Continually watching life get poorer for ones self, and more emotionally for ones children, is hard to take. One the other hand, I could live on a tenth the wealth I now have. Yeah, very little health care, no long trips, lots of vegetables and little meat - oh well - what a sacrifice. Perhaps our greatest pleasures will once again be time and conversation with the ones we love. It is genetically programmed to be that way, even if the distractions and ego trips of modern society seem to suggest otherwise. Unless we decide to kill each other, a not unlikely outcome to resource depletion, I have no doubt we can live on much less energy than Americans currently do.

What you may consider permaculture is more dependent on fossil fuel imputs then 'conventionial' aggriculture...

(You can always tell when someone knows what they're saying about "Permaculture" when they capitalize it -- it's a registered trade mark, and thus, a proper noun. Trade-marking was done, not to make money, but to rule out people saying things like "what you may consider" in regard to Permaculture. If you have an opinion about Permaculture and have not earned at least a Permaculture Design Certificate, please refer to "organic farming" or anything else instead.)

Have you actually read Mollison or Holmgren? I didn't think so!

Permaculture is not at all dependent on fossil fuel, although the wise investment of non-renewable resources is not ruled out.

Before you start to argue, let me note that I am a Permaculture Instructor, and have studied under David Holmgren.

:::: Jan Steinman, Communication Steward, EcoReality http://www.EcoReality.org ::::

You don't appear to know how to cook. Onions, garlic, basil, wine vinegar, vegetable oil, chicken stock, a few ounces of meat, canned tomatoes, rutabaga, parsnip, lentils, a bit of cabbage, water, salt, and pepper made a great soup for my grandma in the 19th century, my folks in the twentieth, me now, and will be easily assembled five centuries from now, by my descendants, assuming they don't move to another part of the world where substitutes would be made.

One third of meals in the US today are fast-food take out, mostly tasteless reformulated industrial corn, sandwiched between nutrient deficient processed flour. One in five meals is eaten in the car, usually on the go.

Peak oil. Bring it on.