Read Part One of this series here.
Listen to David reading this piece here:
The Global Context
With cheap money flowing from the post-GFC era of Quantitative Easing, and the Paris Accord hardening the global agreements in 2015, the rapid growth of renewable energy infrastructure was well under way. It finally started to make a dent in the total emissions of the Australian electricity sector, dominated by coal, but the hard part was always ahead with the need for grid balancing by massive storage and reticulation networks. Meanwhile, the transport sector continued to expand its emissions with fuel prices being the only constraining factor, so plans also involved a push to electrify transport.
In the USA, the Biden administration was expanding the renewable rollout after the lost four years under Trump. To many, it seemed like the transition was accelerating. This was happening at the same time my own critique of renewable tech was hardening. Covid made a dent in the previous seamless flow of global logistics supply chains, while the breakdown in international trust with the war in Ukraine and massive but ineffective sanctions against Russia, along with rising tensions with China, were reducing the trust in global governance mechanisms to achieve consensus amongst the key players.
Global governance for renewable transition
This renewable energy future was always dependent on global governance to avoid the tragedy of the (atmospheric) commons. Without internationally binding and enforceable agreements, those with the remaining non-renewable fossil fuel resources could continue to benefit directly from the power and service they provide, while also benefiting from any amelioration and/or improvement in climate that might occur as a result of other nations decarbonising their energy systems. Inevitably, different nations will have different levels of faith in the gamble that the renewable energy transition will work, be reliable, and capable of replication, when the net energy subsidy of diesel, coal and gas are no longer driving the recycling and remanufacturing industries. These industries are speculated to replace the mining, new production and disposal that characterise the current ‘renewable’ industries.
Another issue is grid security. Countries like Australia, USA, Canada, Russia and China are all so big that expanded grid networks allowing power from wind and solar to be redistributed from where the wind is blowing and the sun is shining to where they are not, can all be done (at substantial cost) within sovereign territory. On the other hand, European countries depend on EU-wide governance structures that are under mounting political stress. Further, plans for solar power generation in North Africa to support European demand depend on fragile neo-colonial relationships that can easily be overturned by geopolitical events.
The sabotage of the Nord Stream gas line by the US, after years of threatening to do so, was an unacknowledged blow to loyal ally Germany’s economy, showing just how vulnerable international energy infrastructure is to the breakdown in global governance. This event underlined the literal truth in Kissinger’s maxim that “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”
Two important trends in global governance suggested to me that the focus on mitigation through a renewable energy transition would fail to create a safe, or even a safer, climate.
Firstly, trust between the largest and most powerful nations is breaking down and realigning to such a degree that historians may classify our current period as World War III.
(As a side note, the acceleration in GHG emissions resulting from military investment and expenditure in the super energy intensive hot wars ongoing in Ukraine and the Middle East could now be countering all the gains due to renewable energy, but war and climate issues remain in separate silos as if there is no connection between them).
Secondly, and partly as a result of this first factor, the global and national governance to ensure all comply with the new strategies is rapidly shifting from democratic to authoritarian. Likewise, the incentives are shifting from carrots to sticks – where corporations seem to be cornering most of the carrots while ordinary folk around the world are feeling the force of more of the sticks. Where authoritarian control is not possible (in the case of non-complying sovereign countries) then demonisation, economic sanctions and proxy wars are the few remaining options, other than all-out (nuclear) war. In the case of Russia, these options have proved ineffective.
Resource depletion
While the geopolitical limits to the renewable energy transition are as significant for the 21st century as the geopolitics of oil was in shaping the 20th century, the long-discussed limits of resources are just as important in determining whether the transition to renewable energy will massively, or even significantly, reduce GHG emissions.
First is the demand for copper, lithium and much rarer minerals essential to this transition. While the absolute quantity of reserves is one issue, inevitably beset by the same issues around oil reserves. Secondly, where they are located and in which country, and which power elites control those resources, is another. China cutting back on the supply of essential rare earth minerals to Western countries is just one well-reported example, while Elon Musk’s honest admission that we (ie the West) will regime change whatever country we need to, to ensure supply of essential minerals was a bit rude and crude for the polite intelligentsia to stomach.
Thirdly, the declining quality of mineral ore bodies requires exponentially higher energy to mine and refine. Almost all of that energy currently comes from petroleum and is very difficult (and expensive) to replace with renewable sources, although plans for electric short haul mining trucks are beyond the speculation stage.
Anyone seriously addressing how the renewable energy transition could itself be renewable was assuming that mining is a once-off conversion of the Earth’s resources into industrial infrastructure, which will then be repaired and eventually collected, remanufactured and/or recycled to complete the continuous replacement of old infrastructure with new. The systems to allow this at a national, let alone global, scale are still in the realm of speculation and proposals. Almost certainly, these will be subject to the same laws of diminishing returns and energy costs that beset the mining of every lower quality ore body.
In the meantime, the failure to develop a reuse and recycle strategy for the massive amount of solar panels and gear being taken off roofs in Australia, mostly to be replaced with larger systems, is a waste that in itself generates more GHG emissions. The proposed rapid conversion of the auto fleet to electric, it seemed to me, would create much more waste, and likely more GHG emissions, than if the existing fleet of petrol and diesel cars were maintained and modestly used for their service life.
Personal Context
Our son Oliver Holmgren’s experience in salvaging for “Obtainium engineering” projects is illustrative of the issue. He has purchased solar panels, car batteries, and even whole cars written off financially and legally, at scrap prices. This has given us a front seat view of the unprecedented burgeoning of high-end waste as the energy transition accelerates. Some of this waste is due to the usual problem of not having a shortage of resources, technology, housing etc but a shortage of the skills and inclination to make use of them all. Beyond inclination, we increasingly lack the risk management culture and legal framework to actually reduce our constant demands that the Earth must feed ‘the Machine’ producing endless new stuff. I don’t know why I am surprised. Did I really expect that the renewable energy revolution would be otherwise?
