One of the great rules of design is do something basic right. Then everything gets much more right of itself. But if you do something basic wrong - if you make what I call a Type 1 Error - you can get nothing else right.

Permaculture is an integrated, evolving system of perennial and self-perpetuating plants and animal species useful to man.

A really failing society has a lot of rules (or laws).

The end result of the adoption of permaculture strategies in any country or region will be to dramatically reduce the area of the agricultural environment needed by the households and the settlements of people, and to release much of the landscape for the sole use of wildlife and for re-occupation by endemic flora.

"Should we tamper with nature?" is no longer a question - we've tampered with nature on the whole face of the Earth.

The greatest change we need to make is from consumption to production, even if on a small scale, in our own gardens. If only 10% of us do this, there is enough for everyone. Hence the futility of revolutionaries who have no gardens, who depend on the very system they attack, and who produce words and bullets, not food and shelter.

Few people today muck around in earth, and when on international flights, I often find I have the only decently dirty fingernails.