countries, and in many different forms and expressions from the most destitute places in the world to the most privileged.
David Holmgren: I was really the co-author of the Permaculture concept. I attribute the first spread and development of the movement, to my co-author, Bill Mollison. Permaculture is sort of the, a low footprint way of living on the land. That also made us more self-reliant, more collectively reliant with our households, our friends, our community, rather than being dependent on large, centralised, globalised system.
(00:02:50) Facing Existential Threats and Modern Anxieties
Lisa Camillo: So the question is, are we f#cked? What are we facing?
David Holmgren: Yeah. Well, in some ways there’s always been existential threats that people have faced or have had a sense of foreboding about, and whether it’s incredibly dangerous predators that might beat you if you go out in the dark in many parts of the world for our ancestors, or whether it’s the behaviour of fickle overlords or raiders or.
David Holmgren: The punishment from God’s bad behaviour of ourselves or our forebears. There’s always been this sense of something that we can’t control, but that that seems worse in the modern world because we’ve been so used to the illusion that somehow through technology and modernity and urbanisation, we’ve become sort of supposedly collectively all powerful.
David Holmgren: And then the discovery that we’re. When we look at it the other way, climate change, the degree to which it has unfolded already or the predictions of what might come are creating that climate angst.
Lisa Camillo: I’m definitely guilty of that.
David Holmgren: A lot of that is a product of the psychosocial as well as any sort of aspect of hard, certain predictions about the, for example, I don’t fear and.
David Holmgren: In my lifetime, the threat of nuclear war has never been as great as it is now. And yet somehow for most people, that is sort of, oh, some background angst. And also I think that the peak of global oil supply that’s really now in the past is as much or more the cause of many of the symptoms that people are attributing to climate change.
David Holmgren: Whether those are direct. Ones like mass migrations, and all the social upheavals from that, or the responses that appear to be responses to climate change. Like we’ll get rid of all the petrol and diesel cars and go all electric. I think that is actually really more strongly a response to the fact that diesel is in chronic short supply in the world and it’s being reserved for the military, for large agriculture, for transport.
David Holmgren: So there’s a need to get rid of personal cars that are using. I have my own of understanding of what’s going on in the world as and work fu. Think about those things as well as, okay, whatever’s happening, there’s a whole lot of things that are worth doing anyway, no matter what those things are happening because they benefit us and they benefit society and they benefit the whole of nature.
(00:05:30) Building Resilience and Practical Skills
Lisa Camillo: So basically, we don’t know what might happen, but we just have to make sure we are ready for it, right?
David Holmgren: Yeah. So a lot of the permaculture solutions are worth doing anyway, and they build resilience to those. Challenging harder times. So in that sense, we don’t have to agree on what future realities are, but if we are healthier in our bodies and better skilled, and by skilled I mean something that you can actually do that other people would value and not, rather than putting your ticket into the slot in some giant government or corporate machine, and yes, they’ll agree to pay you for some skill you have.
David Holmgren: No, some skill that another person will value. Now, whether that’s being able to grow food or whether fix a, a machine or a bicycle, or in fact entertain people with singing and playing a guitar, beyond the media supplied things, it might be many different things in different contexts, but that building those skills of being useful people is always an advantage.
David Holmgren: Being able to cook from uncertain ingredients, make up, nutritious meals. There’s many things that our ancestors, our forebearers took as sort of given that most people could do that, and yet now a lot of those skills have become scarce.
Lisa Camillo: Yeah, I think that’s pretty scary because young people can’t work with their hands anymore and are not interested whatsoever.
Lisa Camillo: For example, my husband and I bought. A house that we were innovating and we got actually some young people that were supposed to do the job and did complete disasters. And so my husband and I said, okay, let’s learn how to do it ourselves. And here we are. It’s not actually that hard and it’s fun and it gives you a sense of being self-reliant and it feels like it’s cool.
Lisa Camillo: I can do that. It’s pretty, it’s pretty fun.
(00:07:20) The Mobile Minimalist and RetroSuburbia
David Holmgren: Yeah. Well, I think the first thing is about being more. Capable of being self-reliant in some small ways that make sense where we already are and that make us more useful to the people around us. I think there’s huge opportunities for what in RetroSuburbia I call the mobile minimalist of people who can have minimal possessions, stay flexible, go to where the opportunities to learn up to do things on a voluntary basis and contribute somewhere.
