Samhain Sheltermaker

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UN issues ‘final wake-up call’ on population and environment

By James Kanter International Herald Tribune Thursday, October 25, 2007

The human population is living far beyond its means and inflicting damage on the environment that could pass points of no return, according to a major report issued Thursday by the United Nations.

Climate change, the rate of extinction of species and the challenge of feeding a growing population are among the threats putting humanity at risk, the UN Environment Program said in its fourth Global Environmental Outlook since 1997.

“The human population is now so large that the amount of resources needed to sustain it exceeds what is available at current consumption patterns,” Achim Steiner, the executive director of the program, said in a telephone interview. Efficient use of resources and reducing waste now are “among the greatest challenges at the beginning of 21st century,” he said.

The program described its report, which is prepared by 388 experts and scientists, as the broadest and deepest of those that the UN issues on the environment and called it “the final wake-up call to the international community.”

Over the past two decades the world population has increased by almost 34 percent to 6.7 billion from 5 billion; similarly, the financial wealth of the planet has soared by about a third. But the land available to each person on earth had shrunk by 2005 to 2.02 hectares, or 5 acres, from 7.91 hectares in 1900 and was projected to drop to 1.63 hectares for each person by 2050, the report said.

The result of that population growth combined with unsustainable consumption has resulted in an increasingly stressed planet where natural disasters and environmental degradation endanger millions of humans, as well as plant and animal species, the report said.

Steiner said that demand for resources was close to 22 hectares per person, a figure that would have to be cut to between 15 and 16 hectares per person to stay within existing, sustainable limits.

Persistent problems identified by the report include a rapid rise of so-called dead zones, where marine life no longer can be supported because of depletion of oxygen caused by pollutants like fertilizers. Also included is the resurgence of diseases linked with environmental degradation.

The report is being published two decades after a commission headed by the former Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland warned that the survival of humanity was at stake from unsustainable development.

Steiner said many of the problems identified by the Brundtland Commission were even more acute because not enough had been done to stop environmental degradation as flows of goods, services, people, technologies and workers had expanded, even to isolated populations.

He did, however, identify some reasons for hope that pointed toward better environmental stewardship.

He said West European governments had taken effective measures to reduce air pollutants, and he praised efforts in parts of Brazil to roll back deforestation in the Amazon. He said an international treaty to tackle the hole in the earth’s ozone layer had led to the phasing-out of release of 95 percent of ozone-damaging chemicals.

Steiner said more intelligent management of scarce resources including fishing grounds, land and water was needed to sustain a still larger global population, which he said was expected to stabilize at between 8 billion and 10 billion people.

“Life would be easier if we didn’t have the kind of population growth rates that we have at the moment,” Steiner said. “But to force people to stop having children would be a simplistic answer. The more realistic, ethical and practical issue is to accelerate human well-being and make more rational use of the resources we have on this planet.”

Steiner said environmental tipping points, at which degradation can lead to abrupt, accelerating or potentially irreversible changes, would increasingly occur in locations like particular rivers or forests, where populations would lack the ability to repair damage because the gravity of a problem would be far beyond their physical or economic means.

Looking ahead, Steiner said parts of Africa could reach environmental tipping points if changing rainfall patterns stemming from climate change turned semi-arid zones into arid zones, and made agriculture that sustained millions of people much harder.

Steiner said other tipping points triggered by climate change could occur in areas like India and China if Himalayan glaciers shrank so much that they no longer supplied adequate amounts of water to populations in those countries.

He also warned of a global collapse of all species being fished by 2050, if fishing around the world continued at its present pace.

The report said 250 percent more fish are being caught than the oceans can produce in a sustainable manner, and that the number of fish stocks classed as collapsed had roughly doubled to 30 percent globally over the past 20 years.

The report said that current changes in biodiversity were the fastest in human history, with species becoming extinct a hundred times as fast as the rate in the fossil record. It said 12 percent of birds were threatened with extinction; for mammals the figure was 23 percent and for amphibians it was more than 30 percent.

“Scientists now refer to a sixth major extinction crisis that’s under way,” Steiner said.

The first mass extinction, about 440 million years ago, and the four succeeding extinctions were the result of physical shocks to the planet like volcanic eruptions and plate tectonic shifts.

The report said that annual emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels have risen by about one-third since 1987 and that the threat from climate change now was so urgent that only very large cuts in greenhouse gases of 60 to 80 percent could stop irreversible change.

The effects of global warming, like the melting ice in the Arctic are “accelerating at a pace that goes beyond the scenarios and models we’ve been using,” Steiner said.