In my essay ‘The Problem is the Solution: but solutions can turn back into (the same old) problems’, I explored how some of our best biological, technological and even behavioural responses to the environmental crisis can be bastardised by the old unacknowledged design principles that have been guiding and governing industrial modernity. My deconstruction of renewable energy tech in that essay provides a relatively clear recording of my critique of how the solution was being turned into more problems:
I believe the scale and context for solar PV that provides the most social and economic benefits for the least ecological cost is household scale systems and microgrids in the Majority World where grid electricity networks are unreliable or unavailable for most rural people. But instead of programs to provide modest power to those who have none, the majority of the world’s solar panels are now being installed at speed in vast solar farms in the hope the global middleclass will not have to reduce their energy consumption or convenience at all, while paying our inanimate energy slaves cents, and believing that this form of slavery is benign. [The term ‘energy slave’ is a way of explaining the power of energy systems in terms of human physical work capacity.]
Thus the vision of modest electric power to complement the abundance provided by nature’s solar panels (plant leaves) has been replaced by a rush to cover the landscape with panels. The ecological impact of this has the potential to dwarf that of wind turbines in the countryside, even if the outcry will be less (because you would need a bird’s eye view to grasp the scale of solar farms now under construction).
Because of the lower energy density from sunlight than wind, greater infrastructure is required to capture solar energy. Although there are few moving parts in solar farms, the density of the road networks needed just to clean and maintain the arrays is far greater than those to service wind turbines.
However, in the essay I did include the following as an example of creative permaculture responses to emergent opportunities:
Given the rapid rollout of solar farms over large areas of grazing, and even prime cropping land, this problem will need creative management responses that ameliorate the takeover of farm land for energy production. Many solar farms are in semi-arid areas where the power factor is greatest. In these areas, water, rather than light is the limiting factor to plant growth. Water shed from panels would stimulate growth in the service accessways, and even a little under the arrays. Grazing sheep would have green feed more of the year and the shade in hot climates will improve their welfare and weight gain. If soils are suitable and maintenance operations can be done in dry weather, grazed pasture accessways without the need for road base could reduce costs and allow novel ecologies of native and exotic species to develop in the shade of the panels.
More intensive horticultural trials growing vegetables and fruit have already been surprisingly successful with some indication that more diverse human-scale cropping might be better suited to solar farm farming than large machine intensive monocultures.
Of course nature has a habit of colonising anything new we construct. Plans for a more radical design of a solar power station some years ago, proposed for desert country near Mildura, got me thinking about ways the design might generate unexpected consequences. The plan was to build a roof about 1km in diameter leading to a central flue, a bit like the Arts Centre Melbourne roof frame. Heated air rising in the 1km high flue would drive turbines generating electricity – a solar updraft tower.
When contemplating the project, I thought about how in wet years the huge roof runoff might create wetlands with fringing forest regeneration that could become a fire hazard in drought years threatening the structure. Finally, I wondered if the transpiration from all that vegetation carried by the flue to great heights might generate frequent thunderstorms that might reduce the efficiency of power production while accelerating growth of the perimeter forest. Maybe the power station would turn out to be an expensive way to create an oasis forest in the desert that some permie horticulturist might turn into a magnificent food forest – destined one day to slowly turn back into desert when the structure eventually failed. I was very disappointed the bank finance fell through on the project so we might never know whether my wild speculations on problems (and the creative response to them) might be real.
Frontloaded costs and emissions
Beyond the waste of a fast energy transition, there are structural reasons why the transition may continue to accelerate GHG emissions. Because the environmental costs (in mining, manufacture and installation) of renewable energy infrastructure are frontloaded, with the benefits coming over the lifecycle of the equipment in saved fuel burning, GHG emissions can increase in the next two or three decades, which according to the climate models could tip the world into runaway climate change. A slower transition to renewable energy more in line with fossil fuel depletion could spread out this pulse in emissions or, as was said in the Covid crisis, ‘flatten the curve’ of emissions. Kris DeDecker’s ‘How Sustainable is PV solar power?’ in Low Tech Magazine provides an outline of some of these issues.
Another factor increasing emissions was the shift of manufacturing of wind turbines and solar panels from countries like Germany, with relatively efficient energy and emission systems (based on Russian gas), to China, where coal has been the main power source supporting renewable technology manufacture. Conversely, much of the initial deployment of solar was in places like Germany where the benefits were much lower than if the same technology was used in sunnier countries like Spain and Australia.
Reflection
To some extent, the application of renewable technology is flowing to where it is most beneficial in providing energy services (and reducing GHG emissions), but in other cases the opposite is happening. The limited number of suitable sites, combined with resistance to industrialising the countryside with wind turbines, has seen a shift to offshore turbines which, despite the favourable winds, are so much more expensive to install, maintain and service than land-based turbines.
Net energy confusion
The larger question about the net energy gains and the net reduction in GHG emissions from the real world rollout of renewable technology remains clouded by methodological problems. These problems result from the energy accounting research field being gutted by neoliberal economic rationalism in the 1980s, from which it has never recovered.
The appalling ignorance by economic modelers of the critical importance of net energy return in determining economic possibilities has been a longstanding source of systemic blindness. Further to that problem, we now have powerful vested interests that depend on showing that the energy transition can maintain and expand the level of service, convenience and low cost that society, and especially industry, demands from our energy infrastructure.
Consequently, the world started going ‘hell for leather’ with the rollout without any reliable metric about whether it will make society richer or poorer. The glib claim that renewable energy technology pays back the energy used in manufacturing and installation relies mostly on studies using methodologies that fail to consider many factors, such as:
- Rare materials are currently available at relatively low cost because ore bodies being mined are still relatively rich (and therefore require much less energy to mine and refine).
- The extra infrastructure required to support either fully autonomous systems, or alternatively, a grid running on 100% intermittent renewable sources without the convenience of gas or other dispatchable fuels.
- The environmental degradation, competition for land use for distributed energy sources and other social factors which in the real world have real energy costs.
- The cost of maintaining the rules-based international order backed by US military power has allowed the efficiency (but still with fossil fuel dependency) of globalised supply chains.
This last factor is showing up in high-end computer chip manufacture in Taiwan being replicated in the US at public expense, in case of a Chinese takeover of Taiwan, with no certainty that the quality of what will be produced will match what the Taiwanese manage.
