Human activity changes the environment and now we are changing the world at unprecedented rates.  Climate change is a huge problem that seems too daunting to tackle at times. With politicians being too busy arguing whether it exists and scientists attempting to create extravagant solutions, it seems impossible to fix. Big corporation pump pollutants into waterways and the atmosphere daily and turning on the car to drive to work creates a carbon footprint crisis for the individual. There does not appear to be any solution but, permaculture shows there is another alternative to living an environmental friendly life.

Permaculture changes the culture’s mindset of reducing waste to not producing waste. The ideas involved with permaculture emphasize using the environment to do the work and let nature work for you without altering it. When properly being practiced, individuals could grow their own food (and food for others), reduce their waste, and purify the air without drastically changing the environment. The gardens shown in the documentary, Inhabit, clearly were more productive and sustainable but, involved less work. They were proof that sustainable farming can exist it just involves a change in mindset. As a culture, we want what we want: corn, beef, or pecans. We grow things not native to the area and damage the environment to keep up with the demand. If we were to change our ideology, we could support a lifestyle that does not just lower our footprint but, creates a green one.

The solutions for climate change are here. Yes, some large-scale actions will have to be taken but, little things like a permaculture garden help. Using bikes to collect garbage or installing beehives make a difference. We need to stop sitting around thinking there is nothing we can do as an individual. Demand change through our actions: great movements always started with one.

As someone who grew up surrounded with monoculture and year-round hostile weather, I became incredibly inspired from Inhabit and our discussions on permaculture. So of course, I scoured the web to see if anyone from my glorious state of Wyoming had braved the years of trial and error to create a permaculture design to work in the sagebrush and pine covered, notoriously wind-blown landscape. It turns out, the only permaculture center in Wyoming resides in my hometown of Casper! The owner, Laurel Graham, keeps a blog of not only the environmental, nutritional, and social benefits of permaculture, but also of her intense appreciation of the peace that living off and with the land gives her. I learned through her blog and through this film about the vibrancy and the passion behind the practice and design of permaculture, and how it is something extremely special.

As volunteering at the Duke Farm was my first exposure to anything farming wise, I finally learned how I love caring for and having a hand in creating life, not to mention the rewarding act of contributing to a process that benefits both the Duke and the Durham communities. As inspiring stories of healthy and local food that benefits us in tandem with the environment mount, the only next step is for me to call my parents and start to work on transforming our backyard in a way none of us thought possible.

Permaculture is not solely a science. It is an accomplishment. In fact, it may very well prove to be one of mankind’s greatest and most important achievements. Through countless life science studies, we have learned both how the environment works and how our bodies work. Yet we have never had a definitive answer for how the two entities should coexist and work together. Permaculture provides insight into this conflict by modeling our actions and landscapes on natural systems. Humans are thus placed as part of nature and as part of the working environment with the role of efficiently managing landscapes.

With clean, efficient methods for living on Earth, permaculture has positioned science to combat climate change. Therefore, the importance and relevance of environmental communication has grown exponentially. Now that there is a way mankind can live harmoniously with the planet, it is of the utmost importance that everyone became aware of this fact. This entails using news outlets, public artworks, literature and other forms of persuasive rhetoric. Moreover, lessons on how to live with such “permanent culture” will be crucial. Permaculture is a terrific accomplishment due to its ingenuity and also its difficulty. There will need to be classes available to the public walking them through the management of this complex system. Though it may take many years for society to accept and respond to climate change, permaculture is a prime example illustrating how science has stepped up to the challenge.

Kevin Bhimani Blog #9 3/31/17

“Permanent-Permutable Permacultural Futures”

By reading about Permaculture and especially getting an in-depth look by watching Inhabit, it is hard to argue that there is any better way to plan for the future. The whole idea behind Permaculture is rooted in the notion that it is “permanent agriculture” so that all of the needs that plants have are met by the natural world. I think one of the most intriguing concepts behind it is thinking about how nature works and getting a true understanding as to how the different parts function. It is a very difficult task to do and seeing the ways in which people have come up with entire farms based off of nothing but rethinking the way in which they organize, design, and populate in order to ensure success for what they hope is eternity. Essentially recreating an ecosystem that nobody can teach you how to make—you simply have to observe “the teacher” in a forest for example and figure out a way to engineer your space to fit those loose guidelines. It is really an interesting concept and it was incredible to see people like the man on the rooftop garden having a very well thought out design for his space even with bees for natural pollinators, or the group harvesting mushrooms on logs in the forest, needing nothing else but the sunlight and natural ecosystem to grow them. The movement is something that could transform the way in which we source our food as it requires such essentially no power, and currently every form of mass food production uses tons of energy. If we move to having our own food sources or even have food that is produced with no power, we will be able to thrive as a society with the ability to make food and harvest other resources just like they used to do it. It reduces our carbon footprint as a people and prolongs our time on this planet—something that seems like a no-brainer situation.

