Permacology

Aren't made-up words wonderful? Especially when they contain references to other made up words?

My name is Adam, I am in my forth year of an undergrad university program in "Environmental Studies" at York U in Toronto (Ontario, Canada). I have been interested in environmental sustainability, food security, social justice, economic, and energy issues for a few years now. Like 99% of people on this earth I have biases and opinions, but in all honesty, every day I try and be more of a critical thinker than the day before. I have "an agenda," a thesis, that I want to disseminate; a set of goals for how I want to shape the world. But I try to base my paradigm/world-view as much as possible on objective and universal facts or rationalizations.

My reasons for starting this blog are multi-fold: I want to collect my essays, tirades, stories, case studies, musings, rants, theses', research... and mental regurgitations in one place for my own piece of mind; I want to get feedback on every potentially-contentious or arguable thing that I think is "right" or "wrong" in the world; I was about to say "I want constructive criticism," but no, I want DEconstructive criticism to be thrown at me. reasons.

My goals are to share what I've learnt from arm-chair research and first-hand experiences and analyses'. My intentions are to deal with all nagging questions I have, to try to prove or disprove all hunches or hypotheses' swimming around in my brain. I will come dangerously close to committing "confirmation bias," but the fact I can admit this is, I think, a strength. The fact that I am interested in the science of ecology first and foremost is my saving grace. I come into this process assuming that some types of organic farming systems are actually more sustainable and higher yield than industrial farming systems, and thus are our future. I come into this feeling cautious about things like biotechnology and it's potential risks ((I feel it's the responsibility of proponents to Prove the safety of GMOs, not the responsibility of others' to disprove it)). I'm not morally opposed to transgenic genetic engineering... but I don't think we actually NEED to go down that path for global food security, when we can base our global food supply on other types of science/"technologies."

So this blog is about all things which relate to "permaculture," the "logos" or logic or study of permanent/resilient/sustainable food-production systems.

This was Permacology entry # 1.

-Adam Daniel (Skold-)Mohammed "Andah"