More fundamentally, I have always been deeply sceptical that the Energy Return On Energy Invested (EROEI) in this rollout will ever sustain the level of societal wealth and complexity afforded to us over the last 50 years by the bonanza of fossil fuels. That scepticism was not just a gut feeling but one supported by some of the most eminent and pioneering energy systems modellers, starting of course with the pioneer of the field of energy accounting, Howard Odum. That view has been an important theme of my teaching and writing for nearly four decades and was a central focus of Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability.
While advances in renewable technology have been impressive, they don’t change the fact that we are facing a world where our energy industries have been sucking up a much greater share of money, skill, resources and energy than has happened for at least half a century, if not longer. That means a materially poorer society, even if some in the energy industries can see a rosy future ahead (for themselves). For mainstream economists, clueless about energy being anything more than just another sector of the economy, a growth in the energy sector is as good as any other. By the same logic, they are just as comfortable with a growth in disaster management, whether created by Mother Nature’s blowback or simply the dynamics of disaster and war capitalism that has an increasing share of the global economy.
Scientific fundamentalism
The few studies of solar photovoltaic technology that have used Odum’s eMergy methodology suggest much lower net energy returns than manufactures and promoters claim. It was not until Charlie Hall, a surviving pioneer of the 1970s embodied energy accounting era, teamed up with Pedro Prieto, a solar engineer and pioneer of the Spanish solar energy revolution, to do a EROEI assessment that we had a snapshot of how it was all working: Spain’s Photovoltaic Revolution: The Energy Return on Investment. They used real world data on costs of manufacture, transport, installation, supporting infrastructure, maintenance, performance and replacement to assess the results of the first few years of the solar rollout. Hall’s methodologies are less challenging conceptually than Odum’s – and the results are not encouraging. Things like the energy cost of rock crushing and transport for service road infrastructure in large solar power stations was an example of a significant, but previously unaccounted for, cost. The pushback by the vested interests was savage, with ad hominem attacks on these senior and eminently credentialled researchers. The results of the Spanish solar revolution suggested, by comparison, that the similarly large solar rollout in Germany would be a net loss of energy given its much less favourable climate.
Of course the promoters of this technology point to the improvements in the new technology now being installed, and the natural efficiency gains made as systems move from the pioneering phase to more efficient procedures.
What is so often forgotten is that the faster and better resourced the research and development in a new field, the faster the maturation of the technology beyond which point history repeatedly shows that innovation no longer works to continually improve performance.
Thermodynamic limits apply to all technologies, and are never overturned by people developing more complex ways to apparently continue the improvements. The dream of the Silicon Valley gurus that what had been achieved with information technology could be replicated in the field of energy technology has already been shown to fail in many areas, including the biofuel boondoggle of the early 2000s.
As an aside, Surplus Energy Economics is another methodology that calculates the energy cost of energy (ECoE). The global ECoE of fossil fuels rising from around 1% in 1965 to 10% is logically the start of an exponential rise towards 50% in 2050 as all the prime fossil sources are exhausted. While there is a much-trumpeted fall in the financial cost of renewables, the fall in ECoE from around 17% in 1990 to about 13% in 2025 is much more sobering. Modelling suggests a bottom around 10-12% in the next few decades before another increase. This methodology suggests total energy harvested globally rising until about 2040, but that the world is already at, or close to, the peak of total energy available to humanity (for purposes other than energy harvesting).
Questioning renewable energy as climate denial
As the renewable technology rollout accelerated, those questioning the results found themselves being accused of climate denial. Energy systems scientist Josh Floyd (colleague of Pedro Prieto and supporter of the logic of RetroSuburbia due to its alignment with the energy density limits of renewable energy) noted to me with horror that Gina McCarthy, ‘the first-ever White House National Climate Advisor and former U.S. EPA Administrator and one of the nation’s most respected voices on climate change, the environment, and public health’ (according to her website) asserted that anyone questioning the technical viability of the rapid 100% renewable energy transition, such as Floyd and Prieto, are guilty of ‘climate denial’.
In my June 2022 email reply to a discussion with Floyd and Prieto, I wrote:
That those articulating RE limits are being branded peddlers of mis-, dis- and mal- information is quite natural. That it should be cast as a threat to public health is unavoidable, given how well the real and/or perceived and/or mal information about the Covid threat succeeded in an unprecedented acceptance of Brown Tech realities (and angry resistance by some apparently small minority). In all these assessments, I remain open minded about the complex “facts” involved in any of these issues. That I see the official Covid narrative as largely false and fabricated while I accept the climate emergency as real (and part of the larger Limits to Growth crisis) is beside the point about how real, manipulated and fabricated facts are used to produce changes in consciousness, which is John Michael Greer’s definition of magic.
For scientists with the strong understanding that science advances through challenge, debate, demonstration and replication of results, this turn toward unquestioned ideology in the face of crisis, real or manufactured, was distressing to say least. Covid has proven it is career-ending to challenge ‘The Science’ in a crisis. The same patterns are showing up everywhere, including the field of climate science, and the policies, applications and technologies promoted to address the implications of global climate models based on that science.
In 2023, I responded to a question from a reader about my take on the latest ‘breakthrough’ in laser-powered nuclear fusion research with the essay ‘Fusion futures’. Apart from my general conclusion that it didn’t change humanity’s energy descent future, I said the following about the hazards of endless specialisation in science, which is equally relevant to climate as it is to nuclear energy:
The devil might be in the details for any of the incredible complexity of proposed and developing technologies, but when only a small group of highly networked peers have any capacity to assess those details and those experts all tend to be governed by groupthink, especially when their livelihood and status depend on perishingly few institutional and corporate funders, then it is very difficult for generalists to sort the grain from the chaff.
While a lot of this territory is well beyond the ability of the average citizen to comprehend, let alone be well-informed enough to discuss and debate, they rely on science journalists to interpret the specialised knowledge from a generalist perspective. Unfortunately, as I indicated in relation to nuclear fusion research, repetition of promotional hype is mostly what the public gets from science journalism.
