ABSTRACT
Permaculture provided a uniting narrative and toolkit for addressing the concerns the author had about the environment. It was grounded in actual work and drawn from lived experience. Permaculture, as a word, originally came from combining permanent and agriculture. Permaculture is built on the belief that people can take some of the best of the past, and wed it to the best of the present. Assessing these issues, seminal permaculturist David Holmgren argues for four potential futures for humanity. First, the Techno-Fantasy outcome, in which, any day now!, some technological salvation appears, allowing people to continue up the slope of increasing per-person consumption forever. Secondly, he describes the green-tech stability outcome. The third possibility is called the Energy Descent, or permaculture future, also known as descent with dignity. The fourth is the Atlantis scenario, where energy usage collapses due to system-wide failure, depletion of available sources, and accelerating climate change.