David Holmgren: And I think that’s a huge opportunity often for young people who are trying to find their feet and also start grounding into those skills without having to make the commitment of, oh, we’re going to somehow. Buy a piece of land or even decide for sure where we want to be. So I think at different stages of life, people need different solutions.
David Holmgren: So not everyone can afford to buy a place in a desirable place in the country, but there’s often opportunities to share, to rent, get into an area where you have got some idea that’s where you wanna be. And then there’s also opportunities to volunteer in places to be able to gain. You need to be able to offer something so.
David Holmgren: First thing is to become more useful. Working out how to fit in or what needs to be done and your own health and fitness to be competent. And even learning simple things in a household, how to sharpen a knife. There are so many things that then as a volunteer, people see. Ah, this person, has some ability or connection rather than, oh, this person is someone who has grown up completely in the media bubble and, doesn’t know how to tie their shoelaces.
David Holmgren: Another one, of course, is learning to identify the edible weeds and edible mushrooms in an area you live in. In many cities, certainly in Australia, and low density cities in the, and. Free food is to forage. Oh, there’s a walnut tree that hangs over the fence in that place, or, all of those things are becoming at home in your territory, your environment.
David Holmgren: Those are good for your own psychological wellbeing. They might contribute literally to some skills that might be survival skills, but they also are part of a pathway to being a more useful contributor that will get you on whatever your pathway needs to be.
(00:09:50) Future Predictions: Governance and Systems
Lisa Camillo: As a futurist, what are you predicting might happen, especially in terms of governments?
Lisa Camillo: Are the governments gonna collapse? Banks?
David Holmgren: It’s complex of, of course, and different things increasingly will happen in different places in, in the world. But overall, I think, governments systems and the, their control of the key supplies of food and energy and communications will get stricter and so they won’t.
David Holmgren: In the near future, possibly not in the lifetime of even young people today, but it’s like you’ll be offered more and more security, but climb into a tighter strait jacket. So the way I would see that, for example, maybe in the supermarket food system, the government movement will guarantee that there will be food in the supermarkets and they will rearrange the economy to make sure.
David Holmgren: That happens, but you might need your ID card to be able to buy out the supermarket, and if you refuse that, then you might be out in the the feral food system of grow your own foraging. Farmer’s markets, informal networks, and so that increasingly there might be choices that people have to make between being inside the system with some hope for security.
David Holmgren: But more constriction or more freedom. And that could be at the geographic fringes, like in the countryside, but it could be if you like, at the conceptual fringes of the semi-legal things. And there’s a lot of people already in those situations. So I think it’s unlikely that in the near future we’ll see.
David Holmgren: Sort of major collapse of those centralised systems. Another way of thinking about that is that most of the economy is completely unnecessary. It’s what’s called the discretionary economy. All the coffee shops and the gymnasium and the dog shampoo services and so many things are completely unnecessary.
David Holmgren: So it seems to me that as society goes into more crises and constriction. At least for most people, maybe rich people will still have them, but most people won’t. And that the resources get reallocated to the basics. What I, in some of my presentations have called a potatoes, beer, and petrol economy. I mean it’s now a bit Blum,
Lisa Camillo: So pretty much an Irish diet.
David Holmgren: Yeah. So, and I don’t mean that sort of literally, but sort of also. In some ways a hopeful sign because if you think of societies in the past when they’ve faced crises and they had to tighten their belt or eat less, or do less, there wasn’t much fat in the system. Whereas our society, there’s so much fat, some of it’s literally on our bodies, but all of this excess things that can be redirected to more productive things.
David Holmgren: And I think governments will do that and people will do it, but the priorities of what is essential and what’s the best way to do it. For us, for society and the planet. There’ll be a lot of different approaches about that. So that’s sort of the way I see, those crises un, unfolding.
(00:12:58) Rural vs. Urban Resilience and RetroSuburbia
Lisa Camillo: Absolutely.
Lisa Camillo: Because I remember when we had Covid lockdowns and we’re leaving in the middle of Milan, we actually caught the worst. It was incredibly hard. We had drones passing by, checking if we we’re outside. So when we decided that we needed a way out in case something like this would happen again, we decided to move from Milan to Sardinia, an island.
Lisa Camillo: Because in the countryside, even though they had the same rules, it was a lot harder to implement them that strictly because of logistics.
David Holmgren: Yeah, and I think Covid and the responses to it are a sort of a perfect sort of example and model, and it doesn’t really matter what. The, the source of that is whether it’s larger scale conflict, than’s already happening in, in Europe at the, the moment, or whether it’s climate driven natural disasters, or whether it’s shortages of, fuel and other essentials because of geopolitical changing, all driven by all sorts of different factors.