The Woke Revolution
Overspecialisation and the massive funding of science leading to groupthink and corruption are now being mixed with novel problems for science and the ability of the public to interpret it. The denial of the biological basis of sex (for example) leading to universities adopting radical ideologies to reject definitions of male and female that have stood the test of time in all cultures around the world is something that doesn’t pass the pub test. But those pubs are, of course, full of old white males who are, by definition, racists, homophobes and now transphobes.
So is it really necessary to muddy the waters of climate science and renewable energy technology with reference to apparently unrelated culture wars between woke and traditional ethics and values?
The development of ‘cancel culture’ started in the humanities departments of universities in relation to identity politics, but that set the tone for the way in which the biological, hard sciences and public policy are now pursued. In my opinion, the process by which powerful and previously conservative education institutions, now run as corporations, seek to adopt apparently radical progressive (woke) ideologies is particularly obnoxious. These innovations are mostly superficial virtue signalling, allowing the corporate raison d’état to continue unhindered.
However these superficial signals convince the mostly young radicals that their noble cause is ascendant, and so encourage them to push further and harder in attacking senior academics who are also some of the last resistance to the corporatised model of universities. In the case of gender politics, it was often senior feminist academics who found themselves cancelled and, in many cases, forced out of their previously secure teaching positions by mostly young radical trans activists. Once the questioning of the very concepts of women and men became normalised in the humanities, it inevitably spilled over into biological science. Cancelling of academics who continued to affirm biological reality followed the pattern already established where scientists are being cancelled and forced out, not for scientific malpractice or fraud, but for their views on social issues. Bret Weinstein, a biology professor, being forced out of Evergreen College, a bastion of progressive gender and environmental studies (including permaculture) in 2017 was a well publicised case.
It may seem confusing to some readers for me to be questioning, rather than supporting, radical cultural challenges to scientific orthodoxies when much of my life (and this very writing) has been doing the latter. My wholehearted support for critical thinking and action changes when some of those radical fringe ideas take hold and establish a new orthodoxy that uses ‘cancel culture’ and worse to demonise any divergence or alternative thinking (as happened with the Cultural Revolution in China under Mao).
Any dogmatic articulation of radical environment or social ideology triggers my habit of playing devil’s advocate for the old establishment ideology, to avoid throwing the baby (of core truth) out with the bathwater (of putrid old ideology). When the new ascendant ideology becomes increasingly authoritarian in its suppression of remaining dissidents from the old order, then my reaction shifts to solidarity and support for those now experiencing suppression of their ideas, wellbeing and even personhood.
As I explained in my contribution to Permaculture Pioneers: stories from the new frontier, despite being one of the two co-originators of permaculture, within the permaculture movement I have been the greatest critic and resister of the development of permaculture puritan ideology, especially the inappropriate application of strategies and techniques beyond their appropriate context. Back in 1993, I wrote a light-hearted essay for the International Permaculture Journal on the role of lawns and pastures in permaculture to specifically defuse the development of impractical and even anti-ecological thinking that was common amongst permaculture designers, teachers, activists and practitioners, about managed forms of grassland. In teaching through permaculture networks in Europe, and North and South America, I strove to undo the ideological hatred of Australian eucalypts, while in Australia I would point to their limitations and downsides to counter botanical nativism in favour of eucalypts.
Maybe that habit is so extreme that, according to Oliver Holmgren, as soon as I see someone enthusiastically adopting my very own ideas, which I have passionately promoted, and move to committing personal capital to bringing those ideas to reality, then I shift to pointing out all the downsides and obstacles, sometimes before I even acknowledge and validate the person’s intention.
For many years, it was possible for me to shrug off more extreme expressions of woke ideology, even in the form of permaculture activists critiquing the origins of permaculture. To paraphrase many diverse comments and statements: ‘two old white male academics didn’t create permaculture, they just took Indigenous knowledge and rebranded it.’ That Mollison was in his 40s at the time, and I was in my 20s, seems to have been lost in history. Likewise, that both of us had spent less years in academia than most of those making the claim may be of less significance than us both being white and therefore ‘racist’ and ‘fragile’ by definition.
But it was the weaponisation of youthful radicalism by centralised power institutions, starting with the universities, then spilling out through the mainstream media to government and corporations, to cover the ethical sins of those institutions in a flurry of virtue signalling and greenwash that rang the alarm bells for me. I knew then it was important to be a resister of the process. The idea from the socially conservative right that the ‘woke radicals’ were the direct ideological descendants of Mao’s youthful Red Guards of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) made a lot of sense.
The Red Guards became more confident they were leading the charge to change society for the better with their extreme condemnation and punishment of their elders, including family, leading to horrendous impacts on society. As a youth in a family with significant sympathies for communist China, I was intensely interested in and aware of what happened at that time and its disastrous end with Mao’s death in ‘76. The first published article on permaculture the same year was emblematic of my more complete disillusionment with youthful revolutionary fervour to force change in society, which I much later articulated in relation to permaculture in Permaculture Pioneers.
The fact that university administrators have not just allowed, but facilitated, young radicals (most notably trans activists) to threaten senior academics and eventually force them out, was a clear sign to me of something different from anything I had seen or heard of in western world universities. When the same process led to the exit of biological scientists, this was a clear milestone in how the biological and hard sciences provided no refuge from these processes.
As the climate science consensus hardened, it became more difficult for governments, banks, corporations, the media and even universities to virtue signal in the same way they already were with identity politics. Investments in fossil fuels were still providing good returns to universities at risk from declining public funding. But with the gathering head of steam behind the climate emergency radicalising university students, the same process began to force universities to do whatever they could to virtue signal, and one of the easiest ways to do this was gradually suppress scientific debate and climate sceptic academics.
With the supercharged example of full spectrum censorship of scientific debate in Covid, it became clear to me that youthful radicalism was again being mustered to reinforce social compliance. The fact that this coordinated exercise of centralised authoritarian governance followed on the heels of a world-wide peak in demonstrations and resistance to central power in 2019 seemed significant to me. Thus it became impossible for me to take anything at face value. My own questions, uncertainties, critiques and strongly held views about the application of climate science were starting to lead to increasing questions and interest in ways to understand local and global climate outside the science journalist communication and interpretation of the framework of arcane reductionist mainstream climate models.