One particular vignette from Inhabit captured my attention: there are over one million rooftops in New York, and each year the city dumps thirty billion tons of sewage water into local bodies of water. As a response, more and more groups are installing rooftop gardens.

Immediately, I grasped the brilliance of this idea. The essence of permaculture, what easier way is there to mutually benefit humans and the environment? Rooftop landscaping could produce a massive carbon sink, save on air conditioning costs, provide new habitats to animals, as well as stimulate the psychological perk we derive from green spaces. Without limiting rooftop cultivation to simply a garden, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that one day New York and our other metropoles could host a forest in the sky.

Permaculture is all about finding sustainable solutions and living symbiotically alongside nature rather than siphoning its many gifts, and large scale rooftop cultivation fits the bill. The idea is not outlandish or without precedent: the Persians were famed for their Hanging Gardens of Babylon. If people are able to recognize the ease with which such a concept can be facilitated, it might not be long before the “concrete jungle” has equal emphasis on the second word as the first.

Mark Shepard’s insistence on returning the land to its “natural form and function,” while still producing food drew me to his style of permaculture. Regarding his 106-acre perennial farm, he made the point that, “if we were to disappear tomorrow, this land would continue producing food for thousands of years.” It blew my mind. Inspired by Shepard, I called my parents and asked to try permaculture in our yard at home. I said, “It’s like our regular garden, but instead we plant only perennials.” I went on to share my limited knowledge about topsoil disruption, pesticide use, and the productivity of the permaculture farms from the movie. Amazingly, they didn’t say no.

My parents have agreed to plant five new food-producing perennials before summer, on the condition that they are native to North Carolina. As the financial share-holders and creators of my life, they generously delegated the research of indigenous plants to me. The list below shows my preliminary findings, all of which are native to the piedmont region and courtesy of the North Carolina Native Plant Society.

1. Pecan tree (nut-producing)
2. Shagbark hickory tree (nut-producing)
3. Beech tree (nut-producing)
4. Hazel tree (nut-producing)
5. Black tupelo tree (for honey)
6. Persimmon tree
7. Black cherry tree
8. Pawpaw tree
9. Crabapples
10. Plums
11. Wild strawberries
12. Low bush blueberries
13. Huckleberries
14. Blackberries
15. Raspberries
16. Fox Grapes

I figure the best way to convince my parents to continue down a permaculture path even long after I’ve grown up and moved more than thirty minutes from home, is to grow what they like. While I am incredibly intrigued by pawpaws, those might best be tested further down the road. I’ll start with persimmons, black cherries, and plums. They are familiar and I’ve seen them grown in Raleigh without difficulty. Additionally, we already have three pecan trees in our backyard, so hazelnuts would be an interesting addition.

I also think that with the right amount of coercion, I can get my dad to agree to put a bee hive in our yard if I also put a black tupelo tree, given his affinity for Tupelo Honey. While the bees may not actually produce pure Tupelo Honey due to the other nectar sources, my dad doesn’t need to know that. It would kill two birds with one stone: planting a perennial, and increasing biodiversity in our yard.

Persimmons, black cherries, plums, hazelnuts, and black tupelo. Those are my five as they stand now. I am in awe of Mark Shepard’s farm, and hope to create a sliver of the good work he does there in my own backyard.

In the middle of an urban area in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina is a small community garden called the Wedge Community Garden. When I was a junior in college I emailed a lady about a potential gardening volunteer position and did not realize at the time how influential it would be on my outlook on permaculture, community gardens, and sharing that with others.  Shamsa Visone and I worked in the garden almost every Saturday during the warmer months growing everything from okra, to cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots, bok choy, garlic, chives, and so much more. We used sustainable farming practices with little chemical pesticides to care for our plants. I learned about composting, the importance of giving back to the soil and making sure all the nutrients were in balance. I also had the wonderful opportunity of working with a high school student and began my interest in being a high school science teacher.