David Holmgren: That experience of the privilege and comfort of being in an affluent city and having everything. Provided indirectly suddenly turns into, oh, this is not just not very nice. It sort of can very quickly get to the point of being unlivable. Whereas in a rural area where there’s been historically this association of less services, less resources, in some ways, many people can now see, ah, the countryside actually has a lot of resilience and flexibility.
David Holmgren: Yeah. And beyond that, I. One of the things in, especially in the Australian context and many other countries where there’s not all urban development is in high density, but suburbia that people have often thought is really boring is actually a great place to be more self-reliant that a lot of people actually may have more access to and be more familiar with because somewhere they grew up, and my RetroSuburbia work is very much about that, how we can positively adapt in.
David Holmgren: Situ in places that, people may find themselves in, in rapidly changing time.
(00:15:06) Health, Medical Systems, and Prevention
Lisa Camillo: Very interesting. Never actually thought suburbia was gonna be sexy, but here we are. Great. Another thing I wanna ask you is other practical things you can suggest people to be ready for, like, especially in terms of health and the medical system because.
Lisa Camillo: It seems it’s collapsing everywhere, all over the world. We’re getting worse. What are your thoughts on that?
David Holmgren: Yeah. Well, in my big RetroSuburbia book, a Downshift is Guide to a Resilient Future. That’s about the built environment, the biological gardening, and raising animals, and the behavioural. Within that, the chapter on aging. Death and disability was the last chapter I wrote because in some ways it was the most difficult for people who’ve been on this pathway of self-reliance for a long time and have seen a lot of people go through this often. Health crises are the things that throw them back. Independence. On the centralised system, and obviously this applies especially more to older people than younger people, but, I think Covid sort of really illustrated how vulnerable people feel and dependent on those centralised system.
David Holmgren: So there’s lots of things we can do about our own health and I don’t think. The official centralised systems that are dominated by the pharmaceutical corporations are generally a good source of advice, and I think the medical system is in a lot of ways very corrupted. But it’s a sort of a do your own due diligence about things and look at the simple behaviours in eating habits, habits in consumption, in activity to keep your body as healthy as possible.
David Holmgren: Prevention, huge opportunities for prevention. That came up with Covid because many people, especially in Europe, in cloudy climates living in urban areas, a very significant proportion of the population is actually vitamin D deficient, even just by normal nutritional standards. But we now know and have known for quite some time that vitamin D is a protective.
David Holmgren: Against viral infections generally, and elevated vitamin D is a really good thing to have, especially in winter and yet in Covid that was completely dismissed. And we can look at, vitamin D is is cheap, whereas complex medicines are expensive. So I’m not saying there’s sort of like simple, easy answers, but then we can look at, there’s many young people who are choosing with pregnancy to have home birth outside of the centralised medical system.
David Holmgren: Generally with midwife help. In some places where the regulations are so strict on midwives, sometimes people doing that without, although that’s a another sort of example of a very sort of contentious issue. It clearly is a much greater sense of. Self-reliance and less dependent on the centralised system.
David Holmgren: Now, ideally, of course, most people would be giving birth at home rather than in a hospital, which is for sick people, and the medical system would be the backup for when things don’t work out. But unfortunately, the world we seem to be moving into is again, sort of, you’re either increasingly, not that it’s a good thing, but we’re finding ourselves, you’re either in the system or you’re outside of the system and trying to maintain that.
David Holmgren: With the medical system, it’s one of those difficult things, but for younger people there’s a lot more flexibility, a lot more options to, to basically invest in your own health long term. Now there’s another sort of related to that. Between that and the being useful is balance. I see a lot of young people who’ve never climbed trees and don’t have.
David Holmgren: Excellent balance.
Lisa Camillo: I’m good then because I grew up climbing trees and rocks and surfing.
David Holmgren: Yeah, and one of the things that happens when you get older is you to some degree start losing balance and whatever level you got to in your early twenties or so. That’s as good as you sort of generally get unless you put a huge effort into it and then there’s a decline.
David Holmgren: Whereas when you’re in your twenties, you can put a. And still get better, but whatever peak you get to, then there’s this decline. So if you never climb tree because you never had access to a tree or your parents didn’t allow you, or whatever it is, or never rode a bicycle, or all of those things that improve our balance are a huge investment in your future wellbeing and your usefulness as a person.