9 thoughts on “Part Thirteen: Renewable Tech Obstacles and the Woke Revolution”
Thanks for responding David. May I make a few hurried responses?
DH: “But in terms of relating to the realities of the society around us rather than living in our own permaculture bubble, a theme that you have articulated over the years, I think relating with ordinary folk of all different experiences and perspectives is an ethical pathway to seeing commonalities rather than divisions. ”
RG: I agree fully. That’s the only viable way to expand permaculture practice beyond its existing niche. By focusing on what we have in common we establish a basis for collaborative relationships.
I experienced this only recently when the community worker/manager of the local Neighbourhood House (like community centres on the mainland) asked for help in writing a funding application that included among other things expansion of the Neighbourhood House’s food co-op. While writing funding applications to government was not new to me (ie. for AusAID funding for our APACE program in the Solomon Islands), working with people like the community worker was, to some extent anyway. We were also invited to speak at the statewide Neighbour Houses conference. They were interested specifically in community gardens, which a number of neighbourhood houses have, and we also talked about permaculture.
I mention this to underline your comment about moving beyond the permaculture niche, or ‘bubble’ as some call it. You mention doing this is a rural context. We live in a small town around 40km from Hobart, however I imagine that it is quite different to your rural context as it is a coastal town and probably has a somewhat different demographic.
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DH: “…in contrast to strategies isolated in urban or online environments where social divisions can grow.”
RG:
It is all too plainly obvious now that digital networks can create and feed ideological bubbles that to some extent disengage people from real-world realities through embubblement in social and political echo chambers.
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DH: “After living most of my life in rural Australia I also know it is much more effective than strategies than originate in the large urban centres and now through media technology where we can live in our networked worlds without ever needing to engage, let along depend on others with radically different understandings of the world.”
RG: Our environments influence our beliefs and how we act in the world. While I do not downplay the value of those coming from rural environments, strategies originating from large urban centrers have strengths in fostering social connection and unity. Cities bring diverse demographics into proximity and while this can create friction it can also crate cooperation, especially on civic issues. Grassroots urban movements can bridge divides by connecting diverse groups and facilitating collective action. Can rural face-to-face strategies achieve this as effectively?
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DH: “…I only ever claimed to be the co-originator of the permaculture concept not the movement let alone its current “figurehead”.
RG: When you release something into the world, like permaculture, it becomes one of those things that you can no longer control and you relinquish how people come to regard it and the figures within it. Your role in initialising permaculture and as a commentator, educator and analyst has positioned you in many minds as a figurehead of the movement. So, the way that many people regard you comes with the territory.
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DH: “In that way I see both my actions and writings as following the wisdom that Mollison saw in not aligning permaculture with any particular political or religious affiliation, not just because he didn’t believe in any himself, but he thought it inhibited the reception of permaculture in the great diversity of cultural contexts around the world.”
RG: Nonalignment, I believe, is the way to go. Alignment, wherher religious or political, alienates potential supporters and fixes permaculture somewhere on the socio-political spectrum and in the culture wars.
That is behind my comments about how people have perceived your writing and actions in regard to things like the pandemic issues. I defended you at the time against rash accusations of being aligned with fascism. That, as we know, is one of those throwaway words that people level to dent the reputation of others rather than using the word in its defined meaning.
As you well know, permaculture is inherently political because it proposes systematic change. That is a meta-level position that can be divorced from alignment with particular political parties and movements. When it comes to political alignment, however, circumstances sometimes necessitate it. What I have in mind is the role of Parkrose Permaculture and Keith Johnson in the US in campaigning against the Trump administration.
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DH: “I can understand how you and others may see my writing and action as aligned to “far right” perspectives and so radically alienating many of those with positive views about permaculture.”
RG: I don’t see you aligned to the far-right. I think what I might have said is that participating in an anti-lockdown rally organised by the far-right risked discrediting permaculture. It’s a matter of perception again. I long ago learned in journalism that perception is more influential than fact. People see something and make links between things.
Nor do I see your comments about the culture wars, gender identification, wokeness and so on as positioning you on the far-right. I see tham more as critical reflections on contemporary issues and attitudes. The problem comes when people see related criticism made by the far-right and go on to assume that must be your politics simply because of some overlap.
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DH: “…as you well know Bill Mollison was also renowned for confronting not just societal orthodoxies but also the permaculture faithful. As someone who knows that history all too well, I would hope you could at least acknowledge the value of my role in doing the same, but perhaps with a little more nuance and diplomacy that Bill ever managed.”
RG: I had to chuckle at your last sentence. I remember how Bill could upset people with what he said and how he said it.
As for confronting the “permaculture faithful”, that can be revealing and can push people to examine their assumptions and beliefs. It also counters tendencies towards embubblement.
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RG: I remember some years ago your saying that permaculture could become a subculture if its ideas are not adopted at scale in societies. I read into it that permaculture could become a more or less culturally cohesive group below the social surface. Some have described permaculture as a cult (Terry Leahy dispelled that idea in his Politics of Permaculture) and I suppose it becoming some kind of subculture could lead to that perception. What is your thinking on the subculture idea now?
I sometimes wonder how systemic barriers such as class, ethnicity and wealth, religion and social polarisation boosted through political forces turning what was once accepted into political triggers, and the disinformation pandemic (both domestic through social and political movements and geostrategic through nation states, such as with the St Petersburg troll farm) are going to reshape permaculture and make the pathway to the future less straightforward. Or, whether the movement will find enough internal cohesion to resist them.
Other than the last comment, none of the others are visible. If this is anything more than an aberration of my machine, the comments that I refer to in this piece might not be visible.
D. Merser: “Permaculture is not, and should not be, intellectually owned by the libertarian right.”
If it becomes that it is lost. Could it happen? An alignment of permaculture with the right might be inferred through the terms David uses, whether that is true or not. We are talking about perception, not fact, and perception is often more influential than fact. Words matter. When David uses culture wars words in his writing, terms like ‘woke’, ‘woke Green Left’, ‘cultural Marxism’, words that are part of the far-right vocabulary and the Trump regime, it isn’t surprising when people make the assumption that he speaks from that political position.