Climate change, however, was an issue that gained huge momentum over the past year, with governments, industries and citizens increasingly seeking solutions to the problem, Steiner said. The recent award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and to former Vice President Al Gore was a sign of widespread scientific consensus that climate change is under way, he said.

Steiner called for an accelerated effort on a far wider range of environmental issues to build the same sense of urgency as shown on climate change over the past year to address the worsening situations of biodiversity, land degradation, fisheries and freshwater.

Many biologists and climate scientists have concluded that human activities have become a dominant influence on the planet’s climate and ecosystems. But there is still a range of views on whether this could result in a catastrophic unraveling of natural resources as the human population heads toward nine billion by midcentury, or more of a steady diminution in diversity.

Grand Shrine at Ise reborn every 20 years in the sacred wood

On the east side of the Kii Penninsula, near the forests of Kumano, lies Ise Jingu, known popularly by the honorific O-Ise-san. Unique to this shrine, situated in a solemn sacred forest, is the ceremony that takes place every 20 years to rebuild the wooden sanctum in a new location. Historically, the ritual began in the sacred woods with the cutting of trees to be used as lumber for the new shrine. Read More

Fanatic Sought

400 year old walled garden in north Tipperary (24 miles Cloughjordan) containing 20 year old permaculture, of apple, pear, plum, hazel, cherry, walnut, mulberry, and a mongolian style yurt with small wood stove, and access to own piped well water supply, seeks a fanatic – or preferably a couple – with basic building skills, to work on property maintenance for one day per week and gradual conversion of outbuildings to low energy use accommodation, for the use of themselves and othersinterested in tectospirituality.
tectospirituality : the expression of spiritual values through the medium of carpentry and the construction of harmonious living space.

The materials for building – timber and stone – will be provided and sourced as far as possible from the farm itself. Replacement timber trees will be planted for future renovation. No wages, no lease, no rent, no rights, but the opportunity to spend 1,2, or 3 days per week immersed in living partially ‘off the grid’ small plot for gardening – optional. Not suitable for small children or dogs because of animals (sheep, lambs, bull etc.) on (organic) farm. This deal would suit a couple of people making a gradual transition to low input living, without their precipitously abandoning their current life or current means of making an income. Preference given to a couple with some prior experience of rural irish life.

Contact : Gillies – 086 / 3532581

Deeply Connecting to the Land

by Australian Geomancer Alanna Moore.
So you have some land and want to know the best building spot? I am often asked to help people decide. As well as an appreciation of sustainable design, from a grounding in permaculture, I use fairly esoteric methods of assessing a place, such as dowsing and meditation. I like to deeply connect to the Earth and Nature, for I am geomancer. Geomancy is a way of looking at landscape that assesses the subtle forces at work, its mythological elements, plus the historical dimensions of place. All up it refers to the overall feng shui (Earth harmony) of place, but its origins are universal, not just Chinese. Geomancers divine the energies of place and determine whether they bring detrimental or beneficial affects. In animist cultures intensely energetic sites are afforded highly sacred status and are never interfered with by people, except briefly, on ritual business.

Extinct paradigms in the modern world? Not really. In Perthshire, Scotland, a land developer’s plans in 2006 were thwarted by locals insisting that a large stone that he wanted removed was the sacrosanct home of the fairies. Scottish geomancer and author David Cowan was interviewed for television at the site, after which he left an offering, putting a one pound coin inside a ‘cup and ring mark’ (ancient petroglyph), he told me. Other people, then, also started to leave offerings, he told me. The developer had to go back to the drawing board and design around it. Folkloric associations with the land there obviously have highest priority.

In other parts of the UK, crop failure has been connected, in the peoples’ minds, to the removal or destruction of local standing stones that had been carefully placed millennia ago for various sacred purposes. Permaculture is about designing sustainable systems using the inherent qualities of energy at sites. Geomancy can provide a spiritual component to permaculture design, helping us determine the ideal placement of design elements, in order to maintain or enhance good fengshui. So the two systems are perfectly complementary for a holistic approach to Earth care.