(00:19:30) The Importance of Physical Skills and Balance
Lisa Camillo: Why do we need to climb trees in the future? Is there something we don’t know?
David Holmgren: Well right here, atra, I climb trees to cut tree fodder to feed our goats. I climb trees to olives, and I can still do that at 69 years of age. So, it’s also about feeling at home and confident. Whether that’s dealing with that might be useful in dealing with some natural disaster, whether it’s caused by climate change or doesn’t matter what.
David Holmgren: All of those things are sort of really useful basic skills, and so often in the modern world, young people, although often highly educated, are enormously disadvantaged compared with people from, and this is. Rob Hopkins from the Transition Towns movement, an offshoot of permaculture, talked about the great re-skilling this need for people to learn new skills.
David Holmgren: And so those skills aren’t in isolation from one another. It’s just, oh yeah, this is useful. So it’s like training for some job. It’s about broadly being at home and capable. And enjoying life. That confident. We see that with people who learn to ride a bicycle as an adult rather than learning when they were young.
David Holmgren: Often they never quite developed the skill flexibility that comes when you learn something young, but it’s still open to people in their twenties and thirties to take something they’ve never done that they should have done as a child and say, I’m gonna do this.
(00:21:00) Stocking Up Supplies and Sensible Living
Lisa Camillo: What do you think we need to do in terms of supplies and stocking up?
Lisa Camillo: For example, food. Do you think it’s a good idea?
David Holmgren: Yeah, yeah. Well, we take for granted here that having food in bulk is the normal, sensible thing. Rather than relying on that, the shop will always be open and it will always be full of food. So any sensible household, properly organised, should have storage of food.
David Holmgren: Not set aside for when the disaster happens, but just the bulk supplies that one is working through seasonally, and that’s all part of living with the seasons and buying from farmers in bulk when the time is right and sharing in the community, if you don’t have enough space to store the bulk quantities that the farmer or the supplier can sell, and when you have that stored food, that’s putting a signal into the market system.
David Holmgren: That it should supply that normally. Whereas when you buy in a rush in a crisis, you’re just contributing to the problem. But when you have stuff ahead and you are using it, because different things keep for different sort of periods of time, it’s a part of a normal living household cycle. And so that includes things like matches.
David Holmgren: And candles and, and sensible things to be able to light a fire. I think one of shameful ideas with modern renewable energy is that everyone should go all electric and have no fire or no wood. Wood energy is really important, at least as a, a backup. And being familiar with the skills of, of using that is very important.
David Holmgren: So yeah, stocking up is sort of, for us, just part of a, a normal, sensible way of living. And it, it means we’re not using all those unnecessary, tiny packages, but it means you need to manage the household. You’ve got food stocks to protect from rodents and damp or things, and so that involves a bit more organisation.
David Holmgren: I’ve seen and been thinking about these things for so long, and I’ve seen many people’s different responses over the decades, and you could say we have been permaculture preppers for 50 years, and a lot of those. Disaster didn’t happen, but it hasn’t done us any harm. We’ve lived a better life as a result, not a life of fear and scarcity.
(00:23:16) Conclusion
Lisa Camillo: Thanks, professor Holm Green. You’ve been amazing. Incredibly helpful tips, and not as depressing as Mosso speakers. So that helps. Thank you so much for being with us.
David Holmgren: Thank you.
Lisa Camillo: And that’s a wrap on another enlightening episode of our We Fact, how to Survive a Climate Sh*t Show. I’m your host, Liza Camillo, anthropologist, filmmaker, and your trust navigator through the world of sustainability or disasters.
Lisa Camillo: A huge thank you to our incredible guest today, David Holm Green for sharing his wisdom and insights with us. If you’re hungry for more knowledge and ready to take action, be sure to check out David’s [email protected] au. There you’ll find a wealth of resources, articles, and courses to help you prepare for the challenging times ahead.
Lisa Camillo: And, hey, before you send off, I want to remind you that We Fact is an against the Tide Films production. For more information about our podcast and upcoming episodes, visit us at Against the Tide films.com. If you enjoyed today’s episode, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast and to share it with your friends, family, and anyone who’s ready to join the fight against the climate collapse.
Lisa Camillo: Together, we can make a difference. Thank you for tuning in Climate Warriors. Until next time, stay informed, stay engaged, and keep fighting the good fight. This is Lisa Camilla sending off. Take care and remember, the future is ours to shape.
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