But, does that matter? It matters because as an instigator of the permaculture design system and a prominent commentator on it, the words David uses influences how people come to regard permaculture.
ASSUMING A POLITICAL POSITION IN PERMACULTURE
Other than David’s particular rhetorical terms, his comments reinforce the public perception of his political position. Comments suggestive of the Russian line on their invasion and destruction of Ukraine in David’s writing (this despite Permaculture Ukraine’s role in resisting the Russian invasion) and his criticism of the German Green Party’s support for arming Ukraine so its people can defend themselves, could be taken by some as unintentional support for imperialism Russian style and for the seizing of territory by force.
The German Greens are not alone. Other European Green parties support arming Ukraine for its self-defense against Russian aggression so as to maintain its democratic sovereignty. The Finnish, Swedish and European Green parties are supporters. The British Greens have focused more on diplomatic initiatives but have not ruled out military support: ““Yes, Russia started the war and Yes, Ukraine is a democracy with an elected President. That we have to restate these simple facts is shocking but necessary because US President Donald Trump has chosen to buy into and amplify the lies and disinformation of the Russian state.” (https://greenparty.org.uk/2025/02/22/standing-in-solidarity-with-ukraine/?).
I am not actually suggesting that support for Russia is David’s intention. But others might, and that is what matters. We are dealing with perception again. What would making that link do to permaculture’s public image?
And David’s comments about Western active measures being behind the Maidan revolution. Like his allegation of Western complicity in the Nordstream pipeline damage, both parrot the Russian line and both remain allegations made in the context of geostrategic and disinformation warfare. They have never been shown to be fact. David does not raise these things as possibilities. Read his articles and you find them stated as certainties. If this sounds familiar, it is. It is a classical ploy used to spread disinformation. State a falsehood as a truth often enough, sidestep the counter arguments, and it will become taken as fact. Disinformation + repetition = fact. You can see how people find the strong odour of a righteward drift in David’s version of permaculture.
Language positions individuals and social movements on the political spectrum. Those prominent in some role need to be careful what they say and to ask the question about how it could influence peoples’ perception of a social movement or an organisation. This is why we see politicians being careful about what they say (most, anyway). I wonder how David’s comments about wokeism and the rest would go with people like Keith Johnson and Parkrose Permaculture in the US, both of whom actively campaign against the Trump regime and for the restoration of democracy?
THE QUESION OF CONTEMPOARY RELEVANCY
In past writings I mentioned how David was echoing right-libertarian attitudes, something I then put down to his homesteader lifestyle. It’s a lifestyle that was unavailable to most in permaculture at the time and is even less available today.
Largrely practiced as a home-base strategy, permaculture has a lot of catching up to do now that a home with a garden are no longer affordable by what appears to be an increasing number of young people, many of whose incomes go to paying off their tertiary education debt over the years or the decades. There is much talk about attracting youth to permaculture, however it will have to grapple with this big disruptive reality and somehow change its approach if it is serious about attracting younger people.
Homesteading is no solution to anyone other than the individual. It is not a social solution. It is often linked to right-libertarian attitudes.
COLD WAR RHETORIC RETURNS
Pumpkinscone’s “Continental-Socialist ‘greater good’ garbage regarding the laughable pseudoscience of communicable disease and public health” is an echo of what comes across as David’s attitude, irrespective of whether or not it is.
It neatly sidesteps the benefits that socialists brought to our society, such a improvements in working conditions that maybe Pumkinscone benefits from, and in social conditions generally. His of her comment on public health, something he/she has probably also benefited from, as have many anti-vaxxers, clearly demonstrates the delusion and the hypocracy of the conspriatorial right. Saying the science of communicable diseases is “laughable pseudoscience” is a grand example of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Oh, and what is a “Continental-Socialist” other than a bad word salad? Can anyone give a clear and verifiable definition? Or is just another dog whistle to supporters of the right in permaculture, like ‘woke’ and ‘cultural Marxism’? Like the term ‘globalists’ that David uses. What is that other than a dog whistle?
THREAT = INTENT + CAPABILITY
We have a simple formula in geostrategy: Threat = intent + capability. If the threat is damage to permaculture’s social standing and the presence of a permanent political polarity in the movement, David’s intent in adopting culture war memes remains ambiguous. But when it comes to capability, his role is significant. Permaculture’s potential contamination by culture war politics may be unintentional, however that is a real threat vector. David positions what he says as defence of the victim although he makes clear that his interpretation of victim is, to quote Hemingway, a moveable feast.
Let’s look at capability. That comes from David’s influence in the movement. In his role of what political analyst Terry Leahy called permaculture’s “charismatic authority”, could his perceived credibility actually shift permacuture politically, whether that is the intention or not? The suggestion of political drift in his writing and the adoption of culture war terms, not as things to dissect and analyse as I would expect the permaculture approach to be, but in their adoption as rhetorical weapons, might excite David’s supporters but at the same time it creates the impression in readers of a politically rightward tilt in David’s thinking and, by implication, in permaculture — the ‘guilt by assocaition’ link.
What his critics ask is this: to what extent could David’s political attitude influence broader permaculture thinking? What is its potential to contaminate the greater permaculture pond? And what would that mean for the future of the movement?
So, where does this leave permaculture as a supposedly-cohesive design movement? Permaculture was once portrayed as a union of diverse interests and actions. That was true at the time. Now? It looks like the big wide world is impinging on the permaculture bubble and, whether we like it or not, whether it is intentional or not, the social movement around permaculture has fractured along political lines. Some would deny this. Others wouldn’t want to know about it as it would not fit their understanding of permaculture. Those lines are hidden, for the most part. They don’t appear in everyday expressions of permaculture, however things hidden can suddenly erupt. All it needs is the right trigger.
Sure, there always were political differences in permaculture. But they were discussed rationally among people who regarded themselves as colleagues, not ideological competitors, and were never allowed to threaten permaculture’s greater mission. Now, comments following David’s articles suggest they could do that.