But how to gain an appreciation of the geomancy of place? Discover your locality. Check out your local region. Go slowly, cars are too fast and disconnect us. Walk the land. Find out the local history and discover where one can visit indigenous peoples’ special sites. Develop a relationship with these places. If we visit the sacred sites with our senses and our hearts wide open, we can learn amazing things! One can absorb the Earth wisdom first hand, directly, at sacred sites. Especially at initiation grounds, such as in eastern Australia where they are often marked by circular earthworks called ‘bora rings’. We can also visit sites where horrible things have happened and send some healing, loving thoughts to the place. Saying “sorry” to the land is long overdue in many cases! And it all helps. Walking the land in an open and respectful manner is also recommended at the very beginning of the permaculture design process. Where does the place feel special, or particularly energetic? These sites must be treated with care! Ideally never to be built upon or disturbed. And before major upheavals, such as earthworks, are begun, the respectful way is to give plenty of warning to the place about what is about to happen, well ahead of, and up to, the event. The same applies to tree cutting and branch lopping. Nature is intelligent, so talk to it! I have been respectfully developing my own land and there have been some beautiful results and that is another story, as they say.

Mankind has been ‘at war with topography’ (as John Pilger described the Vietnam war) for too long. I think that we owe it to the Earth to take a gentle, caring approach to our custodianship of Her. And that can start in our backyard! Creating a personal sacred site might be what is needed. The ancient Greeks would devote one wild untamed corner of their gardens to nature. This temenos/ wilderness patch can be a great way of helping to conserve nature’s biodiversity, but is usually kept out of bounds. Perhaps a circular oak grove? Or an artistic outdoor altar that could be a focus for the peaceful pursuit of creativity.

A spiritual longing for harmony with nature has been building in the last few years. Its symbols are starting to pop up in unexpected places – labyrinths of stone in local council precincts, Aboriginal art captivating the world, and books about the fairies and Green Man (epitomising deep connection to wild nature) now proliferating. The fairies themselves seem to want to be acknowledged again! Perhaps this is because mankind in the 21st century has inherited a spiritual desert, with orthodox religions giving justification for domination over nature. The denigration of indigenous wisdom worldwide paved the way for the cold hearted commodification of the planet, where a beautiful tree or rock outcrop becomes just another ‘resource’ to be plundered.

European traditions of the genius loci /spirits of place and the intelligences of nature are no different to Aboriginal paradigms, and apparently share a common spiritual heritage from earliest times. Aboriginal people have lamented the loss of their traditions and cycles of ceremony as the reason for the decline of flora and fauna species. We can ask them to inform us about the land. If there are none to consult with, then we can pick up the threads and sing to the land ourselves, honour it and protect it from harm. There is the potential for a brighter future in Australian land management, where a new, deep connection to land can evolve, while the hurts of the past are acknowledged and eventually healed.

Many people today are living on the land in co-creative relationships with nature and it brings them great wealth, in terms of joy and land productivity. Sacred sites are calling out to people, to anyone who will listen. The landscape devas crave positive relationship with us, yearn for our voices singing and bodies dancing. We all have the power to create a heaven on this Earth. We have the tools, the know-how. The universe isn’t just ‘nuts and bolts’ and it is our spirits that propel us forward, while we’re thinking with our hearts. By listening to the quiet voices in the rocks and plants, with a spirit of generosity, we can help to restore Earth harmony lost, and honour and enjoy it where it is still tangibly present.

This article was written for and first published by the Permaculture Association of South Australia in July 2006.

Alanna Moore will be presenting one day dowsing and geomancy workshops in Ireland on the following dates (some of which are yet to be confirmed, so check geomantica.com for the unfolding details):
* May 11th ‘Dowsing and Healing’ workshop, Navaho Healing Centre near Belfast
* June 7th, ‘Stone Age Farming’ workshop, The Burren, Co. Clare
* June 15th ‘Divining Earth Harmony’ workshop, Navaho Healing Centre near Belfast
* July 12-13th ‘Stone Age Farming’ workshop weekend at The Organic Centre, Co. Leitrim, with Sunday being a dowsing field trip.
* Sunday July 20th ‘The Sacred Garden’ workshop at Carraig Dulra, Wicklow.

In many countries, cement is crucial for growth but an enemy of green

By Elisabeth Rosenthal International Herald Tribune Sunday, October 21, 2007

In booming economies from Asia to Eastern Europe, cement is the glue of progress. The material that binds the ingredients of concrete together, cement is essential for constructing buildings and laying roads in much of the world.

Some 80 percent of cement is made in and used by emerging economies; China alone makes and uses 45 percent of global output. Production is doubling every four years in places like Ukraine.

But making cement creates pollution, in the form of carbon dioxide emissions, and the greenest of technologies can reduce that by only 20 percent.

Cement plants already account for 5 percent of global emissions of carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming.

Compounding the problem, cement has no viable recycling potential, as the abandoned buildings that line roads from Tunisia to Mongolia demonstrate. Each new road, each new building, needs new cement.