Developing relationships and connecting with high school students can be a challenge. I had the opportunity to connect with a student named Donte during my time at The Wedge Community Garden. Donte had been court ordered volunteer hours and decided to spend some of those working in the garden. I guided him through several projects and I tried to make the laborious process as fun as I could by asking him questions about his life and why soil is important when growing vegetables. At the beginning, he barely answered any of my questions but I did my best to keep asking because I genuinely cared and wanted him to develop a love for gardening. Over time, he began to open up with me and I really felt as if we were making progress not only in the garden but forming a mutually respectful relationship. One weekend without notice, he stopped coming to the garden. Not all of my students will be easy to connect with and each student faces their own challenges but I believe that through never giving up on them I can grow their love for science.

This is one benefit of permaculture and using urban areas to grow anyone’s love for science but also the beautiful earth we live on. I think by turning more areas with degraded soils into areas that produce food is just the beginning of producing a sustainable future in which all people have access to sustainable and wholesome food sources.

Me working in the community garden

As I have been drilling chemistry into my head over the past few days for an upcoming exam, I could not help but connect the concepts I am learning in chemistry 101 to concepts that are apparent throughout the environmental humanities. In kinetics, we learn that a catalyst is  substance that is added to a reaction in order to lower the activation energy, and thus speed up the rate of the reaction. I view hope as a catalyst that environmentalist use to find solutions and problem solve. One of the most captivating solutions we have discussed is permaculture. In its simplest description, permaculture is an ethics based way of living that strives to maximize natural benefits of the environment while maintaining a mutualistic relationship with other aspects of ecological systems. These principles are based on the assumption that humans are indeed a part of the the ecosystem and are responsible to make decisions that promote the harmony and respond to the feedback the environment provides. It is common of our current industrial system to ignore this feedback and exploit the environment for the ways in which it can benefit human kind. Permaculture urges the focus on smaller, community based sustainability rather than large scale, exploitative practices which prevail in our agricultural means today. Designing ways to thrive in the long-term in many areas, not just agriculturally, has become the focus of permaculture.

Permaculture looks towards systems in nature and pre-industrial societies in order to create innovative solutions to environmental issues. It is a very poetic way of thinking in that sense; the utilization of the very entity that it strives to protect as a model for its growth and development is ingenious. In the same light it is very logical and rational way of thinking because it looks back in order to look forward. In science and math problems it is imperative to change the given problem so that it looks like a problem that is familiar and has specific, known steps to solve it. By letting the problem of sustainability become as familiar as an ecological system, this allows for specific steps to be taken to solve seemingly mountainous issues.

A key starting point: Wikipedia Article Wizard

From Sydney University Press: Wiki CHEATSHEET

Wikipedia Markup Cheatsheet

Wikipedia Manual of Style (WP:MOS)

How to create Wikipedia entries that will stick

Wiki Rules

• Notability guidelines
• Conflicts of interest
• Verifiable content
• Reliability of sources

Wikipedia’s Principles

• Wikipedia:Five Pillars
• Wikipedia:Assume Good Faith
• Wikipedia:Be Bold

From all of the art pieces that we looked at, the collection that struck me the most was the collection that included witty advertisements that exposed the wrongdoings of companies and governments.

The first advertisement of the collection stuck with me. It is pictured below. So, I decided to create an image blog of the Volkswagen (VW) emission scandal.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/paris-climate-talks-artist-protests-corporations_us_565c5769e4b072e9d1c25108

This is a real VW ad:

http://www.telegiz.com/articles/5265/20160329/volkswagen-sued-ftc-over-deceptive-clean-diesel-ads-recalls-e.htm

VW CEO Martin Winterkorn acknowledging the breadth of the VW scandal:

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/o-pinion/article36151812.html

The scandal explained:

http://www.drivespark.com/img/2016/11/19-1479532235-29-1446116247-volkswagen-diesel-emission-scandal.jpg

The size of the scandal put into perspective:

http://www.bailiwickexpress.com/jsy/life/current-affairs/volkswagen-will-contact-owners-cars-affected-emissions-scandal/

There is, however, some hope for humanity:

https://directconnectautotransport.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/passat.png

http://fortune.com/2015/09/23/volkswagen-stock-drop/