All of this leads me to suggest that the true permacuture approach to politics is now articulated not within permaculture or by its charismatic founder, but by the scientist and science fiction writer David Brin:
“It’s time to free ourselves from the old left-right axis of the 19th and 20th centuries. Might believers in modernity — whether ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ — find ways to break free of the doctrinal rigidity that has been imposed on us by fanatics of both the so-called Left and the so-called Right?”
Permaculture should never belong to the libertarian right, warns D. Merser. If it does, the movement will be ruined through adopting partisan politics.
The danger isn’t just peceived political alignment. It is also perception: if prominent voices use politically loaded terms like ‘woke,’ ‘cultural Marxism,’ or adopt far-right talking points, outsiders will naturally assume permaculture is drifting rightwards, regardless of whatever the reality is. Words shape reputation, and when influential figures echo these culture-war terms and narratives it affects how the world sees permaculture.
David’s comments sometimes seem to reinforce assumptions that people will make on encountering culture war terms. By repeating Russian arguments about the Ukraine war or criticising the German Greens for supporting Ukrainan’s right to defend themselves, David gives the impression, whether intentional or not (I doubt it), of siding with authoritarian aggression. Such statements matter even if that’s not his aim because in the public mind, perception often matters more than factual reality. If permaculture’s leadership appears to downplay international aggression it risks being seen as adopting fringe or conspiratorial worldviews.
The problem deepens when culture-war rhetoric, like one commentator mocking public health or dismissing social gains as “Continental-Socialist garbage” (whatever a continental socialist might be), echoes through permaculture spaces. Such language can alienate supporters and feed the perception that permaculture is a new home for right-wing grievance politics. Dog whistles like “globalists” or “woke” only add to the confusion and suspicion.
A leader’s influence bestows power. It holds the ability to nudge an entire community left, right or into factionalism. Permaculture’s strength was once its openness to many perspectives, but heated language and ideological drift now risk fracturing the movement. If permaculture becomes publicly seen as partisan, or merely a lifestyle refuge for homesteaders with right-libertarian leanings, it could lose its contemporary relevance. Especially so among young people for whom property ownership is out of reach.
Ultimately, the challenge is larger than any one figure’s political views. Social movements, including permaculture, must adapt to changing times and resist being captured or defined by any particular ideological tribe. As David Brin argues, it’s time to move beyond the rigid old left-right polarity and reclaim a more inclusive, forward-looking vision:
“It’s time to free ourselves from the old left-right axis of the 19th and 20th centuries. Might believers in modernity — whether ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ — find ways to break free of the doctrinal rigidity that has been imposed on us by fanatics of both the so-called Left and the so-called Right?”
Russ, that was some really well thought through commentary. Thank you for taking the time to put it together. BTW it’s not a technical fault of your computer. Someone behind the scenes is going through and removing a lot of the comments, silencing free, considered, speech here leaving only 4 comments. Yet another unaccountable moral contradiction but what does that matter now …
Russ you made some good points. Indeed once one has spent enough time in the city and seen the population growth, the silliness of what you called the homesteading philosophy becomes apparent. I’d go so far as to call it colonial settler homesteading. Permaculture was conceived in the 1970s when the Australian population was about 14million. Today the population is estimated to be 28million, nearly double. However, the Australian land mass available for colonial settler homesteading has not doubled with that population growth. Indeed the land prices have only increased, along with cost of living, all making land ownership beyond many young Australians.
That’s why, along with David’s recent writings and actions, I called it on ‘the end of Permaculture.’ It just doesn’t fit anymore. It can serve as an archive of ideas available for people to dip into, but there doesn’t seem to be any point in trying to keep it, whatever it was, going anymore as a thing or as a word. It was something that was.
It’s unclear what David was hoping to achieve with his echoing of far right talking points. There were already enough people funded by powerful billionaires saying exactly the same thing with far greater reach over the airwaves than David. That part of his motivation seems very odd and miscalculated. Surely David would have understood his support for these fake concepts (cultural Marxism etc) would not only cause strong divisions in ‘Permaculture’, but would also be questioned. His anti woke/trans stance is particularly difficult to stomach now we now see the United States government has taken a series of actions to persecute transgender people labelling them as ‘activists’ as “domestic terrorist groups”. I doubt we’ll hear a mia-culpa from David about how he was wrong about anything. The most we get is, “I’ve been down some rabbit holes”. Indeed.
The problem that David presents is that he has promoted far right ideas among a group of somewhat uneducated folk that appear not to have acquired critical thinking skills. And in this sense, David shares in that gap, and is a conduit for the uncritical acceptance of libertarian far right toxicity.
The damage has been done unfortunately. I don’t think we will see any repair of the divide that David has opened up in Permaculture. I know I won’t ever again pay for a Permaculture course or have reason to associate with David. I used to be a strong and vocal advocate for Permaculture. Now I’m afraid I will only discourage it if I can be bothered. Its a great shame.
And here we see cancelation culture in action. People supporting ideas as long as it echochambers with teir own beliefs. First you say: ““It’s time to free ourselves from the old left-right axis of the 19th and 20th centuries. Might believers in modernity — whether ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ — find ways to break free of the doctrinal rigidity that has been imposed on us by fanatics of both the so-called Left and the so-called Right?”
And then…
“Permaculture should never belong to the libertarian right, warns D. Merser. If it does, the movement will be ruined through adopting partisan politics.”
Can´t you even see the contradictions and biases on your own thinking?
Free speach and freedom of thinking is the basis of any healthy debate.
What is the contradiction with wanting a world free of injustice, hate and violence? When the libertarian Permaculture far right aims to literally cancel souls by dog whistling, stoking hatred with the tools of post woke islamophobia, which encourages people like the Christchurch shooter and the “Sons of Tarrant”, you get NRVE (Nationalists Racist Violent Extremist) death cults.
@Alexander, are you saying that to be a libertarian post woke Permaculturalist is to support the freedom to develop ideas of cultural fascism and then the freedom to be a shooter and act on such beliefs? Like Tarrant and Dezi Freeman did?