“The big news about cement is that it is the single biggest material source of carbon emissions in the world, and the demand is going up,” said Julian Allwood, a professor of engineering at Cambridge University.

“If demand doubles and the best you can do is to reduce emissions by 30 percent, then emissions still rise very quickly.”

Worse yet, green incentives may be allowing the industry to pollute even more. The European Union subsidizes Western companies that buy outmoded cement plants in poor countries and refit them with green technology.

The emissions per ton of cement produced do go down. But the amount of cement produced often goes way up, as does the pollution generated.

Many of the world’s producers acknowledge the conundrum. “The cement industry is at the center of the climate change debate, but the world needs construction material for schools hospitals and homes,” said Olivier Luneau, head of sustainability at Lafarge, the Paris-based global cement giant.

“Because of our initiatives, emissions are growing slower than they would without the interventions.”

Cement manufacturers have invested millions of dollars in programs like the Sustainable Cement Initiative, yet many engineers like Allwood see “sustainable cement” as something of a contradiction in terms, like vegetarian meatballs.

Lafarge, a leader in introducing green technology to its field, has improved efficiency to reduce its emissions from 763 pounds, or 347 kilograms, of CO2 per ton of cement in 1990 to 655 in 2006. Its goal is to get to 610 by 2010, but it expects it will be difficult to get much below that number.

Lafarge, which bought 17 cement plants in China in 2005 and has holdings throughout eastern Europe and Russia, acknowledges that its emissions are growing year by year.

“Total emissions are growing because the demand is growing so fast and continues to grow and you can’t cap that,” Luneau said. “Our core business is cement, so there is a limit to what we can change.”

Cement is certainly a good investment these days.

“The construction market is booming in Eastern Europe, so cement factories are booming,” said Lennard De Klerk, director of Global Carbon, a Budapest firm that arranges investments in Ukraine, Russia and Bulgaria. “All the big cement companies, like Lafarge and Heidelberg Cement, have bought existing facilities there that generally use fairly outdated technology and that waste a lot of energy.”

Carbon trading schemes – green incentives created by the European Union and the Kyoto Protocol – encourage such purchases. But they also allow manufacturers to increase overall cement production, both in the developing world and at home.

The European Union effectively limits production of European cement makers in their home countries by capping their allowed yearly emissions. In places like Ukraine, meanwhile, there are no limits, so cement production can increase there without regulatory caps.

Moreover, European companies get allowances known as carbon credits to pollute more for use at home by undertaking green cleanup projects elsewhere. So buying an old Soviet factory and investing in converting it to green technology can bring multiple paybacks.

“They can invest in Ukraine and Russia, clean up, and earn carbon credits – the investment is much more attractive than it used to be,” said De Klerk, whose company brokers such “carbon” investments. Factoring the value of the carbon credits into the cost of refitting a factory in Ukraine, the predicted rate of return rises from 8.8 per cent to close to 12 per cent, he said.

Once outmoded plants are refitted with “clean technology,” their emission per ton of cement produced does decline. The Podilsky plant in Ukraine is being refitted with greener kilns – financed by the Irish cement manufacturer CRH to earn carbon credits – and energy consumption per ton of production is forecast to drop 53 percent.

But even that sharp drop may not be enough to stop the inexorable growth in cement emissions in the aggregate, or compensate for the new lease on life that refitting provides old factories that otherwise might have shut their doors. Production went up over 10 percent in Ukraine in 2005 and again in 2006. At Heidelberg Cement’s Doncement plant in Ukraine, output soared 55 percent in the first nine months of last year.

Old factories that for years were running at half capacity are now churning out cement as never before, propelled by booming economies and foreign investment.

And cement, which used to be produced and used locally, is increasingly shipped long distances. On the Internet, cement brokers are now selling relatively cheap Ukrainian cement to all corners of the world. Demand is particularly high in the Middle East.

Unlike many industries, cement has a basic chemical problem: The chemical reaction that creates cement releases large amounts of CO2 in and of itself. Sixty percent of emissions caused by making cement are from this chemical process alone, Luneau said.

The remainder is produced from the fuels used in production, which may be mitigated by the use of greener technology. So to “go green,” cement makers try to cut the fuel side of the equation.

When they buy plants in the developing world they often turn from a water-intensive system to a more energy efficient “dry” system. Ten percent of the fuel used by Lafarge is biomass and alternative fuels.

One industry project called the Cement Sustainability Initiative suggests that concrete should be mixed using smaller portions of cement to reduce emissions, and that cement buildings be given better insulation so that they are more energy efficient. But there is less incentive for cement manufacturers to take on fundamental changes in how to make buildings and roads.

