Philosophy
Peak Oil
Many people now believe that the world’s petroleum supply is at or near its peak production capacity. As it gets increasingly
difficult to maintain or expand the supply of this vital resource (aka “Peak Oil”), the economies that rely on cheap, abundant fuel
in increasing amounts will falter. As they do, we will need to devise alternatives to the industrial model we currently rely upon
for basic necessities.
It’s not the purpose of this site to convince anybody of the reality and practical ramifications of Peak Oil. I encourage readers to
do a search on it…there’s plenty of information available online and you can find some recommended links and books on the
Links and Books page on this website.
Reskilling
Reskilling – the development of skills more directly connected with basic necessities of food, clothing, shelter, medicine, and
recreation – is one practical response to the manifold problems that society may well face in the wake of peak oil and economic
displacement and possibly collapse.
Looking for a way to make it easy and practical for people to connect and share skills, I came up with the idea of the Green
Helping Hands Reskilling Initiative. Whether you’re a skilled composter/gardener or an artist with a pair of knitting needles, or if
you are seeking these or other skills, just post a sign with a green hand on it – or look for one near you.
Why a physical sign, one might ask, and not a website? After all, I’m promoting the concept through a website. The answer is,
signs are cheap, fast and local, and don’t rely on high-tech anything to get started. The people who will see your sign are your
neighbors and local community. Likewise, the signs you see as you go about your business will help you find resources close to
home. For reasons that will be obvious if gasoline becomes unavailable or unaffordable, it’s important to connect locally with
local teaching resources. My hope is also that the trust and relationships thus formed will also build stronger, safer communities
of people who are capable of working together to meet common challenges.
Applying "Edge Effects" Thinking to Human Communities
If you’ve read this far and find the idea interesting, you might like a deeper look at the philosophy behind the Green Helping
Hands Reskilling Initiative.
As a longtime organic gardener, I got into the habit of planting many of my vegetables in little patches separated from one
another by other plants and distance. For example, with kale, broccoli and other crops subject to insect damage, I found it best
to plant a few plants here and there rather than all together so that any plant that became infested would be less likely to
spread the insects to its neighbors.
As time went on, my reading and personal experience indicated that intercropping aromatic annual plants like dill, cilantro,
sweet annie, shiso, calendula and others, as well as some perennials, can also help keep pests in check. Having a variety of
plants interspersed in the garden also seems to strengthen the garden community as a whole by providing hiding places and
food for beneficial insects. There is also the added possibility of different plants actively strengthening one another through
their effects on soil chemistry (or some subtler means) in a practice known as companion planting.
A friend of mine who has studied permaculture told me that these kinds of practices make use of the permaculture concept of
“edge effects.” Permaculture looks at the boundaries of living systems under human cultivation as places where important
transfers of energy, materials, and organisms take place. One criticism of conventional mono-cropping agriculture, such as
here in the US Midwest where there are places with corn extending as far as the eye can see, is that all the significant
boundaries have been eliminated.
In some traditional agricultural practices, by contrast, keeping hedgerows shows how the opposite strategy can work. First,
traditionally cultivated fields were typically smaller than those on US farms today, increasing the perimeter and thus the potential
for edge effects. The community of plants and shrubs and trees that make up a hedgerow delivers a number of services for the
farmer, providing a wind break and water erosion control, home for birds and beneficial insects that eat crop pests, wood for
kindling and fuel, and even a home for larger animals, some of which formed part of the many traditional farmers’ diets.
Hedgerows also separated fields and thus field problems from one another, prevented pasturing animals from easy access to
planted crops, offered wild berries, nuts, and fruits, and much else.
Eliminating that strategy came with a cost: all the services that the hedgerow provides had to be met in some other way, usually
involving capital input on the part of the farmer such fences and pesticides. Thus, by allowing the land to provide these services,
the farmer reduced work and capital costs, albeit at the cost of leaving some land uncultivated.
So what does this have to do with reskilling? As soon as I heard about the concept of edge effects, I started to wonder how it
could be applied to human communities. In many ways, human communities, especially suburban communities here in the US,
now resemble the modern US cornfield: mono-cropping with minimal interactivity or richness supported by huge energy and
capital inputs making up for the lost interactivity and community synergy.
Faced with the challenges of peak oil and economic dislocation, it seemed the ideal thing to do would be to increase that richness
by multiplying the edge effects in our communities, inviting interaction and making use of the proximity of nearby resources.
Posting or responding to a green hand sign is one way to make this happen.