That the libertarian post-woke Permaculturalist should promote the freedom to support the gun industry and just pick up their gun to act out blood lust to cancel souls whenever they want?
Is it your belief that cancelling Tarrant or Dezi Freeman is such a moral injury to NRVE political rights, and is so objectionable, that you’re willing to vote for a Pauline Hanson-David Holmgren One Nation NRVE party on that basis?
The majority of protestors against the WEF in Melbourne in 2000 would have been defined as belonging to the “left”, and the protest as a whole, a “leftist” protest.
Now it’s 2025 and anyone that protests the WEF is seen as “right wing”, “conspiracy theorist” and a bunch of other names.
I wonder if cancel culture and woke ideology have been carefully created (or nudged) on purpose, in order to direct angry youth energy in a way that benefits globalists, so that now, to be a leftist or an angry youth basically means being all for authoritarianism. A boot stamping on a human face, forever, just a more colourful boot, with its owner uttering slogans every now and then.
Russ’ comments about intention vs perception are spot on.
The problem with putting anything new out there to the public is that humans will always try to hold you up as the leader of the thing. Permaculture was suppose to be, and in reality still is, an antidote to that built in human tendency.
That’s the most revolutionary part of the whole concept, it’s much less to do with the design system itself, it’s that the whole system is based on the “prime directive”, which is the anchor point or the capstone/keystone to the whole entire system, and guides the interpretation of the ethics and principles in such a way as to avoid all of this political and ideological bullshit that has muddied the waters for years.
All of that just falls away when viewed from this lens.
That’s been the missing element. The three ethics are promoted by most, it’s the first thing anyone mentions when permaculture comes up. The “prime directive”, which was just Bill’s more blunt and forceful way of describing radical personal responsibility, is often glossed over, or felt as though it’s implied, but quite obviously it’s not or there would be no need for any of these discussions or debates or whatever you want to call this.
It’s the core model. The individual in harmonious relation to the whole.
Obviously there will be people outside of permaculture who don’t get it, and will misinterpret it. There’s no avoiding that. Even those who have wrestled with the idea for years, myself included, don’t grasp the significance of it. This is a communication issue in many ways, but it also just may be that it’s such a foreign concept for humanity that it takes time and struggle with the idea to even begin to grasp the significance of it. It’s a self-correcting system in a way, and all this commentary on David’s work, and Bill’s less than ideal behaviour over the years are just that self-correction mechanism in progress. The idea must be picked apart, stripped bare to it’s core, and if it still survives after all that, then there’s something there worth keeping, if not, it will fade away.
David’s work here could be described as social/ political commentary, or “futurist” work, but it doesn’t represent “Permaculture” as if permaculture is a social movement with groups and leaders. It’s the exact opposite of what permaculture was meant to be about, and it’s such a radical idea that even the two people who came up with it have/had a hard time understanding it and living it out in daily life to it’s fullest realization.
To David’s credit, I believe he tries his best to distance himself from this image of being a guru/ leader, but he sits in a very difficult position of being the only living originator of the idea. It’s Russ’ idea of intention vs perception. Everything he writes reflects on the “public image” of permaculture, though it doesn’t change what it is at it’s core. His influence in the here and now though, will go a long way in determining how much work it will be in the future to get back to the core of the idea, he could make more or less work for future generations in that regard.
Mollison is dead and gone, so what’s done is done with him, but you David, still have a chance at steering things in a less politically and ideologically charged direction with your writing.
Your interest in history, and large scale geopolitical future prediction is both a blessing and a curse. If you weren’t attached to the idea of permaculture it wouldn’t be an issue, you’d just be another in a long line of future analysts who detach themselves from reality and comment on the future of humanity like it’s some sort of sporting event.
In my opinion, I think this broad pattern thinking is causing you to see people in the abstract a little, and not as individuals, at least in your writing, and reflects in a way that you don’t see how the words you use are alienating the very people who were drawn to the idea you gave birth to as a refuge from all that noise and division. I know that’s not your intention, but that is obviously the perception of a lot of folks who once stood by your ideas.
I don’t think anyone is asking you to censor your thoughts or beliefs, but it’s just the harsh reality of the situation that the things you say reflect on permaculture in general in this moment in history, and will have long lasting effects on the future adoption of the ideas going forward.
Basically it’s like you have all of the downsides, and none of the upsides of being a guru. Fun position to be in I’m sure, I feel for you.
It’s kinda like how it’s the job of a parent to work themselves out of the job so as to raise independent, responsible adults, and not dependent adult children. You have a whole bunch of kids out there that want so much to believe that you have the answers, and it’s your job at this point to convince them you know nothing.
I’ve been studying and practicing Permaculture for over 25 years, and I don’t read this text simply as an argument or a position. I read it as a kind of release.
A release from the subtle pull toward collectivized thinking—the tendency to anchor ideas in consensus, identity, or shared narratives. What is being expressed here moves in another direction. It brings the focus back to direct perception and to individual responsibility as the true starting point of any meaningful design process.
If Permaculture is to remain a living, systemic design science, it cannot become fixed. The moment it hardens into doctrine, it loses its vitality. It stops responding to reality and starts projecting itself onto it.
What stands out in this writing is not only the content, but the example being set by its co-creator, David Holmgren. By openly expressing the evolution of his own thinking, he makes something very clear: Permaculture is not something to be preserved in a static form, nor something defined once and for all by its founders.
It is something that must continue to evolve—through practice, through observation, and through the responsibility of those who engage with it.
That responsibility cannot be delegated. It sits with each practitioner. Not as an added layer, but as the foundation itself. Personal responsibility is not an advanced concept within Permaculture—it is where it begins.
There is also something important in the tone of this work. To share one’s evolving thinking publicly, knowing it may challenge expectations or provoke disagreement, requires a certain independence of mind. It reflects a commitment to coherence over approval.
Across this series of texts, what we see is not a fixed message, but a process unfolding. Ideas are not being defended for their own sake; they are being reworked, refined, and reorganized as understanding deepens.
Taken as a whole, this is not just a body of work—it is a trace of thought in motion.
A living demonstration of ideas in continuous synthesis.