Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability
by David Holmgren
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Book Summary Information
Author: David HolmgrenEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2002-12
ISBN: 0646418440
Number of pages: 286
Publisher: Holmgren Design Services
Book Reviews of Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability
Book Review: Permaculture or PhD Dissertation on Systems Theory?
Summary: 1 Stars
I was looking to expand my understanding of permaculture with Holmgren's latest work, where he seeks to "directly explain the principles of permaculure" (xi). However, I did not find Holmgren's presentation of permaculture to be useful or that coherent.
It's not just that I found Holmgren's prose to be extremely wordy and difficult to follow, often going back and forth between different ideas, but his writing seemed to overly focus on validating his take on Systems Theory where everything is quantified in terms of some abstract idea of "energy." This supposed all-encompassing worldview leads Holmgren to make some grandiose generalizations, like a "Maximum Power Law" which shows that "comfort and excessive protection from challenges and competition can lead to self-satisfied, lazy and eventually dysfunctional behavior" (pg. 56). Huh? So traditional hunter-gatherers who cooperated together to produce stable, sustainable food systems were lazy? Holmgren doesn't explain further. How about the even more absurd and equally unqualified statement that because fossil fuels have a low "embodied energy," they are not "bad, inefficient, and immoral.. [but] are very useful" (pg. 50). What?! Has Holmgren ever seen the coal mines or oil refineries in his own country? It's a hugely intensive process that seems anything but "beyond sustainable" to me.
I'm not sure who Holmgren's intended audience is, but "Principles and Pathways" seemed like an abstract PhD dissertation. His sweeping generalizations, buttressed by his Systems Theory that quantifies and then can supposedly explain everything, make him come off as arrogant at times. Maybe some people like this detached academic writing, but it's not really my cup of tea.
I found "Gaia's Garden" by Toby Hemenway to be a very accessible introduction and overview to permaculture with lucid examples. I've also begun to read some works by Bill Mollison and found them to be inspiring and easier to grasp. While the so-called "bible" of permaculture, "A Designers' Manual," remains college textbook-like expensive, many of Mollison's other writings can be found online for free.
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