Many people now believe that the world’s petroleum supply is at or near its peak production capacity. As it gets increasingly
difficult to maintain or expand the supply of this vital resource (aka “Peak Oil”), the economies that rely on cheap, abundant fuel
in increasing amounts will falter. As they do, we will need to devise alternatives to the industrial model we currently rely upon
for basic necessities.
It’s not the purpose of this site to convince anybody of the reality and practical ramifications of Peak Oil. I encourage readers to
do a search on it…there’s plenty of information available online and you can find some recommended links and books on the
Links and Books page on this website.
Reskilling
Reskilling – the development of skills more directly connected with basic necessities of food, clothing, shelter, medicine, and
recreation – is one practical response to the manifold problems that society may well face in the wake of peak oil and economic
displacement and possibly collapse.
Looking for a way to make it easy and practical for people to connect and share skills, I came up with the idea of the Green
Helping Hands Reskilling Initiative. Whether you’re a skilled composter/gardener or an artist with a pair of knitting needles, or if
you are seeking these or other skills, just post a sign with a green hand on it – or look for one near you.
Why a physical sign, one might ask, and not a website? After all, I’m promoting the concept through a website. The answer is,
signs are cheap, fast and local, and don’t rely on high-tech anything to get started. The people who will see your sign are your
neighbors and local community. Likewise, the signs you see as you go about your business will help you find resources close to
home. For reasons that will be obvious if gasoline becomes unavailable or unaffordable, it’s important to connect locally with
local teaching resources. My hope is also that the trust and relationships thus formed will also build stronger, safer communities
of people who are capable of working together to meet common challenges.
Applying "Edge Effects" Thinking to Human Communities
If you’ve read this far and find the idea interesting, you might like a deeper look at the philosophy behind the Green Helping
Hands Reskilling Initiative.
As a longtime organic gardener, I got into the habit of planting many of my vegetables in little patches separated from one
another by other plants and distance. For example, with kale, broccoli and other crops subject to insect damage, I found it best
to plant a few plants here and there rather than all together so that any plant that became infested would be less likely to
spread the insects to its neighbors.
As time went on, my reading and personal experience indicated that intercropping aromatic annual plants like dill, cilantro,
sweet annie, shiso, calendula and others, as well as some perennials, can also help keep pests in check. Having a variety of
plants interspersed in the garden also seems to strengthen the garden community as a whole by providing hiding places and
food for beneficial insects. There is also the added possibility of different plants actively strengthening one another through
their effects on soil chemistry (or some subtler means) in a practice known as companion planting.
A friend of mine who has studied permaculture told me that these kinds of practices make use of the permaculture concept of
“edge effects.” Permaculture looks at the boundaries of living systems under human cultivation as places where important
transfers of energy, materials, and organisms take place. One criticism of conventional mono-cropping agriculture, such as
here in the US Midwest where there are places with corn extending as far as the eye can see, is that all the significant
boundaries have been eliminated.
In some traditional agricultural practices, by contrast, keeping hedgerows shows how the opposite strategy can work. First,
traditionally cultivated fields were typically smaller than those on US farms today, increasing the perimeter and thus the potential
for edge effects. The community of plants and shrubs and trees that make up a hedgerow delivers a number of services for the
farmer, providing a wind break and water erosion control, home for birds and beneficial insects that eat crop pests, wood for
kindling and fuel, and even a home for larger animals, some of which formed part of the many traditional farmers’ diets.
Hedgerows also separated fields and thus field problems from one another, prevented pasturing animals from easy access to
planted crops, offered wild berries, nuts, and fruits, and much else.
Eliminating that strategy came with a cost: all the services that the hedgerow provides had to be met in some other way, usually
involving capital input on the part of the farmer such fences and pesticides. Thus, by allowing the land to provide these services,
the farmer reduced work and capital costs, albeit at the cost of leaving some land uncultivated.
So what does this have to do with reskilling? As soon as I heard about the concept of edge effects, I started to wonder how it
could be applied to human communities. In many ways, human communities, especially suburban communities here in the US,
now resemble the modern US cornfield: mono-cropping with minimal interactivity or richness supported by huge energy and
capital inputs making up for the lost interactivity and community synergy.
Faced with the challenges of peak oil and economic dislocation, it seemed the ideal thing to do would be to increase that richness
by multiplying the edge effects in our communities, inviting interaction and making use of the proximity of nearby resources.
Posting or responding to a green hand sign is one way to make this happen.