Western cement manufacturers emphasize that the emissions problem cannot be solved until China and India and other booming economies realize that they must limit emissions as well. “Trying to solve emissions in the EU or G-8 will not solve the problem unless emerging economies and their cement production are included,” Luneau said.

Yurts & Tipis

Looking for a handmade yurt, tipi or marquee? Check out this site, it offers the real thing.

http://www.nomadspiritcanvascreations.com/

Next Sheltermaker – Midwinter

The Sheltermaking Theatre

 

 

Everything is shifting under my feet. Not in a bad way but nonetheless challenging. The EconoSpace Project clearly has a mind of its own. Despite our best efforts, the objective of getting it out of the ground is elusive. This has gotten me thinking, why is it so difficult?

There is no clear answer to this question. I can think of many reasons, including the ‘local wetting’ I wrote about previously. There is also the fact that Thomas has returned to Belfast to resume his amateur boxer training and contemplate his future. Liz has also gone on to do her own thing.

However, no matter which way I look at this all answers fail to satisfy. I’m beginning to consider that it is me that is holding things up, that somewhere in myself I’m putting a block on things. Another possibility is that I’m actually meant to be doing something else. I have been trundling from Design to Construction like an old dog on the hard road, not really thinking if this was the proper route to my objective – wherever that is! So, I decided to lay down by the roadside and reconsider everything. This was blissful – taking time to relax and dream. This led to an interesting place.

I’m calling the process ‘backtracking’. It’s not really about retracing my steps or about where I am going but seems to be more concerned with consciousness! This is familiar territory and brings to mind the comment of a student of an early Be Your Own Architect Course who said ‘I was teaching philosophy not architecture’. I am still catching up with that throwaway line.

Anyway, as fate or destiny would have it, as soon as I begin to dream everything appeared differently. I quickly put together a presentation which neatly fitted into an old idea – The Sheltermaking Theatre. This is a device to enable us to see the invisible – things like time, gravity, space and feelings. These are inexorably linked to architecture and to our selves as human beings. It is from this invisible matrix that we emerge.

Phew! This is not what teaching architecture is meant to be about! Yet, on some level, it is exactly what it is about. It is what living architecture actually means – that we can use buildings to connect to a a deeper reality, discovering in the process who we are. This I have known intuitively for quite some time but I could never explain it in a way that made sense in the context of how architecture is normally spoken of – in terms of passive solar energy, sheepwool insulation, hemplime, heat pumps, double glazing or whatever.

In many ways things that we know inside ourselves but which are repressed or remain unconscious are more shocking when we accept them than new information. That is how I feel at the moment. A mixture of impatience, excitement and trepidation. Add to that the fact that a film crew from TG4, the Irish language TV station, is coming to film the EconoSpace Project next week! I have appraised them of developments but I’m not certain they properly understood. Anyway I’ll adhere to my new mantra ‘it’s all theatre’ and things are bound to be all right on the day. Then there is the HeadSpace to get ready for display at The Dock, the local arts centre. This is pure theatre!

So there it is folks. My soul bared. My face presented to a new horizon. The wheels in motion. Destiny at play.

What Is Going On?

 

I am beginning to feel the weight of this project! I am not exactly certain what I am doing either! The project appears to have assumed a life of it’s own. On the one hand it is about low-cost, mortgage-free, self-build. On the other it is the story of living architecture. I suppose if all the dynamics of this were known there would be no need to do the project. I have the frame more or less designed now. I need to turn my attention now to doors and windows and to the fine detailing. Keep ahead of the posse who are getting the workshop ready for rock n’ roll.

 

Self building is never that easy. It always seems like a relatively easy option but once you are immersed it is as demanding as a therapist’s silence. First you have to get yout toolkit together. This can be very basic. A saw, a hammer, a square, a pencil, a level. Throw in a bit and brace and a decent ratchet screwdriver and you’re off on a hack. The next thing needed is a place to work. Some form of covered area is best where you operate in all weathers. Then there are the building materials and where these are stored. Under a tarp and up off the ground is good. The tool storage, the work area, the materials storage and the location of the building all need to be carefully related to each other so that you can work effecticvely. Finally, you need decent design information in order to build what it is you wish to build.

 

Design information allows the self-builder to ‘quantify’ the amount of material that is needed to carry out the work. It also provides unformation on how to assemble these materials – giving heights, lengths, opening sizes, etc. Usually a building consists of floor, walls and a roof with openings in these to admit light and people. Without proper design information the self-builder will be lost in a sea of questions not even knowing how much of any particular material to order.